The Short Version

Todd Sattersten is the publisher and owner of Bard Press, a book publisher that works with authors to create best-selling books in business, personal development and technology.

Before Bard Press, Todd served as general manager of IT Revolution and president of business book retailer 800-CEO-READ.  He is the author of Every Book Is a Startup and the co-author of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (Portfolio, 2009). Todd lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife Amy and their three awesome kids.

The Longer Version

I love business and business books.

I know it might sound like strange passions but I love ideas and what is possible when you have some space to explore them.

Most years I read around 100 books and look at another 200 books. Every year, I pull together a list of my favorite books to help people sort through the thousands published. Here are my selections from 2004, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010, 2011, and 2012.

I took this crazy passion and co-wrote, with Jack Covert, The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You, a book that has sold more than 55,000 copies and been translated into 12 languages. The original edition came out in hardcover in February 2009. The paperback edition was released in October 2011 and a new ebook edition in January 2012. A revised third edition of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time was released in August 2016.

I served as President of Milwaukee-based specialty retailer 800-CEO-READ where I participated in the launch of hundreds of books into the marketplace. I was instrumental in providing for the continued stewardship of ChangeThis, launched the business book giveaway website InBubbleWrap, and started the 800-CEO-READ Business Book Awards.

I served as General Manager of IT Revolution and worked with author Gene Kim from 2011 to 2018. The first book project from the company, The Phoenix Project, has sold more than 500,000 copies and the follow-up title The DevOps Handbook has sold more than 100,000 copies. We also created The DevOps Enterprise Summit, an event series held United States and Europe with more than 2500 technology leaders that attend annually.

I have experimented with new forms of publishing for the last nine years beginning with my first weblog A Penny For… I self-published my first book in 2005 called More Space: Nine Antidotes for Complacency In Business. Since then, I have published the ebooks Fixed to Flexible: Four Simple Lessons about Cost, Price, Margin, and The Options Available to The 21st Century Business and Pricing Pictures: Drawings To Help You Make Better Business Decisions, both with more than 10,000 downloads.

In 2011, I released a project called Every Book Is A Startup: The New Business of Publishing. The project was published in a serialized fashion as I wrote it. The price started at 99 cents and gradually increased as new material was added while customers were given all updates for free.  In October 2018, I released a revised edition of Every Book Is A Startup was released with a new table of content of contents and new material.

In January 2019, I joined my long-time friend Ray Bard at Bard Press as the deputy publisher. What makes our approach unique is we only publish a few books a year (most years only one or two) and we have built the company to serve authors. The ONE Thing and The Little Red Book of Selling are among the company’s best-selling books. In July 2020, I became publisher at Bard Press, and in September 2021, I become owner and operator of the company.

I live in Portland, Oregon, but I spent most of my life growing up and living in Wisconsin. I am a shareholder in the Green Bay Packers but have largely given up cheese as the fifth food group.

I have a mechanical engineering from Michigan Tech and a Master’s in Business Administration from Marquette. I spent six years working for GE making products ranging from industrial diamond to motor control systems for steel mills to PET scanners.

 Some Way To Connect

• Start by signing up for my monthly newsletter – I send out a detailed and unique riff to my subscribers about what I see going on in business book publishing. Did I mention the newsletter is free?
• I update my blog less frequently.
• Buy a copy of The 100 Best Business Books of All Time – If you want to see the best books of the last 40 years and see what I have to say about them, The 100 Best is a great head start for seeing my perspective of the industry. You can buy it on Amazon for $19.

Need help? I will talk to anyone about the business book project they are working on. Drop me a note.