December 05, 2005
Tango Hotel Foxtrot
With my publisher's blessing, I am happy to announce that my humor collection, Holy Tango of Literature (which answers the question "What if poets and playwrights wrote works whose titles were anagrams of their names?"), is now available as a free eBook. I know, I know, PDAs are so last year, but here the book is nonetheless, in Palm-readable format (if you have a PDA that uses a reader other than PalmReader or MobiPocket, point me to a file converter and I'll generate the book in an alternate file format) and browser-readable HTML:
Holy Tango of Literature eBook
Web-readable version
There's more about why I'm doing this in the introduction to the book, but the short version is -- if the book is ever going to sell more copies than it has, more people need to find out about it. I know from personal experience that when people get to flip through a copy of the book, they generally love it, and often they don't just buy a copy for themselves, but buy a second copy as a gift. The book's been publicized in a few places (Nancy Pearl's NPR book review segment, Neil Gaiman's blog, The Next Big Thing), but those were a while ago, and most media outlets don't want to help promote a year-old book. So, I thought, how can I get more people to see the book? Having become a fan of Cory Doctorow's writing because I downloaded his free eBooks, the answer seemed obvious: by giving it away. (Although if you want to pay for an edition made of molecules instead of only electrons, please do -- your usual online retailers will have it, or you can check Booksense to find out what independent bookstores near you have it in stock.)
And all you folks out there can help! If you want to be part of the Holy Tango ad hoc promotional army, please feel free to link back here, copy the file and post it to your own blog, e-mail it to friends, post about it on Metafilter, or simply write a long and prominently placed article about it in the New York Times. The eBook is licensed through Creative Commons, so don't worry about file sharing issues -- share away.
Additionally, for people without PDAs or who don't want to read a whole eBook without some idea of what's in it, I'll be serializing excerpts from the book here for the next few weeks. Starting now!
WE LONG BONY DORKS
GWENDOLYN BROOKS
The Mathletes.
Seven in the Computer Lab.
We long bony dorks. We
Real big on quarks. We
Quote Python lines. We
Know arcs and sines. We
Not good at sports. We
Black socks with shorts. We
Beat up at noon. We
Out-earn you soon.
I vote for the haiku and the Beckett play for your next excerpts. And the Eliot "Toilets." And...just...all of it, really.
Posted by: Orange at December 5, 2005 08:47 PMI've hit up Book Court to get it several times, but they didn't have it as of a week ago.
Posted by: Ken/Cazique at December 5, 2005 09:08 PMAs a Barnes & Nobles drone, I'll see if I can't give you a face-out or at least get a few copies sent in. We've got this on a face-out, so I don't see why you shouldn't rate up with Carol Queen.
Wait, does your book have female dominance? Because.....that might be a deal-breaker.
Posted by: Mark N. Fiction at December 6, 2005 02:56 AMAnother vote for the haiku. And if you do, I would send the link over to actor James Urbaniak, who was just talking about Basho today. (Plus a decent number of people read his LJ, I think.)
Posted by: Toonhead! at December 6, 2005 07:15 AMOops didn't notice the HTML version up as well as the Palm one. I may just go post a message in Urbaniak's LJ meself then.
Posted by: Toonhead! at December 6, 2005 10:59 AMSeems James has already read it, and enjoyed it. Good. :)
Posted by: Toonhead! at December 6, 2005 11:24 AMuhoh - you've been boingboinged.
(sheer genius - still drying my tears of mirth...)
Posted by: progosk at December 6, 2005 01:16 PMConsider yourself plugged.
Posted by: Doug at December 6, 2005 01:58 PMOkay, taht is farking hilarious. I've ordered my copy from amazon. Good luck, and happy holidays (shove that up your pipe and smoke it O'Reilly!!).
http://www.booksxyz.com/profile.php?bid=982018
it is now available here, with profits benefiting schools
price is listed as $8.96 which seems pretty reasonable to me.
Posted by: Jacob at December 6, 2005 05:40 PMalso, just hoping you could direct folks to us instead of amazon..we are cheaper, our profits go to schools, and we are pro open source
just hoping
http://www.booksxyz.com/profile.php?bid=982018
Posted by: jacob at December 6, 2005 05:46 PMYou're right. I'd never heard of your book until I was pointed to the web version. Now I'm going to buy a copy for my pa for Christmas.
The Authors Guild is dumb.
Deep, deep, deep love for literature. And your work. And William Carlos Williams spoofs. And stalls, and all. Hilarious. I think I'm going to be buying, like, five copies and giving them away to random people in college English Lit programs, or maybe just to my friends in same. Bravo!
Posted by: Elizabeth at December 9, 2005 02:02 AMI've said it before and I'll say it again. I love love love love this book. I'll think about who might like a copy for christmas.
Posted by: beth at December 9, 2005 02:35 PMI've loved your stuff ever since I found it on Modern Humorist way back when. Just in case you didn't know - Daedalus has your book (www.salebooks.com). I've always thought it would be high praise to have my book in their catalog...
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