Cameron Johnson has been keeping a low profile the last few months. (Actually, he’s been totally clandestine, working on an amazing television production that you’ll hear about before long—promise.) ¶ Well, he’s back—and today, You Call the Shots suddenly shot up to #2,000 on Amazon’s ranking. (And in case you aren’t familiar with Amazon ratings, #2,000 is a really good ranking.)

Even more intriguing is that the paperback edition (which isn’t even available yet) hit #28,000. The paperback edition is slated to hit the stores September 18.

Cameron will be featured tomorrow night on a conference call with hugely successful “underground” Internet marketer Yanik Silver. The call is limited to 300 spots, so if you’re interested in hearing Cameron live—which I could not more strongly recommend that you be—you should hop onto this web site and reserve your post now.

If you haven’t already gotten this from reading the book (or listening to the excellent audiobook), let me say this now: Cameron is a national treasure. If you’ve ever listened live to Bob Proctor, Denis Waitley or Dan Burrus, then you know what I’m talking about: he”s like that. The man is a phenomenon. Not just brilliant, not just very good at what he does, but someone with exceptional values, who walks his talk. And his talk is very, very good.

Get on the call — you’ll thank yourself later.

News on the authoring front: I have been officially upgraded on my literary agent’s site from a “One Book Wonderful” to an “Extra Prolific Author.” (The Zen of MLM doesn’t count, btw, this is just about books Margret and her amazing associates have repped.)

You’ll note, faithful reader, that there are four, count ’em four, books listed there, and two of them may seem a bit mysterious. (“Christian Jihad”?! “Untitled”?!) Stay tuned. I’m not sure yet if the former is its real title yet, and while I do know the latter’s real title, we haven’t yet gotten the go-ahead to release it — but soon!

Those of you who have followed my columns in Upline, Network Marketing Lifestyles and Networking Times—or who’ve read The Zen of MLM—have heard me mention my father, the late Dr. Alfred Mann, noted Bach scholar and conductor. My dad was an amazing man; I’ve never known anyone else so universally beloved by all those who knew him.

And it turns out, I’m not alone. The Eastman School of Music (in Rochester, New York), in conjunction with with Publick Musick (a baroque ensemble organization also in Rochester), is sponsoring an annual event that premiers this coming November: the Alfred Mann Music Festival.

The event will focus on the two works with which he was most intimately involved throughout his long career: Handel’s Messiah and Bach’s Mass in B Minor. (I had the distinct honor and pleasure of playing in the orchestra for several of his B Minor Mass performances, but alas, never did have the chance to play the Messiah under his hand.)

I and a whole bunch of my family will be there this November for the festival. I hope some of you reading this can make it as well! (If you need advice on travel and accomodations, click the “Contact Me” link at upper right.)

In case you have no idea what I’m talking about, you can go here to read an editorial I wrote about my dad and what I learned from him about leadership.

Holy advance buzz, Batman! Here we are, basking in the lazy July sun, with the late-December launch of The Go-Giver still a world away . . . and this morning over tea as I open my Bloglines and browse the New York Times online book review, what should I find but a review of My Iceberg Is Melting: “Book Brings Penguins Into Boardrooms.”

. . . which triggers a memory: last year, when I was in New York with my agent pitching You Call the Shots to several publishers, the guys at St. Martins were excited about this book they were about to release; it was the very penguin book being here reviewed (which has since sold nearly a quarter-million copies). The review catches my eye. I start reading it — and son of a gun, eleven paragraphs down: our publisher’s intrepid marketing genius Will Weisser is quoted mentioning our book:

“At least two more animal fable business books will be coming out in the next few months, said Will Weisser, marketing director for Portfolio, an imprint of the Penguin Group. One is Juggling Elephants, by Jones Loflin and Todd Musig, which uses circus metaphors to illustrate the steps to becoming more productive, and the other, The Go-Giver, by Bob Burg and John David Mann.”

(Disclaimer: to be entirely accurate, there are no elephants, penguins, mice, dolphins or any other animals in our book, unless you count the people, of which there are a good number.)

This is going to be one exciting five-month drum roll.

Okay, because you’re here, devoted blog readers, I’m going to let you in on a secret: my next book, The Go-Giver—and this one is going to be big—is already listed on Amazon. Ready?

Here it is.

Our wonderful amazing team at Portfolio, our publishers (the people who published Seth Godin’s last few books) have been an absolute dream to work with, and are pulling out all the stops to make this a stellar success. They’ve shown us some stunning cover designs—I’m not allowed to show them yet, but promise I will as soon as I can.

Meanwhile, I’ll tell you this: it’s a story, a fable (in the vein of The One Minute Manager or Fish!) about someone struggling to succeed, who discovers some surprising things about the way the world really works.

Meanwhile, since I can’t show you a picture of the book yet, here’s another picture of our amazing, devoted and highly paparazzo-friendly dog Ben, happily self-Velcro’ed onto his favorite perch: