Lee Goldberg

Book Vending Machines

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Captpar10108191435 The French have developed a new twist on bookselling:  Book Vending Machines.  They are installed in busy metro stations and on some street corners.

"We have customers who know exactly what they want and come at all hours to get it," said Xavier Chambon, president of Maxi-Livres, a low-cost publisher and book store chain that debuted the vending machines in June. "It’s as if our stores were open 24 hours a day."

Stocked with 25 of Maxi-Livres best-selling titles, the machines cover the gamut of literary genres and tastes. Classics like "The Odyssey" by Homer and Carroll’s "Alice in Wonderland" share the limited shelf space with such practical must-haves as "100 Delicious Couscous" and "Verb Conjugations."

"Our biggest vending machine sellers are ‘The Wok Cookbook’ and a French-English dictionary," said Chambon, who added that poet Charles Baudelaire’s "Les Fleurs du Mal" — "The Flowers of Evil" — also is "very popular."

Regardless of whether they fall into the category of high culture or low, all books cost a modest $2.45.

(Thanks to Bill Rabkin for the tip)

Start Your Day With A Belly Laugh

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GaywyckHere are two very funny posts to start off your day.  Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Novels gleefully skewer another batch of horrendous book covers. This week, it’s some gay erotica:

Dear God. It’s like a checklist: open shirt? Check! Tucked into pants? Check!
Ruffle? CHECK! But what’s up with Ichabod Crane’s low-hanging saggy scrotum, there? I mean,
is shirt-dude kneeling out of pity? The man is half-dead, and the half that’s
dead is down his pants.

And my brother Tod ridicules perhaps the dumbest person to ever write to that beacon of knowledge, Walter Scott.

M. Beatryce Shaw of Conway, SC asks, amazingly, really:

Are the corpses used in the various CSI shows actual dead people or are they
mannequins?

(Click on the book cover for a larger image…if you dare)

Scientific Breakthroughs Nobody Can Live Without

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Now you can take what’s on your home TV anywhere you go and not get bitten by a single mosquito while you do it.

"Slingbox, which costs about $250, is from Sling Media Inc. of San Mateo, Calif.
Using a box connected to your home TV setup, it sends the signal out onto the
Internet, allowing you to watch a video stream of your home channels from any
Windows computer with broadband access and the Sling software installed…In addition to the signal, Slingbox sends along the TiVo controls I have at
home. "

"This summer, I tried something new: killer threads — clothing that supposedly
zaps bugs before they can zap you. It’s called Buzz Off Insect Repellent
Apparel. You wear it instead of insecticide, although it may be more accurate to
say you become a walking tower of insecticide.

My Evil Doubles

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I was procrastinating this morning, so I decided to see what folks were saying about me in the blogosphere (via Blogpulse). And I found this:

My friends at WJBQ made mention
of the blog again yesterday…and let the cat out of the bag that I love
Lee Goldberg.

Surely she’s not talking about me. So who is this Lee Goldberg who fills her heart with passionate yearning? Who torments her nights with unquenchable lust? I had to find out. So I searched the web for my evil, sexy double…

0523154918_goldberg2

LeeLee_goldberg  Goldberg1Grne0712_smPierce7

5421158Here are few of the "Lee Goldbergs" out there.   I’m surprised by how many of them are writers or TV Goldbergsdnewscasters. I wonder if they get hate mail from fanficcers, too?

Playing in Someone Else’s Sandbox

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I received this lengthy email the other day. It read, in part:

I can understand intellectual property concerns about currently or recently
active creative concepts, but when a creative concept has been tried and
presented by the producers and craftsmen, has run its course and been
cancelled, has stopped being shown in reruns, has no active tie-ins, and
appears to have been completely mothballed by the original creators and
stakeholders of the concept – AT THAT POINT, would you still consider it
wrong for a fanfiction author to attempt to step in and write creatively in
that sandbox?

I ask this because I had been considering a fanfiction based on a series
you produced 10 years ago that has disappeared from the face of the earth.
I admit, as a potential fan-fiction writer, that the lure of
already established character study materials, settings, etc., is enticing –
like the idea of taking down and playing with a set of dolls – er, I mean,
ACTION FIGURES.

As for my own writing career, I’ve never had the courage
to try creating something truly original…

Here is how I replied: My personal feeling is that you are better off, in every possible
way, writing something original. I would never consider writing in "someone
else’s sandbox" unless they invited me to.  I never contemplated writing DIAGNOSIS MURDER or MONK novels. I am only writing those books now because
the rights-holders and/or  creators asked me to.  So my answer to you is this…the
show you’re thinking about, whatever it is, doesn’t belong to you. Or me. Write something that is your
own. The creative and personal benefits far outweigh the convenience of writing
with someone else’s creations. Good luck!

Pay me for my fanfic!

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Fandom Wank reports today that a fanficcer named "cousinjean" appealed to her readers to subsidize her fanfiction writing:

I’ve gotten a lot of e-mails over the past year asking if and when I’m going to
finish both Dancing Lessons and my sequel to The Butterfly Effect. Believe me
when I say that nobody is more depressed about the unfinished state of my fan
fiction than I am. But the cold, hard reality is that I have bills and student
loans to pay, an actual paying writing career to try my damnedest to launch, and
an eventual marriage to save and plan for. The simple fact is that there is no
more room in my life for fan fiction. I’ve tried to make room. I have. But it’s
just not happening.

I realize that a lot of people will probably
judge me pretty harshly for the following, but I’m just desperate enough not to
care. I’m offering to sing for my supper, so to speak, and I don’t see the shame
in that. So here’s my proposal: if every reader who has read and enjoyed my fan
fiction over the years will donate the amount that they would expect to pay for
a hardback novel (and I’ve written the equivalent of several novels in the
course of my fanfic career), then I will be able to take a year off to write
full time. This means that not only would I be able to finish the original
novels that are languishing on my hard drive; I would also be able to finish my
fan fiction.

Basically, what I’m asking for is monetary support from my reader base in
helping me get my career as a professional storyteller off the ground. In
return, if at least half of my goal is met, I promise to continue the work that
has gained me a following in the first place. I’m asking you to buy me time to
write.

If you’re willing to do this, in addition to finished WIPs
you will also have my eternal gratitude and a mention in the acknowledgements of
my first published novel. If you’re not, that’s understandable, and all I ask is
that you never again ask me how my WIPs are coming.

This is the funniest thing I’ve read in ages. To be fair to the fanfiction community, they slapped "cousinjean" down pretty hard and within hours of her appeal, she bid fandom farewell.

(On the jump, here’s a tiny sampling of some of the 425 comments — and counting — that she got…)

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How Not To Sell Your Book II

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I got this spam email today:
 

Dear fellow MWA members and members of the forensic society,
    I have written a murder mystery series beginning with Death, Then
Murder and Murder Under Fire starring C.J. Thompson and Lauren
Lamplier.  I have also written a nonfiction book letting everyone know that God
sends messages to us through His angels in human form to make us aware of His
plans for us.  This one is titled INCOMING Listening For God’s Messages, A
Handbook For Life  and is a must read for young adults.  The reader will
find a miraculous change in their perspective towards others once realizing that
everyone may potentially be carrying a message from God.Take a look at www.amazon.com .

 
Enjoy and thanks,
Fred C. Wootan

Okay, Fred. Here’s the thing. This email is a marketing miss-fire on every level. Let’s dissect it line-by-line and explore why. My comments are in italics.

7025224128a0db5f5ec05010_aa240_l   I have written a murder mystery series beginning with Death, Then
Murder and Murder Under Fire starring C.J. Thompson and Lauren
Lamplier. Good for you, Fred. But the
fact you have written (and apparently self-published) a book isn’t
reason enough for someone to buy it. You have to pitch it to us, man! What makes it interesting? What’s
the hook? It’s not that it "stars" CJ Thompson and Lauren Lamplier…because no one knows who the hell they are. Their names are meaningless. Are they cops? Insurance investigators? Lesbian nurses? Transvestite paratroopers? Come on, Fred, show us some salesmanship!  I have also written a nonfiction book letting everyone know that God
sends messages to us through His angels in human form to make us aware of His
plans for us. This one is titled INCOMING Listening For God’s Messages, A
Handbook For Life  and is a must read for young adults.  The reader will
find a miraculous change in their perspective towards others once realizing that
everyone may potentially be carrying a message from God. That sentence is a rambling mess, Fred.  Not a good advertisement for the book or the writer. So which book is it you’re trying to sell us, the mystery thing or the Angels thing? Or is it both? Either way, neither sales-pitch is very strong. Take a look at www.amazon.com. Even if we wanted to ‘take a look’, and you haven’t given us much of a reason, you don’t even link to your books, just to the Amazon home page. You’re making us do all the work, Fred. Not good. You want to make it easy for your customers to get to the product, you don’t want them to have to hunt for it…because they won’t. And you totally forgot to mention that you also wrote THE SUCCESSFUL INSURANCE AGENCY which, if you ask me, is the real must-read for young adults.

“Would You Be Interested In Writing a Book On My Life?”

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I got this email today. It’s so, um, incredible that the only way to truly appreciate it is to read the whole thing. I present it here unedited. All I’ve done is remove the sender’s name (why, oh why, do they write to me?)

Dear Sir,

I can only imagine once you have read the first coupple of lines
of this letter you will probably think that I am mad ? but who knows and no one
ever said there was ever any harm in trying?

I was wondering if you would be able to assist or if you would be
interested in writing a book on my life, or at least advice me on how to write a
book, I will give you a brief outline.
 
I was born in the UK my Dad died when I was little and I had a  real struggle growing
up. I joined the Royal air Force and had a good life in the military,
I was in there for 15 years until I met my girlfriend,I came to America and gave up a military career and  pension and
benefits because I got my girlfriend pregnant, I stood by her and did what was
right, I married her she is an officer in the United States Air force.
I was left with the child our son Rhys at 4 months of age while
she went away on a TDY and partied getting drunk and blowing away $7000 of my
money that I gave to her to pay off a car loan to benefit us as a newly wed
couple.

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