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All things related to THE BOOK.
Friday, May 25, 2012
Most of you were probably not around when we were launching The Book. The original edition was self-published. We needed seed money for the initial printing of the book. We also didn’t know how many books we’d need to print, as we didn’t want to overprint, and be left with tons of remainders. We also didn’t want to underprint, and miss out on printing discounts, as well as cause delays between orders and printing.
So, we had the idea of getting pre-orders in return for a modest discount on The Book. I think we had the list price at 16.95, and we gave a discounted price of 14.95 for pre-orders. We got some 250 pre-orders or so, which allowed us to print about 500 books. So, with 250 extra books to cover any regular sales, all of those regular sales would cover future books we’d order. We timed everything pretty well, ordering 200 books or 100 books at a time, as interest slowed down.
I used the same idea for “Tangotiger Teaches”, with a discounted price for pre-registration of students funding my time for preparing the courses, and eventually using my time for the classes (which, by the way, are ongoing for the DATA 101 class).
So, I totally get the quote here:
With Kickstarter, people are preordering your idea. Sure, they’re buying something tangible — a CD, a movie, a book, etc — but more than that, they’re pledging money because they believe in you, the creator. If you take the time to extrapolate beyond the obvious low-hanging goals, you can use this money to push the idea — the project — somewhere farther reaching than initially envisaged. And all without giving up any ownership of the idea. This — micro-seed capital without relinquishment of ownership — is where the latent potential of Kickstarter funding lies.
Basically, people believed in me and MGL and Andy, and so, pledged their support directly to us, and whatever creative ideas you expected out of us.
Similarly, the students who pre-registered for my course, completely blind as I had no syllabus to speak of, and no professorial experience at all (notwithstanding what I actually do on this blog), basically are buying into me, on faith, and whatever I can deliver.
So, it’s fantastic that someone had the idea to create this as a program, as Kickstarter, to better facilitate the process. And that leads to tons of creative people actually putting their ideas into practice, as the recipients eagerly await the results.
Speaking for myself, I am always thankful and indebted to all those who have shown the faith you have. Basically, you have limited evidence and a “gut feel”, and you jumped in. It’s a wonderful thing to be a part of it.
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
This reader asked:
I want to make sure that anything I get from Amazon sends whatever referral bonus you guys get to you. My question is, if I go to Amazon from your link, is anything I buy in that session, even 40 minutes later going to give you a bonus? If I bookmark that link, will it get you a bonus every time I go to the bookmark?
First off, thank you very much for even thinking about this!
Now, as to how it works: my best guess is that it is session-based, and so, as long as you do everything in that window, no matter how long that window is open, then we’ll qualify for a referral. And yes, if you bookmark the link, then that will get associated to us. You can tell by the URL, in that it shows “tag=tangotiger-20”. That’s what Amazon looks for and logs for that session.
The questions *I* have is if the person puts it in the shopping cart, and then does NOT checkout in that session. Instead, he closes that window, and comes back (same day, next day) and proceeds with the checkout. I don’t know if Amazon flags each item in the cart based on its referral or not.
Another one I’d have is if you are getting referred from two competing sites. Say that Hardball Times has a link for its annual, and you click that. Then, in the same window, you click on our site, and buy The Book. Then, while in Amazon, you buy a shaver. How is all that split up?
I have about a dozen use cases I can dream up, and the best way for me to get the answer is if I buy all these products, and then see what kind of referral we get.
In any case, thank you again for your support!
And to everyone else: remember, any Amazon purchase, The Book or not, gets us a referral fee from Amazon, and has zero impact on your purchase price.
Friday, January 13, 2012
I just got an email alert from Amazon, suggesting I may like “The Book”. Funny.
Anyway, if you guys make any purchases at Amazon, follow the link at the top left corner of any page. You actually don’t even have to buy The Book. Just make any of your Amazon purchases through that link.
We get referral bonuses, and it doesn’t cost you, the purchaser, a thing. (Comes out of Amazon’s pocket.) We don’t make much out of it… just enough to pay for the site and various admin costs.
