tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74340015847176236232024-03-18T17:43:54.265-04:00Don't Ever Get OldDaniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-55048990150835764002015-12-01T18:51:00.001-05:002015-12-01T18:51:19.462-05:00RIOT MOST UNCOUTH is out!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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1807, Cambridge, England.</div>
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A young woman is murdered in a boarding house, and nobody knows what to do about it. The volunteer watchman who patrols the streets of this placid college town has no idea how to investigate a serious crime and the private bounty hunters the girl's family has hired to catch the killer employ methods that are questionable, at best.</div>
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What Cambridge needs is a hero, and, in a situation such as this, it's very easy for a gentleman with a romantic disposition to mistake himself for one.</div>
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19 year-old Lord Byron, the outlaw poet, is a student at Trinity College, though he can only be described as a "student" in the loosest sense of the word: He rarely attends class and, instead, spends his time day-drinking, making love to faculty wives, and feeding fine cuisine and expensive wine to the bear he keeps as a pet.</div>
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Catching a killer seems like a fine diversion, however, and Byron decides that solving the crime must take precedence over other, less-urgent matters such as his failing grades and mounting debts.</div>
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">And it's pretty good:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">"<span style="color: #333333; font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px;">Besides adroitly placing the major plot twists, Friedman manages to make one of the most obnoxious leads in recent memory oddly endearing and even sympathetic." - Publishers Weekly</span></span></span><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="color: #333333; font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="color: #333333; font-family: inherit; font-size: 17px; line-height: 24px;">"100 percent swagger... </span><span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">Inspired, hilarious lunacy" - Library Journal</span></span><br />
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<span style="color: #181818; font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 18px;">"</span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">Even though the crime is grisly and Byron’s debauchery distinctly wanton, Friedman laces the narrative with comic moments, wry observations on noble privilege, and excellent plot turns." -Booklist</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 12.8px;">"</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">you’ll find yourself intrigued and then committed to Friedman’s lavish, over-the-top plot and larger-than-life characters." -BookPage</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Riot-Most-Uncouth-Byron-Mystery/dp/1250027594/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=">Go buy it!</a></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-family: 'Droid Serif', 'Times New Roman', Times, serif; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;"><br /></span>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com46tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-1251560053687637762014-04-23T20:41:00.003-04:002014-04-23T20:41:48.232-04:00DON'T EVER LOOK BACK is out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnm6wTyz17ROcEhyphenhyphenFRKZ7_Ca6Kg0hzm4XPDNCp8hpTg7woaIfBLTpRsCtK9XqQCYYFqwKzPsNJ5D_Ky81b5t4Hx-HNNW2CWm0iaScO3FOT4KvLkrIGrgGTXY3IByUQtIIv7-0gEvlIiHM/s1600/delb.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnm6wTyz17ROcEhyphenhyphenFRKZ7_Ca6Kg0hzm4XPDNCp8hpTg7woaIfBLTpRsCtK9XqQCYYFqwKzPsNJ5D_Ky81b5t4Hx-HNNW2CWm0iaScO3FOT4KvLkrIGrgGTXY3IByUQtIIv7-0gEvlIiHM/s1600/delb.JPG" height="320" width="210" /></a></div>
The <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Ever-Look-Back-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00FUWKMBK/ref=pd_sim_kstore_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=1QDV3C4Q5NRJS28NQ48A">new Buck Schatz book</a> is now available, and people like it!<br />
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“Alternately humorous and moving sequel . . . The howdunit of the 1965 crime will please Golden Age puzzle fans.” —<i>Publisher’s Weekly</i> (starred review)</div>
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"Enjoy the plot, which even has a locked-room mystery packed into it. Savor<br />the resonant prose as a reminder of how flabby much best-seller writing has become. Delight in Buck’s<br />deadpan humor, but don’t fall for it. No codger cuteness here; his nastiness can shock." —<i>Booklist<br /></i><i>"</i>A must-buy" -<i>Library Journal</i></div>
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<i>“</i>Daniel Friedman has done it again—only better.” <i>—</i>Michael Sears, bestselling author of <i>Black Fridays</i></div>
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“Don’t Ever Look Back is a funny, smart, and vibrant work of crime fiction. Good luck finding anything more from a novel this year.” —Wiley Cash,<i> New York Times</i> bestselling author of <i>A Land More Kind Than Home</i> and <i>This Dark Road to Mercy<br /></i>“Daniel Friedman takes the considerable momentum from his Macavity-winning debut novel Don't Ever Get Old and builds on it for Buck Schatz's newest turn, Don't Ever Look Back. Friedman's sophomore outing is darker, grittier, and more political (but just as funny) as his first. It not only lives up to, but indeed surpasses, all expectations for a sequel.”—Susan Elia MacNeal, <i>New York Times</i> bestselling author of the Maggie Hope series </div>
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-33449452278259603352013-05-19T11:58:00.002-04:002013-05-19T12:10:34.941-04:00Short Fiction: Oh, Dear. I Seem To Have Brought A Knife To A Gunfight!<br />
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How dreadfully embarrassing!
I seem to have misinterpreted your gracious invitation, for I have
arrived at this event with accouterments completely inappropriate for the
afternoon’s planned activities. What an unfortunate faux pas. I certainly have egg on my face, don’t I? I wonder if any of the other attendees might
have spare equipment which they could loan to a poor, embarrassed bungler. They do not?
Perhaps we could reschedule?<o:p></o:p></div>
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I think, under the circumstances, this comic little
misunderstanding was reasonable, and I hope it can be easily resolved. You see, the other day in the saloon, when
you and I were both quite tipsy from the barkeep’s fine moonshine whiskey, and
we were amorously eyeing the same twenty-five cent harlot. As an object of lust, she wasn’t terribly
compelling, but there was a real fire to her spirit; a certain irresistible <i>joie de vivre</i>, once you looked past her
lazy eye and her missing teeth and those strange, oozy yellow-green sores. And, as both of us found our entertainment
options limited by the influence of the current macroeconomic tumult upon our
personal finances, and since neither of us was in a patient mood, the question
of who might have the first roll with her became a topic of some dispute.<o:p></o:p></div>
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As discussions became heated, I called you a dust-sucking
sheep rapist, and you intimated that I was a worn-out drunk with a tendency to
crawl upon my yellow belly. I expressed
my belief that your cross-eyed mother must have been kicked in the belly by a
mule to produce offspring as deformed and stupid as yourself. You claimed that my horse looked mangy and
accused me of feeding it improperly and neglecting its grooming. Then
you spat a thick brown liquid upon the floor, and I spat the juice from my own terbaccky
chaw upon your newly-shined boots. You
took grave offense.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"Why don't you come over here and say that?"</i></td></tr>
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At that point, negotiations broke down. <o:p></o:p></div>
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Ever helpful, I suggested that the dispute might be
satisfactorily resolved were we to make something of it. To illustrate the point, I smashed a whiskey
bottle on the bar, and menaced you with its jagged edge. Initially, you seemed amenable to exploring
such mechanisms to satisfy our disagreement. However, you felt that the timing
was inopportune for such activities; it was more to your convenience to
reconvene today, at high-noon. I found I
was available, and we made our date.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Based on the tone and context of our previous exchange, I
had believed that you had invited me here for purposes of engaging in barroom
brawling and fisticuffs, and I came equipped with this here Bowie knife, and a
vague plan that I might jam it into your kidneys. Or, you know, cut your throat, or stab you in
the eye. But you can imagine my surprise
to learn that you had actually intended to invite me to duel with pistols. And here I am, without my sidearm or
bandolier.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So, we’re left with a conundrum. If someone would be so kind as to lend me a
reliable pistol, I would be happy to shoot you at ten paces. Alternatively, if you’d like to come over
here, I’ll stick this knife into your guts.
