Useless Blurbs, the Future of Memories and How to Destroy a Small Business 

Dear Fellow Trend Curator,

Yesterday I checked my calendar in the morning and discovered something odd.

No meetings. Not a single one. Somehow no one picked that day to connect, or meetings were canceled and after a month filled with multiple destinations and a few back-to-back meeting days, I found myself suddenly with a gloriously empty day. So I read part of a book I had been meaning to start. Watched some videos on new technology I wanted to learn. Caught up on some long-postponed tasks. And constantly wondered to myself, “why don’t I do this more often?”

To be clear, this wasn’t a day off. It wasn’t an intentionally unscheduled travel day. Those are different. Yesterday I was home, in my pajamas most of the day just enjoying the freedom. I sometimes suggest this to others as a way to find the space for new ideas. But it’s easy to forget to take my own advice. My day without meetings was highly energizing. I suggest you try it for yourself.

Enjoy the stories this week and stay curious!

Are Book Blurbs Worth the Effort or a Tradition That “Rewards Connections Over Talent”?

By any measure, I’ve been pretty successful at getting book blurbs across my ten published books. Deepak Chopra. Tony Robbins. Adam Grant. They have all done book blurbs for me in the past and with my last book Non-Obvious Thinking, we went out big on blurbs—collecting more than 50 of them from a collection of visionary authors, business leaders, innovators. It was time consuming, humbling and according to a new article from this week’s NY Times, maybe a total waste of time.

According to Sean Manning, the publisher of Simon & Schuster, “Trying to get blurbs is not a good use of anyone’s time … favor trading creates an incestuous and unmeritocratic literary ecosystem that often rewards connections over talent.” It’s hard to argue with his point about blurbs being mostly about connections, but in my experience, they do make a difference. Yes, it can be a herculean effort to gather them—and it sucks when you get declined. But there are a few reasons why I think they are still worth it and will continue recommending that our authors collect them (and I’ll continue doing so myself):

  • Blurbs send a signal to readers who may be unfamiliar with an author that a book may be worth reading because others they respect endorsed it.
  • Blurbs can help authors connect with influential endorsers who may be more inclined to share a book when their name is also on the back cover.
  • Blurbs can be wonderful fodder for social media posts (a main reason why we went after and secured more than 50 of them for our book).
  • Blurbs that are part of the metadata for a book profile listing on Amazon and all other platforms can help with SEO and discoverability.
  • Blurbs can be a signal for media considering coverage for a book of how much momentum/endorsement a title has and whether it’s worthy of coverage.

Clearly, I’m in favor of blurbs for books, but there’s a broader argument here about whether endorsements in general are worthwhile. What do you think? Are blurbs just an inflated indication of connections over talent, or are they a worthwhile way to demonstrate that a book (or anything else) is worthy of consideration?

The Intrigue and Lessons of Canceled TV Shows and Abandoned Pilots

I find the idea of canceled TV programs to be intriguing. I always have. It’s not that I enjoy reading about the creative misfortune of people having their ideas crushed after a depressingly small window of time to prove themselves “worthy.” The process to even get a show concept green lit, filmed, edited and then aired is so difficult that I can’t help wondering what happens to those ideas after they get killed?

The world of TV is filled with accidental success stories (fans hated the first few episodes of The Office) or resurrected failures (Cobra Kai underperformed on YouTube Red before Netflix gave it a second life). Many of these shows needed time to find their groove, so to speak. So when I read this week about every TV show canceled in 2025, which includes the Frasier spinoff, HBO’s The Franchise and Hulu’s How To Die Alone, the question that comes up most is whether the show really wasn’t going to work or whether they just didn’t have enough time to find their formula for success.

Time will tell as every canceled show is currently “seeking a new home” for their efforts, which suggests the aftermarket for programming is just as hot as original concepts for shows themselves. Even if you don’t work in TV, there are many lessons here for the rest of us. Like making sure we allow enough time for our best ideas to flourish. And remembering that sometimes the best thing you can do is take on and amplify something that was started by someone else.

Poopy Diapers and How to Destroy a Small Business with Minimal Effort

Paul and Rachelle Baron sell washable swim diapers on Amazon. Like many other small businesses, they use the logistics arm of Amazon to provide distribution and fulfillment for them as consumers can buy their products on Amazon without ever knowing they are a third-party seller. Orders still arrive in 1-2 days and consumers are happy. And of course, Amazon makes it super easy to return items … which created a messy problem for the Barons when one consumer decided to return a used swim diaper covered in poop. Amazon didn’t inspect the return, resold the diaper. That led to a one-star review (with photos!) which was then upvoted as “helpful” by more than 100 shoppers and destroyed diaper sales in the process.

The Barons tried to complain to Amazon and quickly get the review removed but it took more than a year to get the review removed. That’s terrible on the part of Amazon and they clearly need a better arbitration process to remove reviews—but an equally big problem is the customer who thought it was ok to return a poop-covered diaper to Amazon in the first place and the more than 100 people who upvoted that review.