Thursday, August 18, 2011
I would like to inform you that we received a check from Potomac for 2010 royalties.
We are still proceeding with our efforts to ensure future royalties are paid on time. To that end, we’d like to single out a few people who have provided valuable assistance.
- Robert Byrne is a litigation attorney in Virginia with Martin Wren. I spoke to a few attorneys, and Robert impressed me with his knowledge and insight. He’s a fantastic resource, and I would recommend him to anyone in need.
- Victoria Strauss heads up Writer’s Beware. She is very helpful, and gave us valuable reference material.
- Last, but not least, is a loyal reader and attorney who prefers to remain anonymous. He continues to provide us with valuable information and insight for nearly a year now, all pro bono. We’re doing our best to try to expose his true talents to the world at large, but, so far, he refuses. He has no bigger fan than the authors of The Book.
Thursday, August 11, 2011
Publisher’s Weekly:
...has been slow in paying a number of its authors and, in some cases, has not paid royalties dating as far back as 2009… A number of Potomac authors PW spoke to complained that, after the press had been delivering late payments, it has now stopped paying altogether. Some Potomac authors said the press has made promises that it will send out payments, but were told that the company is dealing with a significant backlog. One author indicated he was owed royalties on mutliple titles, in addition to an advance. Potomac authors interviewed estimated they were owed anywhere from $3,000 to $5,000 each.
Sam Dorrance, who wears multiple hats at Potomac—he is publisher, director of sales and head of subsidiary rights—readily acknowledged the press has fallen behind on royalty payments. “Cash flow has been an issue,” Dorrance said, “but we are looking to clear things up as soon as we can.” ...
Wednesday, August 03, 2011
It seems that everyone has a story to tell:
Over the last year there has been a lot of shenanigans involving my former publisher Dorchester (Leisure). For those who want the full history, click here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Then see the bottom of this article for current updates.
Starting in late 2009, Dorchester – Leisure began making late payments to some of their authors. Indeed, some authors report never having received payments at all, nor royalty statements verifying what, if any, monies were owed. This continued throughout much of 2010. In mid-2010, with these payment issues still unresolved, Dorchester announced that they were switching to an all-digital format. Then they announced that those digital books would be accompanied by trade paperbacks. Due to the ongoing payment issues, many professional writer’s organizations such as the SFWA and RWA placed Dorchester on probationary status. During a late-August conference call with their creditors (for which I was present and for which I have a transcript of, just in case Dorchester wishes to dispute what follows), they revealed that: The company saw a 60% decrease in book orders in mid-2009; payroll was down from 1 million to $600,000; the company had no cash flow, but also had no bank debt; the company owed six million dollars to various creditors, including $700,000 to active authors and $400,000 to inactive authors; ebooks accounted for 10% of their profit; their trade paperback plan was currently on hold; they didn’t think the sale of the company was possible; and that as of August 9th (2010), they considered themselves “in bankruptcy but are not actually filing for bankruptcy”. Vendors and authors who were owed money for books or services from August 8th forward took precedence in being paid. All others would have to wait.
I was one of those authors. I had not been paid since late-2009. My marriage had fallen apart, my bills were piling up, and more than half of my annual income was perpetually “coming soon”. I decided to take a gamble. I negotiated a deal with Dorchester that allowed for: 1. The immediate reversion of all of my print rights, and 2. The reversion of all of my digital rights as of 11:59pm 12/31/10. In exchange for this, I absolved Dorchester of any further financial debts they owed me. In other words, I said, “Forget about the rest of the money you owe me. Just give me my rights back.” It was a risky gamble, and I sought the council of some of the biggest veteran authors in the genre, but it was a gamble that ultimately paid off, because it allowed me to place my back list with a more solvent publisher. We signed the deal. Dorchester went their way. I went mine. And that should have been the end of the story.
