The enthusiasm here at GalleyCat for Megan Hustad and her guide to self-improvement guides, How to Be Useful, is well–documented, so I smiled at yesterday’s item by FishbowlNY commentator Glynnis MacNicol about the Gawker ad for the book, which was blended perfectly into the website’s unsponsored postings (and features an uncredited blurb from Emily). Glynnis discovered that How to Be Useful is actually the sixth book to be featured in this ongoing ad campaign, which includes excerpts and giveaways. As content marketing goes, it’s reasonably well executed, and whoever’s running the show seems to have a fairly solid grasp on the demographic with a willingness to experiment. (I’m on record as loving David Benioff‘s City of Thieves, too, but even with his Hollywood credentials I wouldn’t necessarily have pegged it as a book for the Gawker audience.)
And then I laughed at the comment to Glynnis’s post by “BScrivner,” who attempted to intellectually one-up Gawker and Hustad: “Did you catch the glaring error?” s/he asks. “ANDREW Carnegie gave personal growth advice? In what universe?” Try the one we live in, actually—but if you’d read Hustad’s book, you’d know that already.