This week, I am recommending a book which isn't classified as a business book. To the author's chagrin, SaveKaryn is being shelved with the 'self-help' books. Karyn Bosnak wants you to know that there is nothing 'self-help' about her book. I think she is partly right. It's a self-help book and more. This is a book about how a B.S. in Marketing, a weakness for designer shoes and a shopaholic's addiction led to a practical 'self-help - business marketing - autobiography ' cautionary tale about the dangers of debt. Karyn Bosnak is smart, funny and very creative in her quest to end her debt and become the first Internet 'panhandler'. The book is the natural extension of the very popular and much visited www.savekaryn.com that she started June 2002.

I discovered Karyn's site in August 2002, about 6 weeks after the launch. I was amazed to find someone who shared my idea (I had it first) to ask people for a dollar on the Internet. I was even more amazed she was having such success chipping away at a $20,000 debt. I was afraid the concept wouldn't work. Karyn, however, executed a great plan. In June 2002, she registered her domain, put up a shell website and asked for money. Her pitch, "I'm really nice and I'm asking for your help." But unlike the many wanna-be's that cropped up after www.savekaryn.com, Karyn wasn't just holding out her hand with a cup. She offered to entertain for a dollar. There are many (myself included) who visit frequently to read her daily material and laugh. She's funny. A heck of a lot funnier at times than CBS' 'Everybody Loves Raymond' which costs advertisers more than a dollar per person.

Karyn was also very creative in her request for money. She outlined her marketing strategy online; used the various technologies on the net like Paypal, Amazon and eBay; and even gave free advertising to thrifty places like the Dollar Store. In the meantime, eBay, Paypal and Amazon made money through their affiliation with www.savekaryn.com. And Karyn was the perfect person to show others how to use the Internet to connect to the world. She markets, runs public relations, positions her product and even pitches in to do customer service. Some of her best material is responding to the heckler e-mails that come in daily. She highlights the best ones in her daily 'Me-Mail'. She is also quick to say thank-you and highlight the kindness of others on the site as well. Now that the $20,000 is paid off, SaveKaryn.com is mostly dedicated to promoting the book and continuing to offer tips on being thrifty. There is also a section on giving back to the community.

The book is even funnier than the website, although after reading www.savekaryn.com over the past year, I suspect some of the stories were edited by less funny editors. I know her style. However, because of her style, she gets 4 out of 5 stars for the constant use of 'anyho'. It's not a word, Karyn. I looked it up. It's only funny some of the time.

Unlike the www.savekaryn.com website, the book gives full details of the debt, the high interest payments and the everyday struggle of this newly transplanted New Yorker. We learn a lot more about Karyn's family and friends. More importantly we see the effects of brand pressure on buying habits. When Karyn talks to herself about each purchase, we find that she is actually weighing the differences between the brand perception and the product contents.

This may be considered a 'chick-book' and a self-help book, but it also has lessons of marketing in the current pop-culture. It even has the makings of being a weekly sitcom -- move over Raymond.

Book Description

ISBN: 0060558199 Subtitle: One Shopaholic's Journey to Debt and Back Publisher: Perennial (HarperCollins) Subject: Women Subject: Personal Memoirs Subject: Specific Groups - General Publication Date: September 2003 Binding: Paperback Language: English Pages: 464 Dimensions: 804x530x86 84

The first all-in-one guide to the techniques and tools of today's top product managers

Marketing strategists Ries and Ries spend all 320 pages of their latest book arguing one point: skillful public relations is what sells, not advertising. Case in point: the failure of Pets.com's sock puppet ads. However, in a chapter devoted to dot-com advertising excesses, the authors never mention that many dot-coms had miserable business plans and neophyte management. (The Rieses may be counting on the sock puppet to sell another commodity, as a deflated sock puppet dominates the book's jacket.) Today, most small companies aren't bloated with venture capital to buy TV ads, yet the book has little practical advice on how these companies' executives should use public relations, particularly PR's most important role: crisis control. Some readers might resent paying $24.95 for what amounts to an advertisement for pricey PR consulting firms like Ries & Ries. The authors frequently poke fun at the most outrageous TV ads of recent years, paralleling Sergio Zyman's The End of Advertising As We Know It (reviewed above), a more thoughtful critique of current advertising trends. The inherent flaw in the Rieses' logic: time and again they cite ad campaigns for new products that are "off message" and then say how much sales declined; this supports the notion that products and services are sold by good advertising. Although their book is occasionally entertaining, the argument is simplistic and self-serving. Illus.