Each month, the Educational Software Cooperative (ESC) Software Marketing Book Club discusses a sales, marketing, or business book in detail. The central theme of each discussion is: How can the ideas in this book help software developers make their businesses more successful? The discussions are open to all ESC members.

The Book Club began on February 1, 2009. And there has never been an easier, more pleasant way to learn to market your software.

We have fun going through each book, chapter by chapter, and sharing ideas about how we can make our businesses more prosperous by applying the ideas that we're learning.

Even if you haven't had time to read the chapters that we'll be talking about, please join in the discussions anyway.

To get the discussions going, Al Harberg, the press release guy from DP Directory, Inc. introduces the books' major concepts, and puts the ideas into context, chapter by chapter.

Unlike the 250-word book summaries which follow, Al's introductory postings, which appear in the ESC members-only newsgroup, average nearly 4,000 words per book. He translates the books' general principles into money-making ideas for the software development industry.

Both experienced marketers and entrepreneurs who are new to marketing contribute to the conversations, and learn from them.

The discussions take place in ESC's members' newsgroup. Any ESC member can participate by using an ordinary NNTP newsgroup reader or by using ESC's online forums and their favorite browser. ESC's web site has newsgroup instructions.

Today's economy demands that we pay more attention to marketing our software and services. ESC's new book club is an efficient and fun way to strengthen our companies.

You don't have to market educational software to take advantage of ESC membership. The Book Club discussions are about software marketing, and not just about educational software marketing.

Please join ESC now, and take advantage of this dynamic, growing body of marketing knowledge that can help your software sales.

Following are brief summaries of the books we've been reading. These concise digests were provided by Al Harberg, our book club moderator. His in-depth analyses, along with additional commentary and discussions by ESC members, appear in the ESC members-only newsgroup.