World’s Dumbest Reality Show Winners

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Alg_big-brother_adam-jasinski  I'm just waiting for one of the networks to do a reality show about the pathetic post-reality show lives of reality show winners & finalists, like SURVIVOR's Richard Hatch (who went to jail for tax evasion), WIFE SWAP's Richard Heene (who allegedly staged the "balloon boy" incident), MEGAN WANTS A MILLIONAIRE's Ryan Jenkins (who murdered his ex-wife), and SURVIVOR's Jenna Lewis (who did a sex tape), to name just a few examples. Now you can add BIG BROTHER winner Adam Jasinksi to the list.  This moron used the $500,000 he won on the show to buy oxycodone pills and resell them.

Adam Jasinski, 31, of Delray Beach, Fla., has been charged with attempting to sell 2,000 pills in Massachusetts to a government witness.
Federal prosecutors said Jasinski was arrested Saturday after he flew to Boston and showed the witness a sock containing two plastic bags filled with oxycodone, a powerful painkiller that is a popular street drug because of its euphoric effects.
As agents tried to arrest Jasinski at a strip mall in North Reading, he struggled and threw the sock under a car parked nearby, Todd Prough, a special agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, said in an affidavit filed in court.
Jasinski won $500,000 last year on the CBS reality show in which contestants live under constant surveillance and vote once a week to evict each other in hopes of becoming the last houseguest standing and winning the grand prize.
Prough said in the affidavit that Jasinski told him that he has been using his winnings to buy thousands of oxycodone pills and has been reselling them along the East Coast for the past several months.
Jasinski's lawyer, Valerie Carter, did not immediately return a call Tuesday.
He faces a maximum of 20 years in prison and a $1 million fine on a charge of possession of oxycodone pills with intent to distribute.

Serving the Story, Not You

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Here's an excerpt from an excellent blog post from UK TV writer James Moran about abusive fans…a post that preceded Josh Olson's much-discussed, incendiary piece on a similar topic.

I'm a professional writer. That's my job. I write what I write, for whatever the project might be. I have the utmost respect for you, and honestly want you to like my work, but I can't let that affect my story decisions. Everybody wants different things from a story, but this is not a democracy, you do not get to vote. You are free to say what you think of my work, even if you hate it, I honestly don't mind. But the ONLY person I need to please is myself, and the ONLY thing I need to serve is the story. Not you. I will do my work to the very best of my ability, in an attempt to give you the best show, the best movie, the best story, the best entertainment I possibly can. Even if that means that sometimes, I'll do things you won't like. I won't debate it. Either you go along with it, or you don't. None of it is done to hurt you, or to force some agenda down your throat, or anything else. It's all in service of the story.

I urge you to read the whole thing. I can't tell you how many times I've been through the same experience that he suffered through…

We Are Family

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Od1 There's a great article about my brother Tod, author of the new book OTHER RESORT CITIES, in today's edition of THE DESERT SUN. Here's an excerpt:

Tod Goldberg had the odds stacked against him.

In addition to his dyslexia, he's also color blind.

That was problematic, because the workbooks that were supposed to teach him to read were color-coded.

“I was all messed up,” Goldberg says. “There's no reason I should be writing today.”

What the doctors and teachers didn't know was the power of the Goldberg clan. They rallied around him — “They actually formed a secret cabal without my knowledge to get me to read,” he says. “They didn't want me to be the butt of jokes forever.”

He's still the butt of jokes, but not for that reason.

I Bet This Guy Listens to Rush Limbaugh Every Day

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Yes, it's 2009. Yes, we have an African-American president, but some people in the south still think it's the 1850s. Keith Bardwell, a justice of the peace in Louisiana, refused a marriage license to a mixed-race couple. 

"I'm not a racist. I just don't believe in mixing the races that way," Bardwell told The Associated Press on Thursday. "I have piles and piles of black friends. They come to my home, I marry them, they use my bathroom. I treat them just like everyone else."

Bardwell said he asks everyone who calls about marriage if they are a mixed race couple. If they are, he does not marry them.

