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July 23, 2005
Bound Galleys
I received the bound galleys of my new book, The Greatest War Stories Never Told. Very rewarding moment.
A bound galley, also known as an uncorrected proof, is essentially a facsimile of the book in semi-final form. It is a paperback, instead of hardcover. The printing is not as good (and the photo reproduction nowhere near as good) as the final. The content is taken from an early set of page-proofs that aren�t fully corrected. On the cover there is a label that reads: Uncorrected PROOF, Not for Sale. The back cover has a blurb about some of the marketing planned for the book:
�50 City Radio Campaign
�Print Features
�Online Promotion
I don�t know exactly how many were printed, probably between 100-200. They are used to assist in marketing the book before there is an actual book in hand. For instance, they can be sent to book reviewers for long lead magazines, or buyers for big bookstore chains.
It is always exciting to see the work in book form, even if you have already ploughed through various sets of page-proofs. This makes it feel much more real, and gives me something to show people for the next couple of months until there are real books in hand. Harper Collins didn�t do bound galleys for my first book, so we probably missed out on some opportunities. I don�t really remember why�it was either because schedule didn�t permit, or they didn�t feel it was worth the investment, or a combination. At any rate, I�m delighted they are doing it this year.
I note that a company called Crane Duplicating claims that it invented bound Galleys. To quote from their site: �Priscilla Crane, an imaginative woman with a background of more than 35 years in the book publishing trade, set up a small print shop on Cape Cod and manufactured 15 advance copies of a book for Viking Press. She was the first to do this.� It is probably true. Of course, as my Dad likes to say: �Nothing was invented for the first time.� So you never know.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:33 AM | Comments (0)
New Publicist
My new publicist from Harper Collins, Beth Mellow, called the other day to introduce herself. (The publicist for the first book, Lisa Sweet, left a year or so ago and formed her own company, Lisa Sweet PR.) Authors love to complain endlessly about and the crappy job their publisher is doing publicizing the book, but I guess I'm the exception to the rule--I had a very positive experience with Harper Collins on the first book. Lisa believed in it, and did a great job pushing it, not only in the first few weeks, but really over the course of the first year. Beth seems very nice, and also very supportive, and I can only hope the good times continue to roll
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:28 AM | Comments (0)
July 20, 2005
A Morning Observation
It is amazing the amount of hope, optimism, good cheer, vibrancy, and all-over life affirming force contained in a single cup of hot water strained over a fistfull of ground up coffee beans.
Posted by rickbeyer at 07:59 AM | Comments (0)
July 18, 2005
On Writing
By Stephen King
I haven't read a lot of Stephen King�s work, primarily because the things that interest him (ie, scary things that go bump in the night) don�t really interest me. But I have always recognized him as an excellent writer: His novella �The Body,� for instance, (made into the movie "Stand by Me") totally slayed me.
So when my 15-year-old son urged me to read this book, saying he was sure I would appreciate it, I took his suggestion. I do a lot of driving back and forth to Maine, where I am working on a documentary on the building of a replica ship, and since Mr. King famously resides in Maine, I thought it would be appropriate to listen to him tell me about writing as I drove between Lexington MA and Rockport ME.
King says his book is short because he didn't put a lot of bullshit in it, and I'll try to return the favor in this capsule review. Listening to him read this book made the four hour drives very short indeed. It is funny and fascinating and not a little inspiring. I found myself wishing that I was driving farther, so I could listen a little longer. He offers a dollop of biography (from a peripatetic childhood to a chilling account of the 1999 car accident that almost cost him his life) along with a few spadefuls of pithy and useful observations about the craft of putting one word after another.
I especially liked his characterization of writing/reading as telepathy, with the written word being the medium by which the author sends his or her thoughts into the minds of readers. By this way of thinking, the author�s main job is to accomplish this thought transmission with as little signal loss as possible, to make sure the thought that image that forms in the reader�s head is as close as possible to what the author wanted to describe. Obvious as that might seem, I found it a powerful way to think about writing.
My reading (listening) was interrupted when my wife traded cars with me for a trip to New Hampshire. She started listening, and then she swiped the disks and I had to wait for her to finish. She is a writer too, a good one, although unpublished,and she liked it so much she wants to buy a copy of the written version so we can use it as a reference.
There's lots more I could say, but I'll limit it to this: I loved listening to King. After a while, I felt like the two of us were in the car together, and my old buddy Steve was just telling me a thing or two about writing and his life that he thought I might like to know. And that, Mr. King, is high praise.
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:27 PM | Comments (1)
Da Vinci in America
by Greg Taylor
Intriguing, but could have used better researching, editing, and proofreading. Sloppy errors of fact and typography cast doubt on the credibility of the author. (Note to Greg Taylor: when you compare Wickipedia to Britannica, you suggest that you are unable to discern between well well ressearched, well sourced information, and a site where people can post what they like. Wickepdia has proved very useful to me...but it's not Britannica.)