Or we can take a rain check. It’s
really up to you.<o:p></o:p></div>
Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-83988141817063080172013-05-16T23:45:00.002-04:002013-05-16T23:54:32.571-04:00Thoughts on "The Office"<br />
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This week, Twitter and Facebook and Reddit made a fun little viral moment out of the behavior of a couple of lunatics from Scottsdale, AZ, who owned the first restaurant that Gordon Ramsay has ever refused to help on "Kitchen Nightmares."</div>
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I'd never seen "Kitchen Nightmares" and I don't really watch reality at all, but I pulled up the episode on Hulu, and it was kind of mesmerizing to see people so totally lacking in self-awareness. Afterward, I watched a couple of other episodes, and what always bothers me about these kinds of shows immediately became apparent.</div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>The best kind of famous: Internet famous.</i></td></tr>
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"Kitchen Nightmares" is possibly the most formula-driven show on television; every episode (except the most recent one) is exactly the same: We're introduced to the owners of a struggling restaurant. We learn a little background about why they are failing. Then, Ramsay comes in, orders half the menu, and hates everything. He zooms in on everything with a high-def camera so you can see how gross it looks. If it doesn't look gross enough, he insists it's either too salty or too bland. He takes one bite of everything and sends it all back, often while complaining about how hungry he is. Ramsay inspects the kitchen, pronounces it filthy, and is disgusted. Then the producers flood the restaurant with diners who are encouraged to complain about everything until the kitchen and the servers break down. Ramsay diagnoses a problem, usually with somebody's "attitude." There is an intervention of some kind. Ramsay then brings in a construction crew to redecorate the restaurant, and he reinvents the menu. The owners and staff eat the food and are overcome with awe at how great Gordon Ramsay is. They do another dinner service, serving Ramsay's menu, during which there is a minor crisis that is inevitably overcome, and Ramsay flies off to help others.</div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><br />After a few episodes of this, I was taken aback by how little I was actually learning about the restaurant business, because "Kitchen Nightmares" is a lot like the food in the restaurants it visits; prepared without care or expertise from mediocre ingredients, and then drowned in way too much gloppy sauce. Or, to put it another way, "Kitchen Nightmares" is about three-quarters bullshit.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">If the kitchens and the food are really extraordinarily disgusting as portrayed, then there's no reason to root for these businesses to succeed, but we all understand this is hyperbole. As are the narratives that give the episode structure. </span><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">If the restaurant is owned by a husband and wife, then their marriage is always at its breaking point. If it's a business the owner inherited for his parents, he's stuck in the past and haunted by their ghosts. If it's owned by siblings or friends, then they will be at each other's throats, having lost sight of why they started the venture together in the first place.</span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>"That's what she said."</i></td></tr>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The truth is that restaurants fail because managing a business is harder than people realize, and it can be difficult to make serviceable but unremarkable food stand out in a saturated marketplace. And "Kitchen Nightmares" fails as a TV show because it doesn't realize that contrived drama and phony stakes are less interesting than stories about people trying to make a business work and struggling, and sometimes failing. </span></div>
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In other words, "Kitchen Nightmares" sucks because it's too much like recent seasons of "The Office."</div>
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"The Office" was a show that succeeded when it examined the experience of working in America and told affecting or funny stories about that. Unfortunately, it wasn't that show enough, especially in the last four years. </div>
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<span style="font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit;">The people we work with generally do not become our family; they remain the people we work with, even if we work with them for years, especially in larger offices and corporate settings.</span> The boundaries we create that distinguish our relationships with our colleagues from our relationships with our personal friends are interesting and rarely-explored on TV. We change ourselves to conform to a corporate culture. We often have important parts of our lives that we do not discuss with the people we work with. </div>
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Sometimes there are people we are friendly with at work, who we never make any effort to see outside the office. Are these people our friends? I<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">t's weird when someone is around you all the time, and then they send out a departure memo one day, and you never see them again.</span></div>
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Similarly, it can be strange to run into your boss with his family at a restaurant, or to discover that the guy from IT is in a popular local band. </div>
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It can be awkward when someone you spend a lot of time with, but don't consider yourself close to is dealing with a personal crisis that is overflowing into their work life. It's strange to make small-talk at a birthday party for someone who you don't know well, and rarely think about except in terms of the function they perform. </div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Television's most beloved sailor. After Gilligan.</i></td></tr>
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The combination of rigidly observed barriers and awkward, forced intimacies that make up the social fabric of the contemporary workplace are interesting and often funny. And in the early years of "The Office," it was often funny to watch Michael Scott fail to understand the nature of workplace interaction. </div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The other big running plot of the early seasons, the slow-burning courtship of Jim and Pam was admittedly affecting, especially since the essential sweetness of that was contrasted with the acidity of Michael's disastrous relationship with Jan. But through season five, "The Office" was, to a great extent, a show about semi-functional people trying to hang onto jobs at a dysfunctional, struggling company.</span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;"><span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">Unfortunately, Jim and Pam's romance plot was so popular that, instead of trying to tell new stories about work, "The Office" decided to try and tell that same story over and over again, using various character configurations, with diminishing results. Every character under 50 in that place had a major workplace romance arc.</span></span></div>
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<span style="border: 0px; font-family: inherit; font-style: inherit; line-height: inherit; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px;">The last several years have brought change to many American workplaces, and much of that change was unwelcome. "The Office" was already well established, and poised to make really good art about the experiences of millions of people who have been struggling in places that, to some degree or another, resemble Dunder Mifflin.</span><br />
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These were the years "The Office" spent doing episodes about Robert California, and Andy turned into a dumber and less likable version of Homer Simpson, as he ran away from work to chase Erin to Florida and he left for three months to sail around on a boat with Josh Groban.</div>
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When "The Office" was about the world's worst boss and his improbable journey toward redemption, it was one of my favorite shows on television. When it was an exercise in context-free zaniness than neither reflected nor commented upon reality, it was just a sitcom. </div>
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In the end, "The Office" was like Jim, leaning back and smirking for years as time slipped away and it failed to reach its potential. It was like Dwight, crazed and flailing and disconnected from reality. It was like Pam, sticking to what was safe and familiar instead of dreaming of something bigger. And it was like Michael, hopeful and enthusiastic and sporadically competent, but never quite smart enough.</div>
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Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-13970950353239479002013-01-17T09:08:00.001-05:002013-01-17T09:08:18.805-05:00DON'T EVER GET OLD is nominated for the EdgarThe Mystery Writers of America has nominated DON'T EVER GET OLD for its Edgar award for Best First Novel by an American Author. <br />
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The winner will be announced at a gala awards banquet in May.<br />
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I am thrilled and honored to be nominated for this prestigious award.<br />
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http://www.theedgars.com/nominees.html<br />
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More to come on this.Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-28441268071844184672012-09-04T19:35:00.002-04:002012-09-04T20:34:31.468-04:00John Locke's Amazon Con<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Bestselling self-pub author John Locke</i></td></tr>
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Much has already been said about the NYT article on the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/26/business/book-reviewers-for-hire-meet-a-demand-for-online-raves.html?pagewanted=all">"entrepreneur" Todd Rutherford, who built a business selling four and five-star Amazon reviews to self-published authors</a>. The most widely-discussed revelation of the article is the fact that author John Locke freely admits to purchasing hundreds of reviews from Rutherford at a cost of thousands of dollars.<br />
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<a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/08/30/the_dreaded_amazon_breast_curve/">Most people discussing this article seem to assume</a> that Locke's bogus reviews were a fraud against his readers, and since many people believe they can sniff out bogus reviewers, some readers haven't expressed much concern. As many people point out, the trustworthy reviews stand out when you read them. But Locke didn't care about the content of his reviews. He was interested in having a high star rating across a large number of reviews. He wasn't trying to fool readers; he was trying to fool Amazon's computers.<br />
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Over a period of many years, Amazon has collected a great deal of customer purchase information, and used that to construct a powerful sales apparatus. There are a bunch of "Recommended for you" books on the front page of the site, and there are lots of "people who bought x also bought y" lists it shows you as you peruse the site. Books that get onto those lists get more sales, and then they get onto various genre bestseller lists, which drives more traffic to the books and boosts the sales further.<br />
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Amazon wants to show you stuff it thinks you'll want to buy, including stuff you might not already know about. However, since it sells over 8 million books and millions of other products, its human employees can't put their eyes on every product in its store and decide which ones to recommend, the way a bookseller in your local bookstore might. Instead, Amazon's computers make predictions about what books or other products might interest you based, in large part, on what other people are buying or talking about (particularly other people whose past sales have demonstrated taste similar to yours).<br />
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If Amazon's computers catch a product becoming a nascent trend or a book breaking out, they're designed to recognize that and amplify the sales by showing the book to people who are likely to buy it. In an environment in which thousands of books are trying to break out of obscurity, that kind of exposure is priceless. So a great way for a self-published author to become popular is to trick Amazon into thinking that he's already popular. <br />
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Obviously, if people knew how to do this, everyone would be doing it, so the operation of Amazon's recommendation algorithms is a closely held secret. But Locke made an expensive bet that he could influence Amazon by buying lots of customer reviews and that bet paid off. None of the safeguards Amazon had in place thwarted Locke and Rutherford. The fake reviews came from all over the country, because Rutherford was farming the review work out to freelancers. The reviewers were all "verified purchasers" because Locke's books only cost $0.99, so he could easily pay an extra buck to each reviewer to buy his e-book (which also spiked his ranking).<br />
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Locke had many other mechanisms of self-promotion; he's unquestionably talented at getting his name and his books in front of readers. If buying fake reviews was what got him favorable placement on the Amazon website, it was probably a much more effective investment of money, in terms of traffic to his book page and overall sales, than purchasing <a href="http://janefriedman.com/2012/07/27/a-small-budget-advertising-experiment/">Facebook or Google ads</a> to promote a book.<br />
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<a href="http://dearauthor.com/news/wednesday-midday-links-torforge-us-and-uk-goes-drm-free-anonymous-author-shares-fiverr-experience/">Phony Amazon reviews are now as cheap as $5 on sites like Fiver</a>. According to the NYT, Locke paid $20 for each of the 300 he bought from Rutherford. The good news is that, as fake reviews have proliferated, Amazon has changed its recommendation algorithms to reduce the benefit authors can gain from spamming the site with fake reviews. A hundred purchased reviews will no longer boost an author's standing in the recommendation system the way they did for Locke.Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-3763297357571776262012-08-21T09:41:00.000-04:002012-08-21T09:41:32.564-04:00My Successful Query Letter for DON'T EVER GET OLDAs long as I'm sharing writing and publishing advice, I thought I'd show off my successful query letter for DON'T EVER GET OLD. I sent this out as unsolicited slush, and that's how I found my literary agent, Victoria Skurnick at Levine Greenberg:<br />
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<span style="border-collapse: collapse;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Ninety year-old Baruch “Buck” Schatz remembers a time when the only “portable handheld device” anybody needed was a .357, “Google” was the sound a guy made when you punched him in the throat, and “social networking functionality” came out of a bottle.</span></span><br />
<span style="border-collapse: collapse;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span></span>These days, though, this retired detective is extremely frail and frequently confused. But when he learns the SS officer who tortured him in a POW camp may have escaped Germany with a fortune in stolen gold, Buck decides to hunt down the fugitive and claim the loot. He’s got nothing better to do, and keeping his mind occupied is supposed to ward off dementia.<br />