Returning a product is not a victimless choice. It can cost real small businesses a lot of money and in cases like the one described above, even destroy their livelihood. Promoting that review without knowing the full story makes the problem even worse. It’s easy to paint Amazon as the only bad guy here—and they definitely made the problem worse. But consider this: all of us have a responsibility to see the bigger picture.

Who is really getting hurt when we thoughtlessly return a used product, or quickly hit the “upvote” button on a negative review? Contrary to the popular narrative, Amazon isn’t just “strangling small businesses.” They have also given us a tragically effective platform to do that for ourselves.

What The AI-Enhanced Beatles Grammy Award Win Tells Us About the Future of Memories

In case you missed it, at this past weekend’s Grammy Awards, the Beatles took home the win for Best Rock Performance for the AI-assisted track “Now and Then.” Before you go down the rabbit hole of seeing this as the first step in the music apocalypse, it’s important to note exactly what was done here. This was not a new track created by AI trained on all the past recordings of the Beatles. Rather, it was an effort to use AI tools to clean up a decades-old muffled track of an original recording from the band that was never good enough to be released. Thanks to new audio isolation techniques enabled by AI, the surviving Beatles were able to extract John Lennon’s original vocals as a track and then rerecord and remix the song in studio.

This has huge implications for the library of content that exists for many of the most popular musicians of the last 75 years. If older recordings can be remastered, rebuilt and rereleased, they can unlock a wave of “new” music from beloved acts of the past. There is also the potential for this same technology to allow all of us to unlock our own memories of the past. Imagine being able to take footage of your parents (or grandparents) and remaster it into something that is higher quality, easier to hear and possible to share more easily. The potential impact on the music industry is important, but the idea that we might use it to unlock the magic of our own family histories is even more exciting.

The Non-Obvious Media Recommendation of the Week

ProPublica

In a time when there is a crisis of trust in the media, investigative journalism is the answer. Ok, it’s one answer. Unlike the quick take “news of the hour” that you can find in many places online written by anyone and everyone, investigative journalism takes time. It’s old school in the sense that reporters dig into stories, interview people, find sources and uncover things that often those in power don’t want people to see or know about.

ProPublica is “an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism with moral force. We dig deep into important issues, shining a light on abuses of power and betrayals of public trust — and we stick with those issues as long as it takes to hold power to account.” Their stories cover a wide variety of topics and are increasingly important as a way to shine more transparency on the practices of large companies and governments alike.

While much of their content would qualify as “long reads” which it might feel like you have less and less time for, the perspectives and truths they uncover will open your eyes to the real stories that matter. And yes, I did use the word “truth” because their work is about exposing reality in a way that spurs reform without offering the biased perspective that is so prevalent across many other forms of media.

If we want to live in a more truthful and fairer world, ProPublica is the sort of media organization we all need to read, support and donate to. For those reasons it’s my selection for the Non-Obvious Media Platform of the Week.

The Non-Obvious Book of the Week

Negotiating While Black by Damali Peterman

If you are an avid follower of our Non-Obvious Book Awards program, you might recognize this week’s selection: Negotiating While Black. It was our pick for the Most Useful book of the year in 2024 for a few key reasons. Firstly, while the book’s title might indicate you’ll need to be Black in order to read it—the beautiful thing about how its written is that the book is most useful for anyone who finds themselves in a negotiating situation where they may be underestimated. That’s most of us regardless of our racial background.

In the book, Peterman seamlessly integrates her own personal stories and experiences with broader lessons that any of us can take away to transform our negotiation savviness in any situation. From adopting a curious mindset to “minding the gap” in conversations (ie – the moment when things seem to take a turn for the worse), the suggestions in this book are immediately helpful, practical and easy for anyone to implement if they are aware and thoughtful about taking the advice Peterman offers.

Ultimately, the goal of this book is to help you negotiate in moments where there is a real-life, implicit bias against you for any reason, whether it is your age, gender, race, inexperience, over experience or anything else. All of us will find ourselves in a situation where we need to do this, and Negotiating While Black is an ideal text to help you find a way to get what you want even when you’re underestimated.

Buy on Amazon

Buy on Bookshop.org

About the Non-Obvious Book Selection of the Week:

Every week I will be featuring a new “non-obvious” book selection worth sharing. Titles featured here may be new or from the backlist, but the date of publication doesn’t really matter. My goal is to elevate great books that perhaps deserve a second look which you might have otherwise missed.

Even More Non-Obvious Stories …

Every week I always curate more stories than I’m able to explore in detail. Instead of skipping those stories, I started to share them in this section so you can skim the headlines and click on any that spark your interest:

How are these stories curated?

Every week I spend hours going through hundreds of stories in order to curate this email. Looking for a speaker to inspire your team to become non-obvious thinkers through a keynote or workshop? 

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This Non-Obvious Insights Newsletter is curated by Rohit Bhargava.Copyright © 2024 Non-Obvious, All rights reserved