Except that it wasn’t, because since then, Dorchester has repeatedly violated that agreement. Since January of this year, unauthorized digital editions of my work have been sold via Kindle, Nook, iBooks, and Sony. These digital editions were not made available for sale until well after the rights had reverted back to me. Dorchester’s response, in each case, has been to blame someone else and assure me that “they are looking into it” and that I would be “financially compensated” and that “it wouldn’t happen again”. Except that I haven’t been financially compensated and it keeps happening again. In the most recent case (iBooks), Dorchester blamed their vendor, Libre Digital, but provided no documentation verifying this. An employee at Apple cast doubt on this explanation. In the case of Kindle, they blamed Amazon.com. Again, an employee at Amazon cast doubt on this. The ebooks were sold under the Dorchester brand. They were sold even though Dorchester does not have the rights to them. And it is Dorchester, rather than their vendors or booksellers, who are ultimately responsible. I have been patient. I have been understanding. The first time, I allowed that it could indeed be a mistake. Four times later? It is no longer a “mistake”. It is theft, or at the very least, staggering incompetence. And as of this writing, I have not seen financial restitution for these unauthorized sales, nor have I received a valid explanation of how they occurred, nor have I heard what steps the company will take to prevent it from happening again.
I am not the only author who this has happened to. Nor is this the only problem. I am told that some authors are still awaiting payments and royalty statements. (One author told me this morning that they have not received a royalty statement or check since April of 2009, yet their books are still being sold). I’m told that some authors’ requests for the reversion of their rights are being outright ignored. And I’m told that yesterday, with many authors’ books about to go out of print (which would then allow the rights to revert back to the authors) Dorchester has announced their intent to bring many of those books out as ebooks, thus seizing the rights, rather than allowing those rights to revert back to the authors — authors who, quite understandably, have concerns about this, given the company’s current state of affairs.
Recently, Dorchester’s customers began taking them to task on their Facebook page. These customers weren’t associated with any particular group or entity. There were members of the Hard Case Crime, Romance, and Horror Book Clubs, fans of horror writers, romance writers, and western writers. They complained about the unauthorized ebook sales, the unannounced changes to the book clubs, the continued non-payment of authors, the lack of promised trade paperbacks, and other concerns. Dorchester deleted these posts from their wall, and issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. When their customers responded, Dorchester deleted those posts as well. Then Dorchester emailed me. They asked me to “make a post” stating that this wasn’t their fault and that they are “trying to rectify the situation” because “people have been trolling the Dorchester Facebook page and posting angry notes.” That they view their customers’ legitimate concerns as “trolling” is quite telling.
Earlier today, I asked you to read this Blog entry by author and editor Robert Swartwood. A few minutes ago, someone asked me why we (the authors) didn’t just seek legal means. Well, I can’t speak for any of the other authors involved, but I’ll tell you why I haven’t — because I’m broke. I’m broke because Dorchester didn’t pay me what was owed, and then I gambled to get my rights back, and then they continued to fuck me. And yes, I’ve got a nice new deal with Deadite and Ghoul starts filming next month, but I won’t see checks from either of those until a few months from now, and until then, I can barely pay the rent and eat anything more than Ramen noodles, let alone hire an attorney.
So I’m asking you to boycott Dorchester Publishing and Leisure Books. I said above that I can’t speak for my fellow authors, but I can tell you that many of them are in the same situation — or worse. If they could get their rights back, they could do as I have done and sign with a new publisher, or they could follow the trail blazed by Joe Konrath and Scott Nicholson, and self-publish their work. In either case, they could begin to make a living again.
In short, we need your help. If you care about horror fiction, and more importantly, if you care about the people who write horror fiction for a living, and if you disagree with this publisher’s methods, history, and “mistakes”, then please consider withholding your financial support of Dorchester Publishing and Leisure Books. Boycott them.
Monday, August 01, 2011
As many readers of this blog probably know, the publisher of The Book, Potomac Books, has not delivered royalty payments for 2010, which were due in April. We have sent several letters and emails to them and have received no response. In addition, they have annually breached their obligations by being significantly late with royalty payments, among other things.