<br />Assisted by his grandson, a law student who knows how to find information using a computer and is allowed to drive at night, Buck finds a lead down the Nazi’s long-cold trail. But lots of people want a piece of that treasure, and Buck’s investigation quickly attracts unfriendly attention from a Mississippi loan shark, a seven-foot tall Hasidic Jew, a preacher on the take, a cop with a grudge and a bloodthirsty maniac hell-bent on rubbing out everybody who knows anything about Nazi gold.<br /><br />“Don’t Ever Get Old” is a 76,000 word mystery/thriller about a hard-boiled man in a world gone soft, confronting the existential reality of his inevitable decline and death while trying to get rich quick.<br />
Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-58664777742636799362012-08-16T16:22:00.002-04:002012-08-16T16:22:51.808-04:00Query Advice: Everyone Gets Rejections, But Not Just Rejections<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnaV9CNU0SNbbYKD2klUh7Zba7UHCV_MrzEtXepMPye6KROlkqunUkAOkJx0jSHvL2HyfwvrKGbh_549cim8IG7bueOZnkR2BRVjYV1e6zV_TKzpob90QKsdMy5zPhsCXrrV41pnPSP3w/s1600/Twilightbook.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnaV9CNU0SNbbYKD2klUh7Zba7UHCV_MrzEtXepMPye6KROlkqunUkAOkJx0jSHvL2HyfwvrKGbh_549cim8IG7bueOZnkR2BRVjYV1e6zV_TKzpob90QKsdMy5zPhsCXrrV41pnPSP3w/s1600/Twilightbook.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">Stephenie Meyer really didn't have a hard time getting published</span></i></td></tr>
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It's true that all writers who cold-query literary agents get rejections, and lots of them. Most literary agents get between 5,000 and 10,000 queries per year, and requesting even one manuscript per week is a huge time commitment. They have to cull the slush and make very fast decisions about most of those letters. If you're interested in seeing the process that goes into the decision to request or reject queries, literary agent <a href="https://twitter.com/KevanLyon">Kevan Lyon live-tweets her slush-reading </a>sometimes.<br />
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<br />Agents may reject a query based on a subjective disinterest in the concept, or because it competes too closely with an existing client's manuscript, or because they only have time to take on one new client, and they're looking for something very specific. But mostly, they reject queries because the pitches and the pages that accompany them aren't good enough. <br />
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Successful authors seem to like to tell stories about their rejections, either to shoehorn their paths to publication into some narrative about overcoming hardship, or to commiserate with aspiring writers who are struggling to get agents' attention. There are legends, repeated constantly at writers' conferences, of bestselling authors who got dozens or hundreds of rejections before breaking through to spectacular success. </div>
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A lot of stories make it sound like successful authors got their agents by accident, like when Nicholas Sparks <a href="http://www.nicholassparks.com/for-writers/experience-agent">signed with an agent who fished his query out of a dead person's mail.</a> But Sparks also spent weeks perfecting his letter, and, as a result, signed with an agent on his first batch of 25 letters, despite sending out letters "at random," rather than targeting agents who represented his genre. </div>
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Similarly, when I attended Thrillerfest last month, three different writers told me about how Stephenie Meyer only got representation for TWILIGHT because an assistant who should have auto-rejected the manuscript for its overlong word-count decided to pass it along to her boss. People who tell this story tend to omit the fact that <a href="http://www.stepheniemeyer.com/twilight.html">Meyer got her agent in her first batch of 15 query letters</a>, and she got a $750,000 deal so fast that some of those 15 agents were still responding to her query after she had already sold her book.</div>
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Based on such tales of perseverance, many aspiring authors premise their submission strategy on the assumption that queries fail until they succeed, and that the next agent they query could always be the one who will take on their book. But this isn't quite true; while everybody gets rejections at every point in the process, successful submissions don't get ONLY rejections. The best queries tend to get a significant percentage of positive responses almost immediately. Similarly, a query that's getting no requests probably needs to be rewritten.<br />
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Despite the huge volume of slush and the very brief consideration any individual query gets, the best letters really tend to stand out. Most authors I know who have ultimately secured representation got requests for partial or full manuscripts from at least 20% of the agents they queried, which is an amazing degree of consensus when you consider that agents reject about 99.5% of queries. If an author tells you that 25 agents form-rejected her query, she may be omitting the fact that she also had ten full requests and three offers of representation. </div>
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I think this is an encouraging fact, because it means the query process is something you can control. It may seem like your letter is a single piece of paper in a vast sea of submissions, each with only one chance in 250 of getting an agent's attention, but it's actually more like 210 queries with zero chance of ever getting requested by anyone, 25 queries with a slim chance some agent might take a look, and maybe 15 queries that will get requests a significant percentage of the time. All the agents will be requesting from among the same handful of manuscripts. Although any given agent is likely to reject 12 out of the 15, the authors will be querying dozens of agents, so multiple agents will be reading each of these books.<br />
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It's not a lottery; agents really read the queries you send them. If your letter is the best one an agent reads in a given week, there's a pretty high chance the agent will request your manuscript. </div>
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If you delve into the query-tracking threads on forums like <a href="http://absolutewrite.com/forums/index.php">AbsoluteWrite</a>, you'll see that this is how it plays out: a few people will have 8 or 9 full-manuscript requests from 30 queries, a couple of people will be pinning their hopes on one partial request, and everybody else will have nothing but rejections.<br />
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Of course, that means the people everybody's jealous of also have a pile of rejections, so when established authors talk about the agents that turned them down, many aspiring authors take away the wrong message. You aren't looking for one "yes" in a sea of rejections; you're looking for a positive consensus among a substantial proportion of the agents reading your submission.</div>
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Most agents will only consider a query from you once per novel, so it is a mistake to continue to exhaust all your leads hoping for a different outcome when your previous feedback has been unanimously negative.</div>
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If you send out ten queries with your first five pages to ten agents you think represent books in your genre, and you get zero requests, you shouldn't respond to that by sending out more identical queries. You should go back and work some more on your letter and your pages (and possibly your entire manuscript) before you send it out to more agents. Query in small batches, and keep working on refining the letter if you aren't getting the responses you want. AbsoluteWrite and other message boards have spaces devoted to query critiques, and you should use those.</div>
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Perseverance is an important quality for writers, but the way you persevere is by writing enough to develop the skill-set that will produce the best manuscript in an agent's slushpile. If you fail, read more good books, write more, and produce new work you're even more proud of. </div>
Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-65168636072273710672012-08-04T03:23:00.001-04:002012-08-04T11:29:06.208-04:00Why Authors Sign With Commercial PublishersWe've been hearing a lot of narratives over the last few years about self-published bestsellers, but it remains true that almost everyone who has the option to publish with a commercial publisher chooses to do so.
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Literary agent Rachelle Gardner had a post a while back about <a href="http://www.rachellegardner.com/2012/04/reasons-authors-still-want-publishers/">why authors still want deals with trade publishers</a>. I'm going to point out a few other things that come with traditional publishing that are unavailable to self-published authors, and which translate into real benefits:<br />
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<b>1. (Perceived) Legitimacy</b><br />
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A lot of authors say they want to publish commercially <a href="http://mikeduran.com/2011/04/does-traditional-publishing-validate-an-author/">because they want "validation"</a> from a trade publisher. This may sound like a vanity concern, but reviewers and readers also perceive a validity inherent to trade-published books that is not automatically assumed of self-publishers.<br />
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All writers think they're talented, and that their books are good. Most of them are wrong. Readers want to see some endorsement of a book's quality other than the author's high opinion of himself. When a publishing house puts a book out, there's an expectation that it will at least meet a certain standard of competence.<br />
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There's nobody standing behind a self-published book except the author. For new self-published authors, it can be very difficult to get anyone else to look at the book, even if it's actually good. Many readers -- perhaps most -- won't read self-published books at all. Many online reader forums, including Amazon's customer discussions, have made rules excluding authors from participating in forum threads because readers don't want to interact with self-published authors or have their discussions spammed with self-promotion.<br />
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In 2011, <a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/52216-bea-2012-self-published-titles-topped-211-000-in-2011.html">Bowker counted 211,000 new ISBN numbers</a> for self-published books. That's a huge number of people competing for readers' attention. Even bloggers and reader-reviewer communities who are dedicated to spreading the word about self-published books can't possibly sift all that slush. <br />
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The solution to this problem has been for self-published authors to give away a ton of e-books. The hope is that, by giving away 5000 downloads, maybe a couple of hundred people will actually read the book and five or ten will review it on Amazon or on their blogs, or recommend it to friends. But with so many authors giving away books, even the audience for free e-books is swamped. <br />
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All the things that might have helped a book stand out eighteen months ago, like buying professionally designed covers, running large-scale giveaways, and pursuing pricing strategies to manage Amazon's internal recommendation system are becoming standard practice across a much larger chunk of the market, so it's getting harder for self-published authors to gain traction. <br />
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A survey of self-published authors by Taleist<a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/may/24/self-published-author-earnings"> found that the median self-published author earns $500 per year</a>. In fact, that number is probably high; the survey uses self-reported data, so unsuccessful authors may have lied about their sales or may have been less likely to respond to the survey. And since Taleist found self-published romance authors make twice as much as other self-published authors, if you're writing in any other genre, your results will probably be even worse. <br />
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If the median self-published author pays a freelance editor for copy-editing and hires a freelance jacket designer, the cost of these services will likely exceed the royalties from the author's book.<br />
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<b>2. Trade Reviews</b><br />
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There are four major trade publications that review books ahead of their release: Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist and Library Journal. Each of these magazines reviews about 7500 trade-published books a year, so if your novel is published by a big publisher, there's a good chance you'll be reviewed by a trade. If your novel is published in hardcover by a Big-6 house, you're likely to be reviewed by all of them.<br />
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For traditionally published books, these reviews are free if your publisher sends galleys for the trades to review. But the booksellers and librarians who subscribe to the trades don't stock self-published books and aren't interested in reading about them. The freelance critics who review galleys for the trades don't especially want to read self-published books. The only people who want to see self-published books reviewed in trades are the authors, and that means self-published authors have to pay the trades to review their books. <br />
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If your book is self-published, you can pay a fee for a listing in Publishers' Weekly's quarterly supplement about self-pubbed titles. They also select some titles for review, but buying a listing does not guarantee a review. Kirkus charges a significant fee to review self-published books, and they post these reviews in a segregated part of the Kirkus website. Kirkus calls prides itself on employing "the world's toughest book critics;" so even if you pay them, they may not say nice things about you. If you don't like your review, Kirkus won't post it, but they'll keep your money. Booklist and Library Journal do not review self-published books.<br />
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A positive review from a trade gives you a good pull-quote to use for promotional purposes, and earns you notice from booksellers in librarians. Fewer than 10% of the books reviewed by any given trade will earn a starred review. <a href="http://danieljfriedman.blogspot.com/2012/04/four-starred-reviews-for-dont-ever-get.html">DON'T EVER GET OLD was starred by all four trades</a>, which is very rare, and really jump-started my sales.<br />
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<b>3. Libraries</b><br />
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Libraries are a major revenue stream for the publishing industry and for trade-published authors, and they're almost entirely inaccessible for self-published authors.<br />
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There are <a href="https://www.ala.org/ala/professionalresources/libfactsheets/alalibraryfactsheet01.cfm">9200 public library systems in the US and nearly 17,000 library facilitie</a>s. They buy a lot of books. Many hardcover releases from Big-6 publishers sell thousands of copies into libraries. To put this in perspective: if you sell about 20 self-published e-books a day, you'll maintain a Kindle store rank of around 5,000, which is very good. That moves about 600 copies a month, so it takes you 5 months at that rank to sell 3000 copies. If only 1 out of every 5 library branches buys just a single copy of a traditionally published author's book, he's matched your 5 months of Amazon self-published success before he sells his first retail hardcover or e-book.<br />
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DON'T EVER GET OLD sold very well into libraries, likely on the strength of the starred trade reviews. Librarians have also been <a href="http://www.columbuslibrary.org/reads/robin-reads-blog">very enthusiastic promoters</a> of the book to their readers and on their blogs.<br />
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<b>4. Foreign/Subsidiary Rights</b><br />
