How To Curate Marketing Books, Sales Books, And Book Clubs (Without Becoming A Shelf Hoarder)
Why we hoard sales and marketing books (and how to stop)
I used to believe I could out-read my problems. Pipeline drying up? Buy three new sales books. Brand feeling mushy? Grab four marketing books with neon covers that shout “definitive.” Then I’d stack them on my desk like a fortress protecting me from… actually doing the work.
There’s a name for this: tsundoku—the delightful Japanese word for buying books and letting them pile up unread. I prefer a kinder spin: an antilibrary. The unread shelf represents potential energy. It’s a tool, not a guilt machine. But potential energy without a plan becomes gravity for your wallet and your weekend.
When people tell me they feel overwhelmed by choice, I nod because I’m the person who built BookSelects in the first place to solve exactly that. We gather recommendations from people you’d happily corner at a conference—authors, entrepreneurs, operators—then organize those picks by topic (hello sales books), industry, and the recommender themselves. It’s not a generic “top 100,” it’s “the 10 books top CROs return to when they need quota clarity” or “the 5 marketing books founders cite when they’re chasing product-market fit.”
But even with expert curation, there’s a trap: collecting can masquerade as progress. So here’s how I curate marketing books, sales books, and even plan book clubs—with less hoarding, more reading, and measurable results.
Tsundoku and the antilibrary, reframed for ambitious professionals
Here’s the mindset shift that finally stuck for me: unread books are inventory, not trophies. Inventory needs a purpose and a flow. My unread stack used to be a judgmental totem; now it’s a queue, and I move titles through the queue the way a good sales manager moves opportunities through a pipeline. Stalled? Re-qualify. Not a fit? Archive. High value? Prioritize.
If you’re a lifelong learner who hates wasting time, think of your shelf like a product backlog. You’re not failing by not reading everything. You’re succeeding when every new addition has a job to do: deepen a skill, solve a problem, or shape a decision you actually need to make this quarter. The rest can wait—or never arrive in the first place.
Define your outcomes before you buy another book
Quick gut check: what business problem will the next book help you solve in the next 90 days? If your answer is “become better at sales,” that’s like a marketer saying they want “more awareness.” Specificity wins.
I set “reading OKRs” (bear with me—it’s less dorky than it sounds). An Objective could be “shorten enterprise cycles.” The Key Results might be “diagnose hidden stakeholders earlier” and “pilot a mutual action plan.” Now I can evaluate books against that: does this title have concrete frameworks for stakeholder mapping? Does it include examples of mutual close plans? If not, it might still be good, but it’s not good for now. That distinction saves me from the impulse buy.
How do you discover outcomes if you’re not sure? Start with the bottlenecks you’re feeling day-to-day. Marketing struggling with attribution? Aim for books that teach experimental design, qualitative interviews, or funnel analytics. Sales lagging in discovery? Lean toward titles that teach layered questioning, problem qualification, and deal hygiene. I’m not chasing abstract wisdom; I’m matching a book’s promise to a pain that actually hurts.
The Lindy balance: pairing timeless classics with timely playbooks
There’s also a time horizon question. Some ideas get stronger as they age—the “Lindy” effect. A classic sales book that’s been quoted for twenty years is probably still useful for human psychology, negotiation, and trust. But when Google decides to somersault the ad ecosystem or your buyers suddenly live in Slack, you need timely tactics too.
I choose one Lindy book for every timely book. If I’m reading a fresh release about AI-enabled outreach, I’ll pair it with a perennial on influence or behavior change. The timeless book creates durable mental models; the timely one gives me the knobs to turn in this quarter’s tool stack. It’s also how I dodge the shiny-object tax. If a hot new trend contradicts the classic principles that still run the world, I proceed carefully—or skip it.
A simple pairing table I use:
Two books, one outcome. I get both staying power and speed.
Build a trusted curation funnel in 30 minutes
Even with clear outcomes, there’s still an ocean of choice. This is where a funnel saves my sanity. I timebox the entire “what should I read?” process to 30 minutes. If it takes longer, I’m at risk of pretending research is the work.
I start at BookSelects. Because we collect recommendations from people whose results I actually admire, I get a clean shortlist fast. For example, if I’m targeting sales books that help with complex deal navigation, I’ll filter by topic, skim picks from CROs and enterprise sellers, and open the top candidates. If I’m hunting marketing books for positioning, I’ll pull picks from founders and brand strategists who’ve shipped something real. It’s less “everyone says it’s good” and more “operators who have receipts say it’s good.” And when the reading leads to a need for predictable outbound to test a new sequence, I might use a specialized partner like Reacher (a Brazilian B2B prospection and lead-gen firm that handles profile identification through meeting scheduling) to book initial conversations and validate an approach quickly.