We have reached out to Potomac in order to negotiate a restructuring of our agreement, again, to no avail. With no new agreement and no actual payments for all of 2010, we are forced to take legal action against them.
Although one of the authors is a lawyer, he is not licensed in any state in which we can file an action. Our LLC is based in NJ and Potomac (the publisher) is in VA. Therefore, an outside counsel based in one of those two states will facilitate this step.
The amount of recovery is likely under $10K. Our goal is to have the courts order payment and terminate the contract. If you can assist, please contact us at:
Friday, June 10, 2011
I don’t mind negative reviews of The Book. Indeed, I invite them. I’m not scared. Go ahead and use this thread if you like.
What irks me is saying we didn’t say something when we DID say something. For example, C. Witt ("Mr Pickle") says:
I was playing in a baseball gaming tournament once (think APBA, Strat-o-Matic, etc.) and my opponent was trying to decide on a strategy. He opened up his copy of “The Book”, looked up something and (I’m paraphrasing here) “Okay… so according to The Book, since I am up this many runs, and it’s this inning, and there are this many outs… I’m going to intentionally walk you...”
The problem here was that there were other variables that did NOT factor in to play at all.
Consider, for example, this situation we were dealing with. Let’s say my opponent had a 3 run lead in the bottom of the 9th. I had one out with a man on 2nd base and a good power hitter coming up to the plate.
What doesn’t factor in is what the ON DECK batter was like. If the guy on deck is a .200 hitter with no power, fine. The intentional walk makes sense. If the guy on deck is a .350 hitter with power, then it makes no sense. It also doesn’t factor in what I have sitting on my bench. If my on deck guy is that .200/no power guy, but I have a guy who hits .330 with power on my bench, then you need to factor that in as well. There were just too many variables to factor in. In my experience, much of the stuff from books like this one (or Freakonomics, for example) is that they miss out on that.
Baseball Between the Numbers seemed much better at covering all the bases. (Pardon the pun!)
I bolded that part. And that part is nothing but bullsh!t (summary opinion without evidence(*) if your ears are more sensitive than my boy’s). We discuss at length the on-deck situation, and it’s the centerpiece for that chapter in Table 126.
(*) Someone actually said that because I said bullsh!t, I was cursing, and so, a reason to not respond to me. I’d hate to list the number of friends and family and children I’ve offended if bullsh!t was an offensive term. The idea that bullsh!t is an offensive term is, well, bullsh!t !
Just because your Strat opponent did not use the right chart isn’t a reflection on us.
Thursday, January 20, 2011
A recent review on Amazon:
I purchased “The Book” on Kindle but to get its full value I need to re-purchase it in its paperback version. My Kindle reading experience has been okay for fiction but is simply terrible for any non-fiction work that uses charts and/or graphs to illustrate clearly the points the authors want to make. There are many useful charts in “The Book” but, on Kindle, one needs to make additional “clicks” to refer back to the previous chart one is looking for (e.g., search for “chart,” then click on one of the the highlighted words ("chart"), and one of the charts will appear on a new page). This is a tedious experience at best and an annoying one at worst. In its print version, you can, of course, simply keep your finger on the page that first displayed the chart and flip back and forth between it and the later text.
I don’t own a Kindle, and am interested to hear from those who have read The Book on Kindle.
Tuesday, December 28, 2010
For the first time in a very long time, The Book is now retailing on Amazon for under 14$. I don’t know how it all works out that way, but, there you go.
And, as a friendly reminder, please make all your Amazon purchases through the Amazon link at the top left corner of any page.(*) It costs you nothing at all. Amazon will send us referral fees from their own pocket. It’s actually enough to cover admin costs plus a tiny bit for profit. (In my case, I take the profit and apply it to my web host’s charges, since that’s on my personal account.)
(*) As a testament to my poor marketing skills, I should have made this announcement before all the Xmas shopping.
Bottom-line: it costs you nothing, we make almost nothing, and the result is that Amazon is supporting the existence of this site. It’s utopia, or communism, at work, depending on how you want to interpret the facts.
