I have two updates about The No Asshole Rule. This fake sign is on the blog about the Italian version of The No Asshole Rule, Il Metodo Antistronzi (the translation is something like "the anti-asshole method"): I guess that is why Disneyland is called "The Happiest Place on Earth." Il Metodo Antistronzi continues to be on many bestseller lists there even though it has been out for a bit over three months -- for example, it is currently the #1 business book and #21 overall on IBS, one of the primary internet bookstores in Italy.
In the United States, Amazon recently released their sales figures for 2007 (through October): The No Asshole Rule is among the top 100 for books released in 2007, at #34 overall and #8 among business books. It has been quite a year, and I hope a bad one for workplace assholes. The Heath brothers fantastic Made to Stick had an even better first year, at #26 overall and #6 among business books. I suspect that most readers of this blog have already read it, but if there ever was an "instant business classic," Made to Stick fits the description. The success of both books also kind of amazes me, in part, because I remember around this time last year, when Chip Heath and I were having a sort of wistful fantasy and saying to each other that the best possible outcome (as both of our books were about to come out) would be if both books became bestsellers, and it actually happened.
P.S. Speaking of "stronzi," I got a really funny Italian lesson in a comment from Bill Roth a few weeks back after my "fast and fun trip to Italy." I've been meaning to put it in a post, and this is as a good a time as any:
Fascinating word. Italian being a flexible language, there are alot
of fun things you could do with it. For example, a plain asshole is a
stronzo, but in Italian, nouns have gender, and they also have fun
modifiers like diminutives. So you could have the following:
Stronzi: bunch of assholes
Stronza: female asshole (and don't pretend there aren't any)
Stronze: a bunch of stronzas.
Stronzino: a little asshole
Stronzini: a bunch of little assholes
Stronzone: a BIG asshole
Stronzaccio: a big, bad asshole
Stronzaccio: a big, bad, stronza
Comments