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Some self-published authors have secured foreign rights sales, but it's uncommon, and your self-published sales have to be extremely strong to generate international interest.<br />
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Translation and other rights are often very lucrative for traditionally published authors. DON'T EVER GET OLD has sold Portuguese, Japanese and French translation rights, as well as large print, audio and film rights.<br />
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<b>5. Events/Speaking Engagements</b><br />
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There are literary festivals all around the country, and a number of famous and bestselling authors spend a lot of time traveling among them. These trips offer great opportunities to attract new readers, and the costs are often partly defrayed by event organizers or publishers.<br />
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I've been invited to the Decatur Book Festival outside Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville in October. <br />
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While some of these events do include self-published authors, the indies are often put in a separate tent or have their readings scheduled on a separate stage, and they may have to pay the festival for space to exhibit their books.<br />
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-4808983553783752232012-07-24T22:30:00.003-04:002012-07-24T22:43:08.135-04:00Mike Judge, ProphetCompare this scene from Mike Judge's 2006 film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/">Idiocracy</a>:<br />
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With this clip from the current season of <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/entertainment/ci_20677529?source=pkg">America's Got Talent</a>:<br />
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This encapsulates the current state of our national discourse. David Brooks should write a column about this guy, or something.Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-7058213586444492082012-05-22T00:22:00.001-04:002012-05-23T14:09:03.416-04:00DON'T EVER GET OLD is out<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">It's out. </span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">The critics loved it and now, you can too. Here are some reviews:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-312-60693-0">Publishers Weekly (starred)</a>: "<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); line-height: 18px;">Friedman makes his limited lead plausible, and bolsters the story line with wickedly funny dialogue."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-friedman/dont-ever-get-old/">Kirkus (starred)</a>: "<span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); line-height: 18px;">The real prize here, however, isn’t Nazi treasure but Buck’s what-the-hell attitude toward observing social pieties, smoking in forbidden venues and making life easier for other folks. As he battles memory loss and a host of physical maladies, it’s great to see that he can still make whippersnapper readers laugh out loud."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.booklistonline.com/Don-t-Ever-Get-Old-Daniel-Friedman/pid=5318426">Booklist (starred)</a>: "a knockout of a book"</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2012/05/books/genre-fiction/mystery/mystery-reviews-may-1-2012/">Library Journal (starred)</a>: "<span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">Short chapters, crackling dialog, and memorable characters make this a standout </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">debut. With his curmudgeonly lead, Friedman ensures his intergenerational detective story maintains a pitch-perfect tone. The underlying theme of revenge balances a wacky plot that evokes Elmore Leonard.</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;">"</span></span></div>
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 20px;">You can buy it at:</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://mysteryscenemag.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2607%3Adont-ever-get-old&catid=26%3Abooks&Itemid=185">Mystery Scene Magazine</a>: "</span><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">It’s a pitch-perfect debut novel, expertly balancing comedy, gritty crime drama, absurdity, and genuine poignancy. It’s also one of the most assured debuts in some time."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://bookpage.com/column/a-one-sitting-read-for-international-crime-fans">BookPage Magazine (Top Pick)</a>: "</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Schatz is an anachronism: a chain-smoking Lucky Strike addict; a Luddite to a fault; cranky and crotchety at every juncture. He is also wickedly funny and full of pithy homilies. </span><strong style="background-color: white; border: 0px; line-height: 18px; margin: 0px; outline: 0px; padding: 0px; text-align: -webkit-auto; vertical-align: baseline;">Don’t Ever Get Old</strong><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 18px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> is just about as good as debut mysteries get."</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://reviews.libraryjournal.com/2012/05/collection-development/books-for-dudes/books-for-dudes-an-unholy-triumvirate-time-travel-car-theft-bike-riding/">Library Journal's "Books For Dudes"</a>: <span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">Buck transcends </span><em style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">masculinity</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"> in favor of </span><em style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">manliness</em><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">...</span><span style="background-color: white; line-height: 20px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">If you don’t like this book, there’s something wrong with you."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2012/05/fresh-meat-dont-ever-get-old-by-daniel-friedman-funny-thriller-nazi-gold-mystery-terrie-farley-moran">Criminal Element "Fresh Meat</a>: "<span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">This book reflects back to a serious and dreadful time in world history and yet, Buck is so funny in his approach to life, that I laughed my way throughout. For the sheer joy of it, I re-read the part where Buck and Tequila are in the bank, trying to open the safety deposit box, three or four times. It was that irresistible."</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-auto;"><a href="http://us.macmillan.com/BookCustomPage_New.aspx?isbn=9780312606930">You can read the first chapter here</a></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #363636; line-height: 22px; text-align: -webkit-auto;">And you can buy it at these places:</span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; font-family: inherit; line-height: 20px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Dont-Ever-Get-Daniel-Friedman/dp/0312606931/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1337658018&sr=1-1">Amazon</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><a href="http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/dont-ever-get-old-daniel-friedman/1107039123?ean=9780312606930">Barnes and Noble</a></span></div>
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<a href="http://www.indiebound.org/book/9780312606930">Indiebound</a></div>
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<a href="http://www.powells.com/biblio/62-9780312606930-0">Powell's</a></div>
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<a href="http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/dont-ever-get-old/id480097926?mt=11">iTunes</a></div>
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Or at your local independent bookstore, which I recommend, because DON'T EVER GET OLD is a<a href="http://www.authorsroundthesouth.com/okra"> SIBA Okra Pick.</a></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;">Here is an ad about how all four trades gave the book starred reviews:</span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhju5_nyuwGDKqlkaJ1NSok-7ytlpzuQ9KknGij3RFsbySliyy975NtzJPQQgoXHWEXS9qiXBqdVsCPybNEAUSlCaeIDd4fqlsWigc0kc0BR4qL3ttXEcRBs9gZ2IizO8WEWl7igrG8HfM/s1600/Don%2527t+Ever+Get+Old+quote+sheet+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="color: black;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhju5_nyuwGDKqlkaJ1NSok-7ytlpzuQ9KknGij3RFsbySliyy975NtzJPQQgoXHWEXS9qiXBqdVsCPybNEAUSlCaeIDd4fqlsWigc0kc0BR4qL3ttXEcRBs9gZ2IizO8WEWl7igrG8HfM/s1600/Don%2527t+Ever+Get+Old+quote+sheet+copy.jpg" /></span></a></div>
<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-70971279507191565862012-04-28T07:41:00.000-04:002012-04-28T07:41:00.837-04:00Mystery Scene magazine loves DON'T EVER GET OLDMystery Scene Magazine has reviewed DON'T EVER GET OLD. Reviewer Derek Hill said: "It's a pitch-perfect debut novel, expertly balancing comedy, gritty crime drama, absurdity, and genuine poignancy. It's one of the most assured debuts in some time -- the dialogue and tight, expert plotting should please fans of Elmore Leonard, Charles Willeford, and Joe Lansdale. The mystery field is crammed with "colorful" amateur detectives, but you've never met anyone quite like this old bastard. You'll never forget him either. Highly recommended."<br />
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-83814206899536147522012-04-23T22:49:00.005-04:002012-04-23T22:51:23.790-04:00Four Starred Reviews for DON'T EVER GET OLDPrepublication reviews by the four publishing-industry trade journals -- Publishers Weekly, Kirkus, Booklist, Library Journal -- are extremely influential.<br />
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They each review thousands of books a year, and they award starred reviews to distinguished or exceptional books.<br />
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Librarian Ann Chambers Theis maintains <a href="http://www.overbooked.org/about.html">a blog called Overbooked</a>, where she tracks the starred reviews awarded by these publications. Here is a list she compiled of<a href="http://www.overbooked.org/stars/allstars/fiction/11.html"> all the adult fiction titles last year that got stars from three or more of the trade publications</a>. <br />
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When you consider that upwards of five thousand novels are published by commercial presses each year, that's a short list. And the number of books that are starred by all four trades is very small. <br />
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For all of 2011, this is the full list:<br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Red On Red" Conlon, Edward</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Broken Irish" Delaney, Edward </span></span><span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">J.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"The Marriage Plot" Eugenides, Jeffrey</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Say Her Name" Goldman, Francisco</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Turn of Mind" LaPlante, Alice</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"The Troubled Man" Mankell, Henning</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Trackers" Meyer, Deon</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"The Night Circus" Morgenstern, Erin</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"1Q84" Murakami, Haruki</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"The Cat's Table" Ondaatje, Michael</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">"Zone One" Whitehead, Colson</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><br /></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">So I am very happy to announce that DON'T EVER GET OLD has been starred by all four trades, and joins that illustrious company.</span></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhju5_nyuwGDKqlkaJ1NSok-7ytlpzuQ9KknGij3RFsbySliyy975NtzJPQQgoXHWEXS9qiXBqdVsCPybNEAUSlCaeIDd4fqlsWigc0kc0BR4qL3ttXEcRBs9gZ2IizO8WEWl7igrG8HfM/s1600/Don't+Ever+Get+Old+quote+sheet+copy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhju5_nyuwGDKqlkaJ1NSok-7ytlpzuQ9KknGij3RFsbySliyy975NtzJPQQgoXHWEXS9qiXBqdVsCPybNEAUSlCaeIDd4fqlsWigc0kc0BR4qL3ttXEcRBs9gZ2IizO8WEWl7igrG8HfM/s1600/Don't+Ever+Get+Old+quote+sheet+copy.jpg" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><br /></span></span>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-19335577549746621762012-03-30T19:50:00.003-04:002012-03-30T19:50:53.314-04:003 Starred Reviews<br />
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DON'T EVER GET OLD has earned coveted starred reviews from Publishers Weekly, Kirkus Review and Booklist. These are three of the four major trade publications which review most trade releases. Only about one out of every ten to twenty books reviewed gets a star, so this kind of early critical consensus is really exciting. </div>
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<a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0-312-60693-0">PW said</a>: </div>
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<a href="http://www.publishersweekly.com/images/data/IMG/img/000/000/1-3.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://www.publishersweekly.com/images/data/IMG/img/000/000/1-3.PNG" /></a><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Friedman’s excellent debut introduces a highly unusual hero, 87-year-old, politically incorrect Buck Schatz, a former member of the Memphis PD, who’s become a living legend. Schatz’s memory is less and less reliable, and his physical decline is making his world “a gradually shrinking circle.” That circle becomes a good deal larger after he agrees to a request to visit Jim Wallace, a soldier he served with in WWII who’s on his deathbed. Wallace reveals that Heinrich Ziegler, the SS officer who ran the POW camp where both Schatz and Wallace were imprisoned, survived the war. On top of that shocker, Wallace reveals that he facilitated the Nazi’s escape in exchange for a gold bar. Schatz’s furious reaction accelerates Wallace’s demise and sets off a frantic search for Ziegler and the treasure he still possesses.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Friedman makes his limited lead plausible, and bolsters the story line with wickedly funny dialogue.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/daniel-friedman/dont-ever-get-old/">Kirkus said</a>:</span></div>
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A geezer cowboy who’s been retired from Memphis Homicide longer than he served there is thrust into the middle of a murderous hunt for Nazi plunder.<u></u><u></u></div>
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<a href="http://www.johnpaulgodges.com/images/KirkusLogoHiRes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="93" src="http://www.johnpaulgodges.com/images/KirkusLogoHiRes.jpg" width="200" /></a>What a shame that when Jim Wallace was on his deathbed, he asked his old comrade-in-arms Buck Schatz to come see him. The two had never been friends, and they don’t bond now over Jim’s revelation that he’d accepted a bar of gold in return for letting the supposedly dead Heinrich Ziegler, the SS commandant of the POW camp where both GIs languished in 1944, pass through a military crossing and out of history. As if Jim’s confession weren’t bad enough, Buck soon realizes that Jim blabbed to everyone he could reach from his hospital bed. Now Jim’s daughter Emily and her repellant husband Norris, Baptist preacher Lawrence Kind, Israeli agent Yitzchak Steinblatt and casino debt collector T. Addleford Pratt are all convinced that Buck is on the trail of Ziegler and his gold, and they’re all determined to cut themselves in for a piece of the action. Worse still, someone doesn’t trust natural causes to eliminate his competitors. Since he’s 88 years old, Buck’s clear mandate is to go back to watching daytime TV. Instead, he pokes Det. Randall Jennings with a stick and, when that fails, enlists his grandson William, aka Tequila, to spend his summer off from NYU Law School helping him track down Ziegler. The real prize here, however, isn’t Nazi treasure but Buck’s what-the-hell attitude toward observing social pieties, smoking in forbidden venues and making life easier for other folks. As he battles memory loss and a host of physical maladies, it’s great to see that he can still make whippersnapper readers laugh out loud.<u></u><u></u></div>