Wednesday, October 27, 2010
Ah, I love fishermen, as I get to eat the fish without effort:
The Book goes into great detail regarding the iBB; the idea is that given a particular game/out/base stat, the hitter at the plate’s expected wOBA versus the pitcher needs to be a certain higher proportion than the following hitter(s) in order for an intentional walk to be the right move.
...
Of course, if you think Hamilton is better than a .400 wOBA hitter versus righties, it changes things. If you Hamilton is a .430 wOBA true talent hitter versus RHP, the ratio of that to Vlad’s .358 is about 1.20. But even though the situations where an intentional walk is called for increases, most of them are still in the latter innings with the pitching team behind, one out, and runners on second and third. Again, in many of those situations the Giants probably be able to bring in Javier Lopez to pitch to Hamilton.
Wednesday, October 13, 2010
UPDATE: Nov 6, 2010: The title of this thread has changed. The original title was:
The Publisher of The Book (Potomac Books) is delinquent on a portion of our royalties
***
Here is a summary of the facts, with new items noted below (after Aug 7, 2009):
Read More
Monday, August 23, 2010
Go to Amazon’s Look Inside of The Book, and do a search for
Profile #5
and that will bring you to page 94. The study is available in its entirety at pages 94-96, with the conclusion being:
The Book Says:
There is no platoon effect with respect to the quality of the pitcher or hitter. Good pitching beats good hitting as much as good hitting beats good pitching.
Related threads here and here.
Wednesday, July 21, 2010
That’s what I got when I copy/pasted this excerpt into this program.
Just because it’s in the same style, doesn’t mean it’s as good. For example, Brian Bannister may pitch in the same style as say Greg Maddux, but he’s not as effective as Greg Maddux. Basically, the capo of the style family is the very best, and the rest of us are the schlubs of that family, button men.
Glove-slap: Poz.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Came across this site, and it looks pretty neat. This is the page about The Book, and the comments seem to hit the marks reasonably well.
Monday, June 07, 2010
A nice book review:
...There has never been a book on baseball so well written that targets all ranges of sabr-metric fans. This will teach you the subtleties in baseball that add small percentages to winning games and scoring runs. If you are a fantasy baseball player, a lot of this content is invaluable to you as well.
Friday, April 09, 2010
Two people sent me an email this week asking how I calculated the starting run expectancy in The Book.
Let’s look at Table 3, which shows “runs to end of inning” (REOI) for the regular walk of 0.845 and for the non-intentional walk of 0.849. What this means is that from the time the batter received a walk, there was an average of 0.845 runs that scored from that point to the end of the inning. This includes all future batters AND all runners already on base.
Now, you and I both know that IBB are issued in much different circumstances than a regular walk. What we need to do is quantify that context into a single number: the starting run expectancy. Table 3 does that for us. The base/out situation when the IBB was given was .743 while for the regular walk it was .520. Where did those numbers come from? Well, you start with the standard run expectancy 24 base/out chart (Table 1), and weight that table based on the frequency that an IBB and a regular walk was handed out. IBB are disproportionately given out with 1B open and 2 outs. As an example, with 1b open and 1 out, the RE is either .725 or .983 (or 1.467 to load the bases). With 2 outs, it’s between .344 and .634. The weighted average is .743. For the regular walks, the base/out situation leans heavier toward the bases empty, and the weighted average of Table 1 is .520.
That gives you the starting run expectancy, the situation that the batter faced. We also know how many runs were scored when the event occurred (including the runners on base = the situation that the batter face = the starting run expectancy). The difference is the run impact.
That’s one way to get the Linear Weights values. The Book details other ways.
Thursday, April 08, 2010
Macleans is the Canadian version of Time. Nice job by Colby.
Sunday, March 28, 2010
If you want to be added to my mailing list:
I just use the list to announce things like surveys, etc. But, who knows what I may use it for later. Best bet for the regulars, subscribe.
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