Ian Lurie told me to read the Dungeon Master's Guide

I asked Ian Lurie what people should read, expecting a list of SEO blogs. He gave me a 1923 advertising book, a Lincoln biography, and then this:

"And then, and this is going to sound crazy, read the Dungeon Master's Guide from Wizards of the Coast. I am not kidding. Read it. There is stuff in there about how you work with a group of people to get them to participate in a story. That will teach you more about marketing than every single book and blog post you will find anywhere else."

That's Ian at 16:18. I laughed at the time. He wasn't kidding.

I went back through every WojCast transcript, and when these people recommend a book it's almost never about search. The SEO books on this list are mostly the ones the guests wrote themselves.

How people actually make decisions

Switch by Chip and Dan Heath, Nudge by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein, and Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. All three came from Wil Reynolds, who told me he doesn't read for fun: "I don't read for pleasure. Because marketing is pleasure to me." When he does pick up something outside marketing, it's psychology:

"They might not be marketing books, but it really does help you get in the mindset of a... as a marketer helps me to understand and empathize better with people and how people make decisions."

That's the same Wil who later in the episode argues for "audiences over algorithms", which became one of our principles of digital empathy. Nudge now comes in a 2021 "Final Edition". Worth knowing though: some of Ariely's own research has since been pulled, including a 2002 procrastination study retracted this month after problems with the data. Read it with that in mind.

Scientific Advertising by Claude C. Hopkins (1923). Ian couldn't remember the author on the day, but he remembered what it did for him: "it was one of the first books I ever read about marketing." He also said he'd heard about it from Wil, so that's two guests for one book. It's old enough to be free to read, and it's basically a 100 year old pitch for testing your ads.

Leading people who don't agree with you

Team of Rivals by Doris Kearns Goodwin. Ian credited it to Abraham Lincoln himself, which I'm choosing to read as a compliment to the writing. His reason for recommending it holds up for any agency or in house team: "that's a great book about just leadership and how you get people who don't agree with you to still participate and work with you."

Patrick Lencioni's leadership fables, best known being The Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Ian wrote his own book as a story after studying Lencioni: "I actually I learned that format from an author named Patrick Lencioni who does a lot of corporate sort of learning stuff and it works really well." (6:39). If you've ever tried to get a boardroom to care about title tags, a fable is a sneaky way in.

The Billionaire Who Wasn't by Conor O'Clery, about Chuck Feeney, who made a fortune in duty free and quietly gave it away. This was Rand Fishkin's favourite. He told me it's "a great narrative... and a well-told story, but it's also a story of someone who felt a deep need to contribute in a way bigger than themselves." Rand passed it on to Wil, who called it The Billionaire Who Gave It All Away, which is fair enough: "Rand recommended it to me. I'm like, that was a good book."

Company of One by Paul Jarvis. When I interviewed Jon Henshaw in 2019, after he'd sold Raven Tools, he was running Coywolf on the side and said Jarvis had written the book on it, "which I encourage people to go out and read. It's awesome." What stuck with him was the idea that "you can end up actually happier by doing a little less". The whole conversation is in part two of his written interview.

Jeff Haden. Larry Kim didn't name a book. He named a writer. Haden was the Inc. columnist Larry read for "leadership and what inspires people and vision and all this stuff", and he said he'd "definitely recommend Jeff Haden". Haden has since put a lot of that thinking into The Motivation Myth (2018).

Telling it so people listen

Dungeon Master's Guide from Wizards of the Coast. Ian's pick from the top of this page. A revised edition came out in late 2024, so there's no excuse. His point was never really about dragons: it's a manual for getting a group of people to buy into a story and take part in it, which is also a decent description of a content strategy. I wrote more about why stories do the heavy lifting in tell a compelling story.

How to Deliver a TED Talk by Jeremey Donovan. Oli Gardner avoided public speaking for years because he was scared. This is the book that got him started: "Amazing book, changed the way I think and how I structure my talks." He paired it with some homework. His bus to work took 17 minutes, so he watched one TED talk every morning on the way in.