Still, this is a readable book that introduces the uninitiated to some of the myths and stories surrounding the Freemasons, and how Dan Brown might make use of these in his upcoming book. I'm not sure it is the best place to discern fact from myth, but it does seem at least as if the author is trying to do that, whcih is more than you can see for the authors of many books in the Templar/Freemason/Mystery genre.
Posted by rickbeyer at 09:58 PM | Comments (0)
July 07, 2005
The Secret Man
Bob Woodward's book on Deep Throat.
I showed up at the bookstore yesterday at opening and bought their first copy. It is a short book and I finished it this morning.
It offers a fascinating peek into the relationship between Woodward and Mark Felt, the high-ranking FBI official who was Woodward's "deep background" source during the Watergate years.
One unexpected element was the anguish Woodward feels at never really having gotten closure with Felt, a chance to talk to him in later years and reflect on why he did what he did. Their relationship began with a chance meeting in the White House in 1970 when Woodward was still in the Navy, and came to a screeching halt in 1974 after "All the President's Men" came out. Woodward called Felt to see what he thought, and Felt, perhaps irritated at being referred to as "Deep Throat", hung up the phone. After that they had mimimal contact. After many years of silence, Woodward contacted Felt in 2000, and went out to California to meet with him. But by then Felt, suffering from demntia, had few memories of the Watergate years. The book makes it quite clear how frustrated Woodward is that he can only guess at Felt's motivation, or how he managed the logistics of their secret relationship from his end. Even after the revalations of Deep Throat's identity, and an account in which Woodward says he has held back nothing, some parts of the story are likely to remain a mystery forever.
A must read for Watergate addicts, but it definitely left me wanting more. I imgagine Woodward feels the same way.
Posted by rickbeyer at 05:11 PM | Comments (0)
July 06, 2005
Book of the Month Club
Fantastic new today on the book club front. The Greatest War Stories Never Told will be offered a featured alternate selection in the following book clubs:
Book of the Month
History
Military
American Compass
Book club exposure is a fantastic marketing plus for a book. Something I didn't know until my first book came out is that all these clubs (and 25 or so more) are owned by a company called Bookspan. A 2002 press release I found on their site helps explains the ways book club selection can power a book:
Book Clubs Remain Driving Force Behind U.S. Book Sales
Consumers say book clubs get the highest ratings for helping them decide what to read next. Book clubs also stimulate book purchases in stores and online as a result of consumers seeing book club literature; that includes consumers who aren't members of book clubs as well as those who belong to a book club. These are just two findings of a newly released study conducted by RoperASW.
Among the other Roper findings:
� Club Members and Book Buyers agree that Book Clubs are the best source for helping readers decide what books to read next. (page 22 of study)
� Book club advertising stimulates interest in purchasing books in venues other than Book Clubs among both Club members and Heavy Book Buyers.
Now that press release is 3 years old, and undoubtedly Amazon is playing a stronger role today than it did then. But book club selection still provides a tremendous amount of visibility to people who are serious book buyers. It was a tremendous boost to the first book, and I think it will be to this one as well.
Posted by rickbeyer at 08:58 PM | Comments (0)
Presidential Colleges
The subject of Presidential Colleges came up in conversation last night--who went where, which college has the most presidents, etc. This conversation prompted me to assemble the list that appears below. It covers undergraduate degrees only. For those intested in the score, Harvard is the winner with 5 presidents. William and Mary and Yale can each claim 3. Two presidents went to Princeton and two to West Point. No other college hs more than one presidential alum. Nine presidents did not attend college, the most recent of whom was Harry Truman. The full list follows:| George Washington | None |
| John Adams | Harvard |
| Thomas Jefferson | William and Mary |
| James Madison | Princeton |
| James Monroe | William and Mary |
| John Quincy Adams | Harvard |
| Martin Van Buren | None |
| Andrew Jackson | None |
| William Henry Harrison | Hampden-Sydney College |
| John Tyler | William and Mary |
| James Polk | University of North Carolina |
| Zachary Taylor | None |
| Millard Fillmore | None |
| Franklin Pierce | Bowdoin |
| James Buchanan | Dickinson |
| Abraham Lincoln | None |
| Andrew Johnson | None |
| Ulysses Grant | West Point |
| Rutherford B. Hayes | Kenyon College |
| James Garfield | Williams |
| Chester Arthur | Union College |
| Grover Cleveland | None |
| Benjamin Harrison | None |
| William McKinley | Allegheny College |
| Theodore Roosevelt | Harvard |
| William Taft | Yale |
| Woodrow Wilson | Princeton |
| Warren Harding | Ohio Central College |
| Calvin Coolidge | Amherst |
| Herbert Hoover | Stanford |
| Franklin Roosevelt | Harvard |
| Harry Truman | None |
| Dwight Eisenhower | West Point |
| John Kennedy | Harvard |
| Lyndon Johnson | Southwest Texas State |
| Richard Nixon | Whittier College |
| Jerry Ford | Michigan |
| Jimmy Carter | Annapolis |
| Ronald Reagan | Eureka College |
| George Bush | Yale |
| Bill Clinton | Georgetown |
| George W. Bush | Yale |
Posted by rickbeyer at 10:49 AM | Comments (1)