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A sardonically appealing debut for a detective who assures his long-suffering grandson, “I care about people. I just don’t like them.”</div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.booklistonline.com/Don-t-Ever-Get-Old-Daniel-Friedman/pid=5318426">Booklist said</a>:</span></div>
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The title of this knockout of a book is misleading. Ninetyish, retired Memphis homicide cop Buck Schatz </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">makes coot-dom look like a riot. Buck is an abrasive old party with not an ounce of codger cuteness. He </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">has trouble remembering, his skin has grown papery, he can’t push his lawn mower anymore. But his </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">cop’s watchfulness is intact. He keeps his .375 Magnum close by. He’s a death-camp survivor—his real </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">name is Baruch—and right off, he learns that the sadistic guard who brutalized him is likely still alive and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the possessor of much stolen Nazi gold. To honor the Nazi’s victims and maybe grab the gold, Buck and </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">his chatterbox grandson go on a quest. But who are these people who suddenly come out of the </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">woodwork—a loan shark, a scholar, a pretty Israeli soldier? And why does everyone start dying? In prose </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">as straightforward and tough as old Buck, the plot reveals its secrets with perfect timing. It’s a shock when </span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">the killer’s identity is revealed. But, then, we think eventually, who else could it be?</span></div>
</div>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-79398659766430400582012-03-24T02:08:00.002-04:002012-03-24T09:20:04.716-04:00Did This Con-Artist Trick The Big Six Into Publishing Him?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mitchell Graham's mugshot</td></tr>
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Via <a href="http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2012/01/delmont-ross-writing-contest-saga-of.html">Ann Crispin and Victoria Strauss at Writer Beware</a>, comes the fascinating tale of <a href="http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/story/2011-10-07/writer-indicted/50687542/1">Mitchell Gross, a.k.a. Mitchell Graham</a>.<br />
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Graham is the author of five books; <a href="http://www.harpercollins.com/authors/25465/Mitchell_Graham/index.aspx">three fantasy novels</a> and <a href="http://us.macmillan.com/Author/mitchellgraham">two mysteries</a>. HarperCollins publishes his fantasy series and Tor/Forge put out his mysteries. Graham is also a felon. <a href="http://www.ajc.com/news/atlanta/marietta-author-accused-of-1351638.html">He swindled women he met on Jdate for millions of dollars</a>. <br />
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The Atlanta Journal-Constitution story linked above describes how Graham persuaded his girlfriend to "invest" over three million dollars with a nonexistent financial manager, how he sent her fake tax forms, and how he used her life savings to support his lavish lifestyle and pay off his ex-fiancee, who he'd bilked out of $1.4 million using a similar scheme.<br />
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But, years before he duped his lovers, he may have conned a literary agent into representing him, and HarperCollins into publishing his book.<br />
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In 2002, Graham "won" the gold medal for fantasy and the overall grand prize in the prestigious third-annual Delmont-Ross writing contest. There was no fourth-annual Delmont-Ross writing contest, and there was never a second or a first.<br />
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Writer Beware is the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers' of America's scam-watching task-force. The Delmont-Ross contest came to their attention because writers who had seen publicity about Graham's book asked SFWA about the contest, and how they could enter it. Writer Beware found that Borders and Merrill-Lynch, the purported sponsors of the contest, had never heard of it, and there was no trace of any Delmont-Ross foundation. Prominent sci-fi writer <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3ABen+Bova&keywords=Ben+Bova&ie=UTF8&qid=1332563260&sr=8-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B000AP7L52">Ben Bova</a> who was hired to judge the contest, told Writer Beware that Graham's manuscript was the only "finalist" submitted for his consideration.<br />
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The Delmont-Ross award was fake. Graham made it up, so he could give his manuscript a "grand prize." Then he sent out <a href="http://www.sffworld.net/members/sff/home.nsf/viewWebNews/A4BA0F90E1E3FC9C88256B8C004A07B3%21opendocument">fake press releases,</a> ostensibly from a Merrill-Lynch trust administrator, announcing his victory. He also placed an announcement about the award in Locus magazine, a legitimate sci-fi/fantasy publication. <br />
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In interviews with the <a href="http://articles.sun-sentinel.com/2003-02-16/entertainment/0302140497_1_trial-lawyer-mitchell-graham-book">South Florida Sun-Sentinel</a> and the online journal <a href="http://www.writerswrite.com/journal/feb03/graham.htm">Writers Write</a>, Graham claimed that he was inundated by requests for the manuscript from agents and publishers after his Delmont-Ross announcement. If he's telling the truth (which he almost never is), this con man actually got literary agents to query him!<br />
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I'm not going to muck up his agent's Google results by putting her name in this post, because she did exactly what an agent is supposed to do. She got him a 3 book deal. But I wonder if the agent really reached out to him based on his phony press releases, or if she was persuaded to offer representation by his grand prize in the prestigious Delmont-Ross competition. <br />
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There's no way a con like this would work today. Agents are inundated with too many submissions to chase down the winners of writing contests they've never heard of. And there are so many contests these days that even legitimate awards don't carry a lot of cachet with agents. But agents were a lot harder to get in touch with a decade ago, queries were only accepted by snail-mail, and the slushpiles were a lot smaller. Maybe agents ten years ago were subjected to a lower concentration of <a href="http://slushpilehell.tumblr.com/">insanity</a>. A completely phony announcement could have looked very credible, in those days, if it was placed in a legitimate publication. <br />
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Anyway, for bonus Mitchell Graham hilarity:<br />
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<a href="http://www.ajlmagazine.com/content/092005/mitchgraham.html">In this interview he claims to have corresponded at length, over a period of many years, with both C S Lewis and J R R Tolkien.</a><br />
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And, in this article, which Writer Beware fished out of the deep recesses of the Internet, <a href="http://web.archive.org/web/20100105235800/http://sundaypaper.com/More/Archives/tabid/98/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/2872/When-Hollywood-calls.aspx">Graham claims that Stephen Spielberg personally called him on the phone to option his books for film.</a><br />
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-86273608155174236032012-03-07T07:00:00.000-05:002012-03-07T07:01:43.120-05:00Being Times Square Elmo<span style="font-family: inherit;"><br /></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Let’s assume, for purposes of keeping me from getting sued or arrested, that <a href="http://gothamist.com/2010/10/24/elmo_terrorizes_times_square_once_a.php">Elmo is my name.</a> Like, my actual name. I’m <a href="http://gothamist.com/2008/03/30/elmo.php">just some guy who happens to be named Elmo</a>. Elmo is a name that people have, sometimes, so this is a fact that could, conceivably, be true. There was a saint named Elmo. All similarities to well-known media properties are entirely coincidental. </span></div>
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i><span style="font-family: inherit; font-size: small;">"I've got something you can tickle."</span></i></td></tr>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">No, I don’t have any identification to back that claim up. I’m wearing a fuzzy, red costume. It’s got a round, orange felt nose, big googly eyes, and no pockets. I don’t carry a wallet. <a href="http://articles.nydailynews.com/2010-10-24/local/27079043_1_elmo-character-impostor"> I have a cloth sack with the word “TIPS” stamped on it with plastic bedazzled rhinestones.</a> There’s no driver’s license or passport in my sack. No credit cards, either. Men with sacks don’t tend to have credit cards. So you’re just going to have to trust me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">The costume is unrelated to the trademarked Muppet characters, the Childrens’ Television Workshop or the Sesame Street program. Any similarities are, like I said, coincidental and unintended. The costume is made in Taiwan. According to the tag, it’s called “Tickles,” and it should be machine-washed on a gentle cycle or dry-cleaned. I almost never do either of these things, so the suit is usually rank and filthy.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">“Oh my God,” says a teenage girl, to one of her stupid friends. “It’s a hobo Elmo. It’s an Elmo hobo. It’s Elbow.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">“You should totally tweet that,” says her fatter, oilier little sidekick.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">“I will,” says the first one, and then she takes a picture of me with her iPhone. She’s not even sneaky about it. The flash goes off, and everything. I wave my “TIPS” sack at the girls, but they just giggle and run off.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">People who take photos of me and then don’t tip are the worst people in the world.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">If you see me on the corner of 42<sup>nd</sup> Street at Seventh Ave., and your kid hugs me and you have your picture taken with me, just remember I’m not that Elmo. I’m another, unrelated, entirely coincidental Elmo. </span><span style="line-height: 32px;">You have no idea who I am, underneath this. I could have a tattoo of a pentagram on my neck. I could have oozing, dripping sores on my face. I might be missing an eye. </span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;">If your kid asks why Elmo smells funny, it’s definitely not because I just burned a J in the backseat of somebody’s Bentley with the guy who valet-parks cars at the W Hotel.</span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Maybe I am Elmo Gutierrez; just a guy who does this job because his immigration status is questionable, and he can’t get a straight gig. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Maybe my name is Elmo Yoder, and I came here two years ago, on a Trailways bus out of Des Moines. I was the best singer in the church choir and the best dancer at the hoedown, and I thought I could make it on Broadway. Maybe this is as close as I got.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Maybe I’m Elmo Johnson; a man who spends an hour every morning on the train to get down here from Yonkers; a man trying to keep his nose clean and put in an honest day’s work in a tough economy. Think about that, and about how you call yourself a progressive, while you don’t punish your pampered, Park Slope private-schooled ten year-old for sticking his chewing gum in my fur. I know you saw him do it. Don’t just walk away like nothing happened. I didn’t spend all that time bedazzling this sack for you to not put money in it. It says “TIPS” for a reason, asshole. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Maybe I’m Elmo Schmitt, convicted felon. Try not to think about how there are no schools within five hundred feet of Times Square while I’m tickling your kid. Parents will let anyone in a cute costume touch their children. It’s really kind of amazing and terrifying.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="line-height: 32px;">Ever taken your child to visit a department store Santa? That is a man who was in need of seasonal employment; a vagrant of some kind. Think about it for a second, and try to calculate the odds of whether the department store Santa has a substance abuse problem.</span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;">If you roll up Santa’s velveteen sleeve, will you find needle tracks and prison ink?</span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;"> </span><span style="line-height: 32px; text-indent: 0.5in;">Go ahead and let your first-grader sit on his lap.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">You can’t even roll up the sleeves of the Elmo – excuse me, the “Tickles” costume. The gloves are attached to the sleeves. I can’t get out of it unless somebody unzips the back for me, and helps me take off the head. When you’re taking a photo and then not paying me, don’t think about how hot this gets in the summertime. Don’t think about how difficult it must be for me to deal with having to take a piss.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: inherit; line-height: 32px;">Psychookie probably just pees right in his suit. “Psychookie,” by the way, is what I call the psychotic Cookie Monster who hangs out by the flagship Toys R Us store. I don’t even think he bought a Taiwanese knock-off suit. His costume looks like it’s made out of blue dryer lint. His googly eyes are just ping-pong balls krazy-glued to the head of his suit. The pupils are just drawn on there, and not even with, like, a sharpie or a magic marker. I think he scribbled them on with a ballpoint. His sack says “COOKIE” on it, but he still wants tips, and if you take a photo and don’t pay him, he will chase you down the street. </span></div>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-22927541810757642952012-02-28T09:19:00.002-05:002012-02-28T09:20:22.393-05:00Rejected Titles for Nathan Englander's "What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank"<br />
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<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;"> Jewlysses</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Passage To Israel</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Way Of All Gefilte Flesh</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Catskills Revisited</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">A Portrait Of The Rabbi As A Yeshiva Student</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Where I Hardly Ever Remember To Call From</span></span></li>
<li><span style="color: #222222; font-family: inherit;">Zuckerman's Wake</span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Tender Is The Brisket</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">Whitefish Noise</span></span></li>
<li><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><span style="font-family: inherit;">The Sound And The Fury And The Holocaust</span></span></li>
</ul>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-61199686713705260252012-02-09T17:46:00.001-05:002012-02-09T17:52:42.810-05:00For Whom The Butt Tolls<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A
little after six in the morning, while I was putting in my daily four miles on
the elliptical machine at the New York Sports Club near my apartment, I smelled
a fart that made me contemplate death and its inevitability.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/ani_cartman-fart.gif" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="http://www.threadbombing.com/data/media/2/ani_cartman-fart.gif" width="320" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">As
I’m sure the reader is aware, there are many different kinds of farts. There are loud baritones and there are brazen
trumpets. Sometimes, there are squeaky ones.
