Who defines "greatness"?

I was scanning my email a few minutes ago and happened upon an "invite" issued by a Facebook "friend" to attend an event by someone promoted to be a "North American master". I realized in that split second of reaction to the stated "credentials" that I do not place much credence in such monikers. The fellow may be very good at what he does, perhaps a master at his trade, and the moniker may even be something someone else pinned on him, but I wonder how effective such promotion really is...

Perhaps a relevant question is, "How much credence do YOU put on such promotional adjectives and why?"

I'm reading a book titled Branding Faith by Phil Cooke about this very topic. Maybe the reaction that I have to these reputed credentials is testament to my perception that these are not significant contributors to one's "brand" -- and if this is not contributing to the "brand" for this particular person, then why use it in a promotion? Or maybe it is an effective expression of this person's "brand" and I'm just an "odd case".

Whew!

It's been a while since I've posted. During that time I have been ruminating over a short piece that has been on my mind for the past 15 years. The book was started several years ago. Put on the shelf a number of times, taken down, dusted off, rewritten numerous times in the first several chapters but never getting to the end. I was grappling with the content of the book, not seeing what I had to say as deserving of a 250 page trade publication like so many authors were writing. Without that content length, I figured publishers would not want to waste their time.

Then along came Kindle. Obviously, Kindle has been around for several years but it recently came to my attention that it would be a great platform for shorter books. I noticed today that TED now has books published by its presenters on the Kindle platform in the genre called "Kindle Singles."

In any case, the awareness of the Kindle publishing channel gave me the motivation to finish the book. I wouldn't have to run the gauntlet of finding an agent, submitting the publication, waiting for an answer.... I could just finish the book, submit it for publishing and viola' -- a published author.

About 10 years ago I took a little workshop from Joe Sabah, a Denver-based proponent of professional speakers. He has a database of radio talk show hosts and suggests that authors get their works publicized through radio.  Apparently it is a "ready market" if you have something a bit out of the ordinary to talk about -- or at least a provocative way of saying ordinary things :).

Being published on the Kindle platform in a few days will give me the means of distributing the book without the upfront production costs of printing a book, make the distribution easy (via Amazon for the Kindle, iPad, iPhone, Android and Blackberry devices), ease of modifying the book should I decide to add to it or change it after publication. Plus it can be priced in the $3 range to make it a easy to justify purchase.

The electronic publishing industry is going to revolutionize and democratize the authoring process!

So watch for it, "Joy: A Simple Choice" is coming soon!