Edward Tufte's books, starting with The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Dr. Pete Meyers didn't pick a single title. He just said "I really like Tufte, you know, Edward Tufte stuff," and that he'd been to one of his seminars. For someone whose job is explaining data, his reasoning was refreshingly plain: "I think there's a lot to be said for simplicity."

Hello, My Name Is Awesome by Alexandra Watkins. When I interviewed Jeff Sauer in 2022, he told me he named his company with it: "I used a book called Hello, My Name is Awesome. And it just goes through like a whole naming process. You put like 20, 30, 50 ideas on a notebook." The name he landed on was Data Driven U, and then a team member asked whether "data informed" wasn't closer to what they actually did. That story is in his written interview.

A few more that came up in passing:

• O'Reilly's animal books. Jon Henshaw named Raven after them: "the reason why I picked Raven was because I love those books." O'Reilly has the story of the animals if you've ever wondered.
• Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon. Lewis Howes, on borrowing ideas from a great event for his own: "Kind of like steal it like an artist, you know, and get that book or whatever."
• Much Ado About Nothing. Geraldine DeRuiter quoted Beatrice to explain how she'd turn down Jeff Goldblum, then warned me: "I'm going to get emotional because that's what Shakespeare does to me because I'm a nerd."
• StrengthsFinder 2.0 by Tom Rath. Melanie Spring's second strength is "input", which explains a lot about how she collects stories.

The books our guests wrote

Several guests had a book out, or on the way, when we spoke.

Rand Fishkin: Lost and Founder (Portfolio, 2018). In part two, Rand was still writing it: "I have five chapters out of 16 done. So I am, I am sweating it." He finished. When I interviewed Tim Soulo of Ahrefs in late 2018, Tim told me the book had changed how Ahrefs approached a new metric: "we are not rushing it, partially because of what I read in Rand's book." Moz had shipped its spam score half baked, and Tim didn't want to repeat it. It's in his written interview too.

Nathalie Nahai: Webs of Influence (Pearson, now in its second edition). The psychology of online persuasion, written by someone who clearly practises it. When the publisher's designer sent back the first layout, she pushed back hard: "you guys have not read the fricking book. Like if you do this, you'll undermine the entire thesis of the book." Her newer book is Business Unusual. If you liked her point about reducing ambiguity, start here.

Paddy Moogan: The Link Building Book (2013). It was meant to be 20,000 to 30,000 words and ended up at nearly 70,000. He kept it digital on purpose: "with an online version, an e-book, you just send out a new version tomorrow and it's done." He did exactly that. The updated book is now free to read online.

Ian Lurie: Conversation Marketing and One Trick Ponies Get Shot. Ian wrote Conversation Marketing in 2003 (his words); the paperback followed in 2006. One Trick Ponies is the fable he learned to write from Lencioni, about agencies escaping the vendor trap. Portent now hosts a free long form version. More of our chat is in Ian's written interview.

Geraldine DeRuiter: All Over the Place (PublicAffairs, 2017). She mentioned something in it, then added "which you should buy" (28:07). At the end she said "I wrote one book and gotta go do another one, right?" She did: If You Can't Take the Heat came out in 2024.

Lewis Howes: The School of Greatness and The Mask of Masculinity. When we spoke he was writing the second one, and said it grew out of the Q&As on his first book tour. He has since added The Greatness Mindset and Make Money Easy.

Two more guests have books I didn't get to ask about on air. Marty Weintraub wrote Killer Facebook Ads (2011) and The Complete Social Media Community Manager's Guide with Lauren Litwinka, and his latest is The Last (Human) Leader Standing. Mike King has The Science of SEO with Wiley, with a release date of 25 August 2026. And for the record, Oli Gardner doesn't have a traditional book, but his free Unbounce ebook Attention-Driven Design reads like one.

The whole shelf

Jon Henshaw gets the last word, because he's not a big fan of business books. Jon Henshaw told me he has never been "the type of person who likes to read other people's books of how I'm supposed to... run my business," and that you should believe in something "because you've tested it and tried it for yourself". Fair enough. Nearly every book here is about people rather than tactics, and you still have to go and test what you learn on real ones.