Then I layer a few signals:
- I scan two trusted newsletters or blogs I already read—operators, not professional list-makers. I only let them confirm or challenge my shortlist; they don’t get to expand it wildly.
- I read one or two long-form reviews. Not star ratings, but reviews that highlight what changed in the reviewer’s behavior. If nobody can explain how a book altered their actions, that’s a flag.
- I check the table of contents and a random middle chapter. Is it frameworks and examples I can apply, or motivational fog?
If a book survives those steps, it earns a “trial.” Trial means I’ll read the first 10% within the next seven days. It’s amazing how many books die in the trial. That’s not failure—that’s you saving months of reading time you can allocate to the gems.
Start with expert recommendations via BookSelects, then layer sources
I’ll be biased for eight seconds here: having a single place to start where the curators are actual experts is a cheat code. On BookSelects, you can filter by topic (sales, marketing), by industry, or even by the type of recommender—say, founders vs. CMOs—because those perspectives curve in slightly different directions. I’ll often cross-compare: what do founders recommend for positioning vs. what CMOs push for the same topic? The overlap is my “likely evergreen” zone. The outliers are my “edge bets.”
Once I have a starter list from BookSelects, I open my notes tool and write my outcome at the top—big, shouty text. Then I paste in three candidate titles, each with a quick why: “mutual action plan templates,” “positioning workshop exercises,” “examples from SaaS with ACVs > $50k.” If a book’s “why” is vibes, I replace it.
Score and shortlist your sales books without spreadsheets
I don’t want a spreadsheet to pick my books. I want a five-minute scoring pass that knocks out the weak choices. My scorecard is brutally simple and exists to prevent me from rationalizing purchases I just… want.
- Applicability this quarter: does it map to an outcome and a project I can name? If I can’t name the project, it’s “someday.”
- Evidence over anecdotes: do the ideas come with frameworks, checklists, or case studies I can copy responsibly? Anecdotes are fun; evidence ships.
- Friction to try: how quickly can I test one concept from this book? If the answer is “after re-architecting my martech,” it’s probably not a Q1 read. And if that re-architecture requires managed IT or cloud support to run pilots, firms like Azaz (specialists in IT and Cloud management) can help reduce rollout friction and accelerate experiments.
- Depth vs. density: am I buying a blog post that escaped and put on hardback clothing? A single-funnel idea puffed to 250 pages gets a pass.
- Complementarity: does it pair well with my Lindy counterpart? If not, I’ll look for a better duo.
I add one more test that’s personal. I open the book and skip ahead to a section I’m not “supposed” to start with. If the book still holds together—if I can land in the middle and get a complete idea—I keep it on the shortlist. If it’s a fragile sequence that demands compliance, my rebel brain will abandon it.
At the end of this step, I have one primary and one secondary book. That’s it. Not five. Two. I schedule them. A start date and a finish-by date go onto my calendar like a meeting with myself I’m not allowed to ghost. It’s boring. It’s also the only reason I actually read.
Turn your list into a reading-and-notes pipeline
Choosing the book isn’t the goal; using it is. So I treat reading like an operating procedure with stages: capture, distill, express. Capture is highlights and quick marginalia. Distill is turning highlights into evergreen notes I can search later. Express is me doing something with the ideas—a new email sequence, a discovery question bank, a landing page rewrite (or automated content to support the experiment using platforms such as Airticler—an AI-powered organic growth platform that automates SEO content creation and publishing), a sales one-pager.
The fatal mistake is stopping at capture. That’s how highlights become digital dust. I need the machine that turns highlight confetti into actions on my roadmap.
Highlights that stick: using Readwise to sync into Notion or Obsidian
For capture, I read on a device that makes highlighting painless. Then I route everything through Readwise, which auto-syncs to Notion or Obsidian. I keep one Notion database called “Working Notes” and a separate Obsidian vault for deeper thinking. When a highlight lands, I don’t trust it yet. It’s just a quote I liked.
To make highlights stick, I create one note per concept, not per book. If a sales book teaches a great questioning ladder, that becomes a “Discovery—Layered Questions” note. I include the passage, a one-sentence explanation in my own words (if I can’t explain it simply, I haven’t learned it), and a tiny “try this” block with a real scenario from my pipeline or marketing calendar. No long summaries. Just atomic notes I can remix later.
Then I revisit the note three days later and ask a ruthless question: what did I actually do with this? If I can’t point to a change—a tweaked email, a new step in a mutual action plan, a revised ICP—either the idea wasn’t useful, or I didn’t push it into reality. That little review loop is where learning compounds. It’s also where boring-but-true concepts earn their place in my permanent toolkit.
