“Generation We,” is not your typical independent publishing story. Yet it is emblematic of how independent publishing can provide a platform that will reach an instant audience in the narrowest or widest range.

It was just a week ago that industry futurist and consultant Mike Shatzkin broadcast a posting to his friends and colleagues announcing this remarkable forthcoming publishing achievement. It was only a month earlier that he was engaged by Greenberg to bring together the ingredients requisite to publication: a production supervisor (Brian O’Leary of Magellan Media) a printer (Quebecor), a publicist (Max Pulsinelli of Maximum Impact) and, with the help of Rich Freese, former CEO of PGW, .a distributor (BookMasters/Atlas in Ashland, Ohio).

Nor is it that Greenberg is your naive innocent operating on a shoestring. He already knew that going with a conventional publisher would mean giving up the production and marketing controls that were so important to his reasons for doing the book in the first place. Having poured over a million dollars into the research that led to the book, what he didn’t anticipate were the logistical intricacies that could impede a quick and effective launch—especially one that wants to be in the market before election day. Hence, Shatzkin.

Bringing the book out now was important because Greenberg chose independent publishing  as a platform from which he expects to accomplish nothing less than the mobilization of a new generation of 95 million Millennials in the cause of the social and political transformation of American politics. Catching the crest of the wave of election campaign interest will help his message become part of the national conversation.

The Personal Odyssey

How did this come about? After all, according to his Barnes and Noble.com bio, “Greenberg has founded and established many businesses in his entrepreneurial career including wind farms in partnership with Native American tribes in the Great Plains; Acumen Sciences and the Acumen Journal of Life Sciences; Scient, a consulting firm focused on eBusiness and emerging technology; and Viant, an internet systems integrator. An award-winning philanthropist, he was named by Worth Magazine as one of the 10 Most Generous Americans Under 45”

Greenberg writes in the book’s introduction, “Through hard work, applied intelligence, and good timing, I was able to prosper. By the turn of the century, I was a paper billionaire at 35 years of age...Although I was lucky enough to have  a stable relationship with my wife, everything else around me devolved into a pit of misfortune, conflict, and poor health. 

“I was miserable. By 2004, I weighed 275 pounds, was dependent on prescription medication, depressed, and sometimes selfish and thoughtless. The world was giving me a valuable lesson: Life is not about things and what you do for yourself.  I was imploding from my ambition-driven ego. My life was unsustainable...I closed my business and stopped working.”  

So it came to pass that an Emeryvlle, CA based business man, had his personal epiphany while in the Amazon jungle in 2006 during a two year process of self-renewal and rediscovery.

He returned determined to do something about the state of crisis he felt was undermining the foundations of American society. This story of personal transformation is a back story interesting and inspiring in its own right.

In addition to launching his Millennial generation project, Greenberg has applied his talents to a socially responsible enterprise as President and Chief Executive Officer of Beautifull, Inc. (Beautifull.com), “a prepared, fresh food company focused on providing tasty, healthy, and real food for retail and home delivery.”

As I listened to Greenberg in our interview and as I later read more of the book, I realized that Greenberg was looking for the “big idea”—a line of attack that would break out of the mold of the conventional with the prospect of leading to serious change. He wanted to find the fertile soil for new ideas, seed it, and enable a new crop of actors to grow and take over.

Once a Reagan Republican (for which he doesn’t apologize in the book), but now in a new place for social and political transformation, Greenberg remains an idealist, but is not a utopian. He is not advocating the overthrow of the system. “If we ever are going to fix the problems we have today we have to do it with political action,” he says, and it needs to be done within the system and within the two parties if possible.

He writes, “This book is for our future.  The most powerful force that can make our future better than our past is the youth binding together on the outcome, resolve, and political will to achieve it, no matter how they may differ on details of implementation. I’m not a member of Generation We, and I don’t aspire to lead it.  My great hope in writing this book is that it will inspire a handful of  great leaders like Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., or Mahatma Gandhi to emerge and lead their peers.”

At its heart, the purpose of this effort, he told me is “to ignite a passion for the greater good.”

The name of his publishing house, Pachatusan, by the way, is taken from a holy mountain in Peru, which can mean, “he who sustains the world.”

Posted by: Eugene Schwartz, Editor-at-Large