I didn’t hear this one at all; if it announced itself in any way, the
sound was lost amidst the whirring and clattering of the cardio machines. But what the fart lacked in fanfare, it made
up in foulness. It smelled like a
dumpster behind a Chinatown fish market.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
put a hand against my face to mask the ass-stench with the stink of my own
sweat, and I looked around for the culprit.
I was on the elliptical at the end of the row. The machine next to me was vacant; it was
broken, in fact. There was a woman two
machines over. I wouldn’t say she was a
big woman, exactly, but she wasn’t skinny either, and she was tall. Like, five-feet
ten; a strapping specimen. Had she the
capacity to unleash such an abomination?
I wouldn’t put it past her.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
tried to gauge the expression on her face, to see if she seemed guilty, but I
could only steal glances, because I didn’t want her to catch me looking at
her. I always try to avoid looking at
people at the gym. I don’t want anyone
to think I am a pervert.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Behind
the ellipticals, there was a row of treadmills.
Most of them weren’t in use this early, but there was a guy on one,
behind and to the left of me. He looked
ethnic. I thought the fart smelled
ethnic. I wondered if this was racist of
me. I realized it probably was, since I
had no empirical basis for my belief that farts had ethnicities. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Off
to my right, a man was working with free weights. If you’re looking for somebody to blame a
fart on, the guy lifting free weights is generally a pretty good suspect, since
science has proven squatting against resistance has the same effect on the
human colon that rolling up the bottom of the tube has on toothpaste. But the tall woman and the ethnic man were closer
to me than the weightlifter. I wondered
how far a fart could travel; it seemed like it would dissipate pretty quickly
in an open, high-ceilinged health club. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">In
college, I read a book about the atomic bomb that was dropped on
Hiroshima. People within a certain
distance of the blast were instantly incinerated, while victims further away
died slowly from radiation poisoning.
This information was in no way applicable to my fart problem. I decided to let the whole matter slide, so I
switched on my iPod and listened to Lady Gaga sing about Nebraska for a while.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">But
ten minutes later, somebody released a bigger, more bombastic, more pungent
sequel; the “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” of farts.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">The
free-weight guy was gone, so I could cross him off the list. I looked back and forth between the tall
woman and the ethnic guy. She caught me
looking, and she scowled at me. He had a Forbes magazine draped over the
console of his treadmill, and he was oblivious.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
leaned back on my elliptical, and tried to take a broader look around the
room. Maybe there was some sort of
ass-ventriloquist who had mastered the art of throwing farts across great
distances. But I didn’t spot any such
trickster. And then I realized there was
a suspect I hadn’t considered.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">If
you’ve seen movies, you are probably familiar with this moment. This is the part where they realize the
serial killer’s phone calls are coming from inside the house. This is the moment when Bruce Willis learns
he’s already dead. This is the bit when
Edward Norton figures out that he and Brad Pitt are actually the same guy. This is the plot twist. This is the part where the story about farts
becomes a story about death.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Now
for the expository flashback: four days before the events described herein, I
had decided to try a three-day crash diet called a “juice cleanse.” The
purveyors of this product argue that a super-low calorie diet of raw vegetable
juice can cleanse the body of certain unspecified “toxins” and “rest” the
digestive system. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Most
doctors respond to these dubious claims about the same way one might respond to
a fart in the gym. But people on the
Internet claimed to have lost six pounds in seventy-two hours. If there’s one
thing I’ve learned from the Amazon.com customer reviews for self-published
books, it’s that I can always trust people on the Internet.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Also,
the people claiming to have lost all the juice-weight seemed to mostly be
marathon runners and yoga instructors, so if they could find six pounds to lose
from their waifish, birdlike bodies, I could probably expect to drop even more
from my own keg-shaped, fat-sheathed torso. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
ordered the juice. By lunchtime on the
first day of the cleanse, my nose was running like a snot faucet. The website
claims that this is a common result of the purging of toxins, but since toxins
do not exist, it was probably an allergic reaction. Or else, the unpasteurized juice was full of
bacteria. But it didn’t matter; the
juice people already had my money, and, being both stubborn and stupid, I
decided to see the thing out. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">So,
the morning of the gym fart, I had just eaten my first breakfast after
completing the cleanse: a container of Greek yogurt and a couple of kiwifruit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">With
this data taken into consideration, I had to put myself right on top of my list
of potential fart culprits. And that was
scary, because I was a reasonably healthy thirty-year old man, or at least I
had been one, prior to my juice cleanse.
If I farted, I was usually the first person to know about it. The idea that something so singularly noxious
could make a frictionless escape from my bowel was one I found extremely
disquieting. It meant that I’d done some
serious damage to my body.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
had a great aunt who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease. She lived, during her last years, in the
dementia ward of an assisted-living complex.
I remember going to visit her, and sometimes seeing one of the other
residents, a man who had suffered a stroke.
He’d lost motor control over half of his body, so the lid of his left
eye and the left side of his mouth always drooped, slack and loose.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Maybe
that was what my asshole looked like after the juice cleanse. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
imagined myself lying face-down on a hospital bed. A doctor entered the room, trailing a group
of medical students, like a mother duck with a string of ducklings.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">“Mr.
Friedman presents with some interesting symptoms,” he said. “Can anyone
identify this?”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">A
young, attractive woman, a dead ringer for Katherine Heigl, jumped up and down
on the balls of her Croc-shod feet and raised her hand: “He’s had a
butt-stroke,” she shouted.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">Still
jogging on the elliptical, my heart rate had begun to speed up, even though my
pace was steady. I was thinking that I
should cut my workout short and go to the drugstore. What would I ask them for, though? Some kind
of ointment? A hand mirror? Maybe I should go to the emergency room. I was three miles into my run, with only one
to go, so I decided to finish. But I
promised myself that, if I experienced any more farts I couldn’t feel, I’d find
myself a gastroenterologist, or something.
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">I
didn’t, though. My ass turned out to be
undamaged, which means that I was not responsible for the gym farts, after all.
The real culprit got away. I think it
was the ethnic guy. All I did was spend
a lot of time sniffing at a stranger’s butt-gas, and thinking about it.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;">So,
yay for me.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12pt; line-height: 200%;"><br /></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal" style="line-height: 200%; text-indent: .5in;">
<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-72510701101597895252012-01-17T23:35:00.002-05:002012-03-01T17:14:13.509-05:00E-Galley Giveaway<div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1twTz_pA26T7rjfVAU8GmLec3fcvIFdF6Kq2g_E3Nr92v2EKLE8SIiF2fD4CWNz5iH7GeyfHtyNm0-MRga2Lq-_mrV4RCh-RDG9r_NSVsRTmr9MaR_3Ga5Q-rTmX7qlRFoM9QfksmwRE/s1600/don%2527t+ever+get+old.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1twTz_pA26T7rjfVAU8GmLec3fcvIFdF6Kq2g_E3Nr92v2EKLE8SIiF2fD4CWNz5iH7GeyfHtyNm0-MRga2Lq-_mrV4RCh-RDG9r_NSVsRTmr9MaR_3Ga5Q-rTmX7qlRFoM9QfksmwRE/s320/don%2527t+ever+get+old.jpg" width="212" /></a></div>
<div>
I am giving away some secure e-galleys of DON'T EVER GET OLD through <a href="http://netgalley.com/">NetGalley</a>. To be eligible, just leave a comment on this post, OR tweet a link to any post on this blog you happen to think your followers might enjoy OR tweet at me that you want to be entered, and retweet anything from my Twitter feed, OR <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13159897-don-t-ever-get-old">add DON'T EVER GET OLD on Goodreads</a>. <br />
<br />
The contest ends on February 1, so do this immediately!</div>
<div>
<br /></div>
I'll assign everyone a number and pick the winners using using <a href="http://random.org/">Random.org</a> and I'll give away 3 e-galleys of DON'T EVER GET OLD, but if I get up to 1000 followers on Twitter, or if 250 people add me on Goodreads by the end of the contest, I'll give away 5 of these e-galleys, and I'll also give away some <a href="http://www.modernmuffin.com/">muffins from Modern Muffin</a>. These are some seriously awesome muffins, and the book is pretty good, too. So tell all your friends about my Twitter feed, retweet my funniest tweets to your followers and make me famous.<br />
<div>
<br /></div>
<div>
NetGalley e-galleys are compatible with just about any e-reader, tablet or smartphone, and you can also read it on your PC if you don't have a reader. If this goes well, I'll run more contests in the future, and give away some print galleys this way as well.<br />
<div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
UPDATE: I just ran the Random.org number generator, and the numbers I'd attached to Mindi, Albert and Steph from Twitter came up. So you get e-galleys. Congratulations. I'll ask my marketing contact to get your e-mail addresses authorized, and you will be able to download your secure e-galleys to your computer, tablet or e-reader. I am also having a copy sent to Rita Meade, who is a librarian and blogger and said she wanted one. <br />
<br />
ANOTHER UPDATE: If you reach this page from Google, we are doing an giveaway for signed print ARCs through Goodreads. You can enter here: <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/21061-don-t-ever-get-old">http://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/21061-don-t-ever-get-old</a></div>
</div>
</div>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com16tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-88900861642705620072012-01-11T11:59:00.003-05:002012-01-11T12:04:38.148-05:00I Need A Diet Soda That's Not For Women: A Personal Narrative<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYzD6I6uEX22BWGmKU2J7C8JSbZHRtpUmqie3RZn9W2b1tOyURjyS25xjIbSQ_qTYGCmYncXnOMTx0gkx369m9IO4MHs3_bD2kkTULFac4Qv97OiAPlV1WX40-0hX62qTgxbJ3zOZ530/s1600/DrPepperTen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="233" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFYzD6I6uEX22BWGmKU2J7C8JSbZHRtpUmqie3RZn9W2b1tOyURjyS25xjIbSQ_qTYGCmYncXnOMTx0gkx369m9IO4MHs3_bD2kkTULFac4Qv97OiAPlV1WX40-0hX62qTgxbJ3zOZ530/s400/DrPepperTen.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">The other day, I was hanging out in a vacant, foreclosed house, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">smashing holes in the fucking drywall with my goddamn forehead, when I </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">happened to catch a look at my reflection in a nearby mirror. That’s </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">when I realized I’d gotten fat as shit.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">I don’t know how the fuck I became such a porker. I consume only </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">high-octane extreme-sports food, such as Taco-Bell’s Double-Stuf </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">Torpedito combo meal, King-Size Super-Spicy Slim-Jims, and </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">Nacho-In-The–Face Cheezy Doritos. But, despite my </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">carefully-calibrated athlete’s diet, my form is significantly softer </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">and less-defined than one might expect, based on my intense, manly </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">lifestyle.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">I blame high-calorie sugar soda. I chug a two-liter bottle of that </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">shit to hydrate after I do my ten minute version of P90X on </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">fast-forward, and then I usually pick up a 64-ounce Godzilla Gulp when </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">I make my daily stop at the Exxon station to put another 30 gallons of </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">super-premium in my Expedition. Clearly, I need to stop doing that.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">I’ll be damned, though, if I am going to drink </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><a href="http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/food/story/2011-10-10/dr-pepper-for-men/50717788/1">some pussy-ass diet soda with dainty little bubbles and curlicue cursive lettering on the can.</a> And I am sure as shit not going to drink water. Have you seen </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">water? Water is clear, like the vodka drinks on “Sex And The City,” </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">which I have never watched. I don’t trust a clear drink. A man’s </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">beverage should be the same murky brown color as a mouthful of </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">tobacco-spit. If you drink water, you’d better stock up on tampons, </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">because pretty soon, you’re gonna start bleeding out of your vagina.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">I thought about drinking Gatorade, but it doesn’t seem like that will </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">help much. It turns out that Gatorade has almost as many calories as </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">soda. Plus, it tastes like fruit, which seems pretty gay to me. That </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">is not an appropriate beverage for a man. A proper drink should put </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">hair on a man’s scrotum, hair that he will leave ungroomed and </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">unwashed, in a long, matted tangle, like God’s own beard.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">Thank Christ for the rocket scientists at Dr. Pepper, who have </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"><a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/10/18/dr-peppers-bizarre-new-not-for-women-ad-campaign/">developed a new man-soda called Dr. Pepper 10</a>. An extensive marketing </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">campaign has persuaded me that this awesome low-calorie beverage is </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">emphatically not for women. This stuff comes in a can that’s the </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">color of a gun, and it tastes like it feels to get punched in the face </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">by an iceberg.</span><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><br style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;" /><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;"> At long last, I will be able to enjoy a beverage that doesn’t shatter </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">my fragile perception of my own masculinity, and I will also be able </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">to enjoy a view of my penis that is not fully occluded by the </span><span style="background-color: rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.917969); color: #222222;">protrusion of my belly. Fuckin’ A.</span></span>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-47915003400129412592012-01-05T10:47:00.001-05:002012-01-06T15:29:43.631-05:00How to keep people from pirating your book<br />
<a href="http://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=sopa">Much has been written elsewhere about SOPA</a>, the industry-driven and deeply misguided legislation that the media industry is trying to push through the US Congress.<br />
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I believe that legislation and litigation are absolutely useless at deterring piracy. The Internet always finds a way around these things. Online media piracy has been around for nearly as long as the Internet. Industry groups like the <a href="http://www.riaa.com/faq.php">RIAA and the MPAA classify downloading as theft</a>, and disseminate marketing material urging this viewpoint onto the public.<br />
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But, despite their efforts, piracy continues relatively unchecked. Years of efforts to convince the public that downloading is wrong have failed; in 2008, <a href="http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090116/0955383440.shtml">95% of music downloads were illegal</a>. The results of this activity for the music industry have been devastating. Sales volume <a href="http://money.cnn.com/2010/02/02/news/companies/napster_music_industry/">has dropped by more than half over the last decade</a>, because a huge percentage of the consumers who used to pay for music now get it for free.<br />
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People pirate media online when the pirate copies are easy to get and function identically to legal copies. Efforts to make pirated media difficult to obtain always fail. Therefore,<b> the best way to deter piracy is to make pirated media less functional by excluding it from popular devices.</b><br />
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You can see the difference between a protected media format and an unprotected media format by looking at a single device, the iPhone.<br />
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Apple's music devices, dating back to the original iPod, have always been very welcoming to pirated music. You can download a song and drop it right into your device through the iTunes software, and it plays.<br />
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This function was something of an unavoidable necessity for music. Listeners had extensive collections of high-quality digital recordings on CD when the iPod devices first came out, and they had a reasonable expectation that they'd be able to move their CD music collections onto the new devices. And since the CD format was developed before anyone knew about the Internet or digital piracy, CDs had minimal protections against getting ripped into unprotected MP3 formats and distributed online. iTunes and Apple have no way of telling the difference between a file you've ripped from CDs you bought and a file you downloaded.<br />
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By contrast, it is extremely difficult to use pirated software applications on iOS devices. There is only one point of access for software, and that is Apple's App Store. If you download some illegal software for the iPhone, it's very difficult to make your phone run it. If you have tech-savvy friends, you'll find that many of them download music illegally, but regularly pay for apps.<br />
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People don't feel that supporting app developers is a moral duty, while supporting musicians is not. People don't feel that the apps contain more value than the music. If you could load your iPhone with pirate apps as easily as you could load it with pirate music, nobody would pay for apps. But it's easy to pirate music and hard to pirate apps.<br />
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The same rule holds true with video game consoles; getting them to play pirate software is very difficult and often requires physical modifications to the hardware. So most gamers buy their software legally.<br />
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Publishers need to be talking to e-reader vendors and tablet makers about how these devices will deal with e-book files that originate from places other than the stores affiliated with the apps. Right now it's possible to read pirate books on a Kindle, but it's much more involved than loading a song onto an iPod. It's important that these devices not be allowed, in the future, to read PDF files or other pirate formats like e-books, and that measures are kept in place to prevent purchased e-book files of being downloaded from the devices, stripped of DRM and shared online.</div>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-88033303921809186172011-12-20T07:20:00.001-05:002011-12-20T07:23:38.020-05:00The Rob Schneider Query (With Apologies to Trey Parker)Dear Sir or Madam;<br />
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Derp De-Doo is a derp-da-derp da deedily derp who deedily-deedily derp-de-derp. But she's about to learn that derp-dee-derp de deedily-dee.<br />
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Now she's got to derp-de-derp de dumb-da-dumb. But when deedily-dee, she'll need to dippity doo or she'll be dumbity dipped. And with deedily dumb-da-dumb, she's really got her hands full!<br />
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Will dumb-ba-deedily dee before doodily dumb-da-dumb, or will Derp De-Doo be deedily-duh? I bet you can't wait to find out!<br />
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DERP DE-DOO DEEDILY DUMB is a YA paranormal romance, 76,000 words in length. I've enclosed the first five pages, and I hope you'll be interested in looking at more.<br />
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Deedily-doo,<br />
Dippity Q. Dee<br />
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-87689515284171510232011-12-16T04:33:00.003-05:002011-12-16T05:53:11.641-05:00Have E-books gotten more expensive?<a href="http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2011/has-the-price-of-e-books-really-increased/">Digital Book World conducted a survey </a>of Amazon's top 100 e-books after the Wall Street Journal published <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204336104577096762173802678.html">an article saying that readers will face "sticker shock"</a> over the price of books.<br />
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DBW compared the average price of a bestselling e-book last Christmas to the average price of Amazon's current top 100 e-books, and noted that the average price has declined over the last year, and that the price of bestselling e-books is significantly lower than the average price of the top 100 print books.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFYoJNxbfutHJMPLS5GtSfCu8hrOAIOSUv3O0w0_2Ftg7wDlw0vQVfqhRdKqmH74MNWK4JN4K0DMGHqDwieoNMSUVq5YjCakFJr6-fYBEmMhfwbg9QljbyelSiCkAam4Eu-1P04kS3p2Y/s1600/scrooge-mcduck-make-it-rain.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjFYoJNxbfutHJMPLS5GtSfCu8hrOAIOSUv3O0w0_2Ftg7wDlw0vQVfqhRdKqmH74MNWK4JN4K0DMGHqDwieoNMSUVq5YjCakFJr6-fYBEmMhfwbg9QljbyelSiCkAam4Eu-1P04kS3p2Y/s1600/scrooge-mcduck-make-it-rain.jpeg" /></a>But averaging prices is a perfectly useless piece of data. There is no interpretation or analysis performed to give this number any meaning. In fact, the way this discourse is framed by both of these outlets is like a case study in how useless and misleading data points such as averages can be.<br />
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What is happening with e-book pricing is several separate, distinct phenomena, and by averaging them, you come up with a number that fails to tell you anything about any of them. It's like mixing up the audiences for HBO premium series, Bravo reality and ESPN sports, and then drawing blanket conclusions. <br />
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As a reader, the averaging of e-book prices tells you nothing about what you might expect to pay for books, or how that's changed since last year. Instead, averaging prices obscures what's actually going on. The numbers don't show a downward trend in e-book prices, as DBW suggests but, rather, the segregation of two discrete e-book audiences, which are served at two distinct price points.<br />
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The important numbers to take out of the DBW survey are these: last year, there were 22 titles in the top 100 priced above $10. This year, there are 32. Meanwhile, last year, 17 titles on the Amazon top 100 cost $2.99 or less. This year, there are 35.<br />
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Here's what's going on:</div>
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<b>$10 and up: Frontlist fiction</b><br />
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These expensive titles are the e-book versions of the new fiction that publishers are putting out in the hardcover format. They typically cost $10.99-$12.99, and this is usually a $3-5 savings over the $15-17 price of the Amazon-discounted hardcover edition. E-books have attracted a lot of the sort of readers who buy a bunch of new fiction every year, because buying e-books is a lot cheaper than buying the same books in hardcover. That might be why <a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/mass-market-paperback-sales-down-54_b43204">hardcover book sales are down 18% in the last year</a>; people who would have bought hardcovers are buying the same books in e-formats instead. <br />
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While these e-books cost less than the same titles in hardcover, they're the same price they were last year and more expensive than similar e-titles were two years ago. Back then, publishers sold e-books to Amazon wholesale, and Amazon sold the books for a loss at $9.99 to subsidize its hardware, which, at that time, cost about $300 for an e-ink device. The publishers did not like Amazon selling their newest, most exclusive books for such low prices, and that spurred <a href="http://blog.macmillanspeaks.com/macmillan-ceo-john-sargent-on-the-agency-model-availability-and-price/">a fight between Amazon and major publishers, resulting in the agency pricing model</a>, wherein the publishers price and sell books through Amazon, which takes a commission.<br />
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<b>$3 and Under: Bargain books</b><br />
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Amazon has cultivated a large and active community of readers who hunt for bargains. These people do the work of sorting and rating the hundreds of thousands of self-published titles, and mainstream publishers court them with flash-sale book discounts and other promotions. <br />
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Some romance publishers like Harlequin seem to be generating strong sales by pushing a few e-book titles down into the $2.99 pricing space, where they compete with e-book only imprints and self-publishers. If established genre publishers start pushing into their prices down to $3, there's a good chance that many bargain-seeking readers will stop reading unknown "indie" authors.<br />
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The surge in romance novel sales on Kindle is also a cause for worry among bookstores; in print, Amazon hasn't historically discounted as steeply for paperbacks as it has for hardcovers, and it's tougher to meet Amazon's $25 free-shipping minimum buying $6 paperbacks than it is with $18 hardcovers. So bookstores had a bit of an edge on e-tailers for selling those books.<br />
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<a href="http://www.mediabistro.com/galleycat/mass-market-paperback-sales-down-54_b43204">But mass-market paperback sales are down 54% in the last year. </a> This segment of the market is the one that e-books have really crushed, and this is the tier of mainstream publishing whose sales the top self-published novels may actually be eating into. <br />
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Famous authors like Amy Tan and Dean Koontz have novellas out in e-formats; short works priced to move at $1.99 to $2.99. On Amazon, these are called "Kindle Singles," but they're also available on other e-readers.<br />
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If you're into self-published books, you may be spending less than last year. Back in those halcyon days, many bestselling self-published titles, such as Amanda Hocking's bestselling TRYLLE series cost $2.99. But there are now so many self-published writers competing for attention, and the competition for notice and eyeballs have dragged the prices from the $2.99 level, which is the lowest price eligible for the 70% e-book royalty rate to $0.99, which is the lowest price you can sell a book for and still get a ranking on the paid Kindle list.<br />
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With a few exceptions, self-published authors can only break into the top 100 at $0.99, and this means, <a href="http://danieljfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/12/crunching-numbers-behind-self-published.html">as I've explained in the past, that almost none of them make any money.</a> The surge of $0.99 self-published books may be part of why the average for the full list has dropped since last year, when many of those books would have cost $3.<br />
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So, if you're looking to read the New York Times' critics top-ten lists, you'll be paying $10-12, same as last year. Buying frontlist e-books is still cheaper than buying hardcovers in almost every case. <br />
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If you're buying a Kindle to take advantage of bargain-books, there are plenty of those, and they have, indeed, gotten very cheap. <b> </b><br />
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<b>Is there overlap between these audiences? Do any of you regularly read both frontlist $12 e-books and bargain or self-pubbed stuff? Please comment.</b>Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-69589720580893483752011-12-14T15:37:00.003-05:002011-12-14T15:54:07.560-05:00Good News About Self-Publishing is Actually Bad News For Authors<br />
<a href="http://www.usatoday.com/life/books/news/story/2011-12-14/self-published-authors-ebooks/51851058/1">A USA Today article that talks about how self-publishing has changing the world </a>notes that author Michael Prescott had 5 books in the USA Today bestseller list for 42 weeks, and earned $300,000 in a year by selling 800,000 books. Once again, that's a lot of money, but on a per-reader basis, authors have never had such poor compensation. Prescott he is one of only 30 self-published authors to sell more than 100,000 books. Remember, if you sell 100,000 books at $0.99, you earn $35,000. <br />
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In 2009 and 2010, J A Konrath and Amanda Hocking made real money selling e-books for $2.99 at a 70% royalty rate, but those days are over. Market competition has pushed the price-point for "indie" books by unknown authors down to $0.99. You cannot sell these books at a price that yields a respectable per-copy royalty. <br />
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In the USA Today article, Konrath notes that it's tough to find an audience for self-published e-books, but he argues that it's also tough for traditionally published books to find their audience. But the legitimacy of being backed by a publisher and stocked in bookstores is a big help toward reaching the audience, and there's a better chance to get noticed among the few thousand books in the bookstore than there is to be noticed among the 133,000 books that were self-published in 2011. Further, the audience a traditionally-published novel has to reach in order to be remunerative is much smaller than the audience an "indie" author must find.<br />
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If you sell 25,000 copies in hardcover, you earn a hundred thousand dollars. Is it easier to find 300,000 people willing to pay $1 than it is to find 25,000 willing to pay $16? The dearth of authors who have actually found a mass audience selling self-pubbed books suggests that it is not.<br />
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Under the current traditional publishing model, you can earn real money writing a book for 10,000 people. If you self-publish a book that reaches the same audience, you get $3,000. Anyone who says that e-publishing is reinvigorating the midlist must necessarily be relying on false assumptions, such as the common misperception that unknown, self-published authors can sell their books for $2.99.Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7434001584717623623.post-45518840062406969662011-12-08T23:31:00.001-05:002011-12-09T17:34:49.145-05:00Crunching The Numbers Behind Self-Published BestsellersWhen proponents of self-publishing talk about the indie-publishing revolution, they mention the same names over and over again: <a href="http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/">J. A. Konrath</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3ABarry+Eisler&keywords=Barry+Eisler&ie=UTF8&qid=1323411101&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B001IQXSUE">Barry Eisler</a>, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AAmanda+Hocking&keywords=Amanda+Hocking&ie=UTF8&qid=1323411122&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B003H4L762">Amanda Hocking </a>and <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AJohn+Locke&keywords=John+Locke&ie=UTF8&qid=1323411149&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B003ATT1YO">John Locke</a>.<br />
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There's a good reason for that; there are very few bestselling self-published authors. According to <a href="http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204770404577082303350815824.html">this Wall Street Journal article, which postulates that "self-publishing is upending the book industry,"</a> only thirty self-published authors have sold more than 100,000 copies, out of more than half a million books self-published since 2006 and more than 133,000 books self-published in the last year. <br />
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In light of that data, the success of Darcy Chan, whose self-published "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Mill-River-Recluse-ebook/dp/B0051PRFLQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1323406303&sr=8-1">Mill River Recluse</a>" has sold 400,000 copies should properly be deemed an anomaly, rather than evidence of a trend. And this anomaly isn't especially lucrative. As the article points out, Chan's book, like most successful self-published titles in the last two years, sells for $0.99. Amazon pays a 35% royalty on books sold at that price, or about 35 cents per copy, so Chan's earnings on her 400,000 sales total about $130,000.<br />
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That's a lot of money, and, as the WSJ notes, it's much more than an average debut author would get paid for a traditionally published novel. But this is an extraordinary self-published novel; Chan is one of only twelve self-published authors to sell more than 200,000 copies. When compared to extraordinary advances for traditionally published books, Chan's earnings seem less princely: author Erin Morgenstern got a "high six-figure" advance for her "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Night-Circus-Erin-Morgenstern/dp/0385534639/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1323409258&sr=1-1">Night Circus</a>," Chad Harbach got $665,000 for his debut novel "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Fielding-Novel-ebook/dp/B004QZ9PE2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323409086&sr=1-1">The Art of Fielding</a>," Stephenie Meyer got $750,000 for "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_tc_2_0?rh=i%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3AStephenie+Meyer&keywords=Stephenie+Meyer&ie=UTF8&qid=1323409762&sr=1-2-ent&field-contributor_id=B001H6GO92">Twilight</a>" and Reif Larsen got a reported $900,000 for his "<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Selected-Works-T-S-Spivet/dp/B003YDXD18/ref=sr_1_cc_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1323409149&sr=1-1-catcorr">Selected Works of T.S. Spivet</a>."<br />
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Traditional publishers also pick up the cost of professional editing, proofreading, formatting, typesetting, jacket design and marketing, while self-published authors like Chan must bear these costs themselves. According to the WSJ article, Chan paid $575 for a review from Kirkus and an additional $1000 for online advertising. And traditionally published authors also get bookstore distribution which is still a huge advantage. Nearly two thirds of books are sold in bookstores, and, despite exponential growth, e-books only represent 20% of book sales.<br />
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A traditionally-published author would need to reach fewer than fifteen percent of Chan's audience in hardcover, or fewer than one-fifth in paperback to earn the same royalties. The self-published e-book would have the benefit of a much lower price-point, but the traditional book would have access to the 80% of the market that e-books don't reach.<br />
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A self-published $0.99 book that sells 100,000 copies (remember, only 30 authors have done this in the last five years) earns $35,000 in royalties. That's a great windfall, but it is not extravagant compensation for producing a book-length work of literature, nor is it particularly spectacular when compared to advance payments for traditionally-published books. <br />
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By comparison, an author who sells 100,000 copies in hardcover earns more than $350,000 in royalties (assuming a $25 SRP and a 10% royalty with an escalator to 15% after 10k sales). <br />
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<br />Daniel Friedmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01217086697322548237noreply@blogger.com3