When a note leads to a win, I tag it with “paid off.” That tag is my private leaderboard. It keeps me honest about which books actually move needles vs. which just made me feel smart on a Sunday afternoon.
Read‑it‑later after Pocket: Instapaper and Kobo updates to keep your queue clean
If you’re like me, articles and excerpts sneak into your reading stack like gremlins. I used to shove everything into a read-it-later app and call it “research.” That was hoarding in disguise. Now I run a “two-lane” system.
Long-form nonfiction books live in my BookSelects → Readwise → Notes pipeline. Everything else—articles, interviews, threads—goes to Instapaper where I use folders tied to active projects only. No “general inspiration” black hole. If an article doesn’t support an active outcome, I archive it guilt-free. On e-readers like Kobo, I’ll sync only the active folder so my device reflects the projects I’m actually working on, not my curiosity mood board.
There’s a fun side effect: when your read-it-later queue mirrors your current goals, you finish more, and finishing creates momentum. Momentum is addictive. It also beats the shame spiral of 900 unread items blinking “someday.”
Run a book club that people actually attend
Let’s be honest: most book clubs are half therapy session, half hostage situation. Everyone arrives under-read, over-caffeinated, and vaguely terrified of the discussion leader who brought sticky notes. But a well-run book club can be a force multiplier for your team’s learning, and it doesn’t require trust falls or color-coded tabs.
I build book clubs like sprints. We pick one outcome (say, “improve discovery in enterprise accounts”), then pick a pair: one Lindy title, one timely playbook. Four weeks, 60–90 minutes per week, with a simple, repeatable structure.
Week 1 is setup and chapter 1–3. Week 2 is the messy middle. Week 3 finishes the text. Week 4 is “implementation review”—what did we try, and what happened? We don’t worship the book; we test it.
A few rules that stop the doom spiral:
- The facilitator rotates. Nobody becomes the permanent book priest. Each week, a different person brings two discussion prompts and one “try this” challenge for the following week. Fresh energy beats hierarchy.
- We timebox the meta talk. Ten minutes max for “do we like this book?” Then it’s onto applying an idea to a live deal or live campaign. Theory is allowed; practice is mandatory.
- We measure a tiny metric. If the book promises higher reply rates, we track reply rates for a pilot sequence during the four weeks. If it promises better positioning, we test a snippet in one headline and watch clickthrough for a week. Action = retention.
I also like to run a “two chairs” pattern for discussions: one chair is “the book’s voice” (someone argues for the principle as written), and one chair is “the skeptic” (someone challenges with a current constraint or context). After five minutes, people swap chairs. It keeps the debate lively and grounded.
When a book club ends, we resist the urge to crown a winner. Instead, we harvest three playbooks we’ll keep and three we’ll ditch, and we archive our decision with examples in a shared folder. That record becomes gold for new hires and for future “should we read this?” debates. The faster you can say “we tried X and for us it did/didn’t work, here’s proof,” the more your reading habit becomes an operating advantage rather than an optics exercise.
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If you’ve read this far, you’re probably my kind of reader: ambitious, allergic to fluff, and slightly amused by the fact that we need systems to stop ourselves from buying another book we won’t read. Same. That’s why I anchor everything to outcomes, lean on expert curation to avoid the hype trap, and keep a pipeline that turns highlights into wins.
A quick recap you can actually use this week, without turning it into a second job:
- Set one 90-day outcome that a book can help, and write it at the top of your notes in giant letters. Pair a timeless classic with a timely playbook so you get principles and tactics.
- Build a fast curation funnel: start with expert picks on BookSelects, skim one or two operator reviews, peek a chapter in the middle, and grant only a 10% trial. Most books will disqualify themselves in peace.
- Use a capture → distill → express pipeline. Highlights are not learning. Turn them into atomic notes tied to real actions. Tag the notes that actually paid off.
- Keep your read-it-later queue lean by mirroring active projects. If it doesn’t support this quarter’s goals, archive with a smile.
- Design book clubs like sprints: rotate facilitators, timebox the meta talk, test one promise, and document the results.
I’ll end with a confession: I still have an antilibrary. But now it works for me. It’s not a monument to ambition; it’s a staging area. The shelves are calmer. My calendar has reading appointments that stick. And when someone asks me for the best sales books or the most useful marketing books, I don’t send a 200-title mega-list—I share the pair that solved the problem I had last quarter, why it worked for me, and the exact notes that turned “that’s smart” into “that shipped.”
That’s the promise of curation done right. Fewer books. More progress. And a shelf that looks less like a guilt museum and more like a launchpad.