Imagine what how racist a person would have to be to qualify as one in this neanderthal's mind…

Booklist Loves Tod

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My brother Tod's new collection of short stories, OTHER RESORT CITIES, got a rave review from Booklist:

Menace and mayhem brew beneath the finely crafted surface of these magnetic short stories of American mania and despair. Goldberg draws on his crime-fiction chops (Living Dead Girl, 2002) to portray refugees from failed attempts at middle-class normalcy seeking freedom and revenge in the overdeveloped deserts of the American West. Goldberg’s disgruntled characters get up to no good in Palm Springs, Las Vegas, and various gated communities just begging for defilement. A lonely, no-longer-young cocktail waitress struggles to understand her missing Russian adopted daughter. A former sheriff and cancer survivor returns to the strange, toxic, devouring Salton Sea, where he lost his first wife. A man converts his fancy home into a Starbucks after the disappearance of his second wife, and one wonders just how insane he truly is. Goldberg pulls out all the stops in “Mitzvah,” a tale about an ersatz rabbi and a temple-centered money- and body-laundering scheme. A divorced father kidnaps his kids; a family is found slain on a mountain. These are eerie, obliquely compassionate, darkly humorous, and ensnaring stories of misery and catharsis. — Donna Seaman

Fast Track Webcast

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Fasttrack-392  We had a few technical glitches on our first live, interactive webcast…and weren't able to record the FAST TRACK portion of the show. So we're doing it again this Sunday, Oct. 18, at 6 p.m. I'll be joined by FAST TRACK stars Erin Cahill and Andrew Walker. If you would like to watch, or participate by chat, here's the link. If you would like to join us on camera, via webcam, please send your Skype username to info AT expandedentertainment.com or forward it to me at lee AT leegoldberg.com and I will get it to them.

You Can Become a Kindle Millionaire, Part 10

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My friend Joe Konrath, who inspired me to put my out-of-print novels on the Kindle, has posted a fascinating and informative account of his Kindle ebook sales and royalties. He compares how the Kindle versions of his Hyperion-published books are doing compared with his "self-published" Kindle titles. Here's an excerpt, but I recommend you read the whole post:

My five Hyperion ebooks (the sixth one came out in July so no royalties yet) each earn an average of $803 per year on Kindle.

My four self-pubbed Kindle novels each earn an average of $3430 per year.

If I had the rights to all six of my Hyperion books, and sold them on Kindle for $1.99, I'd be making $20,580 per year off of them, total, rather than $4818 a year off of them, total.

So, in other words, because Hyperion has my ebook rights, I'm losing $15,762 per year.

Now Hyperion also has my print rights, and my Jack Daniels books are still selling in print. But they aren't selling enough to make up the $15,762. Especially since all of them aren't regularly being stocked on bookstore shelves.

According to my math, I'd be making more money if my books were out of print, and I had my rights back. 

[…]Ebook rights began as gravy. I can picture a day when the print rights are the gravy, and authors make their living with ebooks.

Yes, it's still far off. And yes, print publishing is in no danger of going away anytime soon.

But I don't think I'll ever take a print contract for less than $30,000 per book, because I'm confident I could make more money on it over the course of six years than I could with a publisher over six years.

I wouldn't take this as a rallying cry to turn away from NY publishers and rush to the Kindle. Joe is a special case. Before "self-publishing" his Kindle titles, he'd already established himself with a series of hardcovers and paperbacks from major NY publishers. He also did a 500-store, multi-state book-tour and attended countless conventions. Joe selling thousands of ebook editions of his previously unpublished work is a very, very different situation than an unpublished writer hoping to accomplish the same feat.

As for myself, my Kindle sales are still going strong, though not Konrath-strong. 

 THE WALK has sold 1760 copies in 4 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $1204.


THREE WAYS TO DIE has sold 236 copies in 4 months @ $.99 each, for a royalty of $82


MY GUN HAS BULLETS has sold 254 copies in about 3 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $175


BEYOND THE BEYOND has sold 69 copies in about 3 months @ $1.99 each, for a royalty of $48.30

I've also got out-of-print editions of TELEVISIONS SERIES REVIVALS, UNSOLD TV PILOTS, and my four .357 VIGILANTE novels that have been released on the Kindle at various times over the last four months. 

All told, my combined Kindle royalties from June 1 to 11:23 pm Oct 13, are: $1750. 

It's not enough to make me follow Joe's example and turn away from anything less than a $30,000 advance from a major publisher, but I'm very pleased. It's hardly a fortune, and clearly the lion's share of the royalties are from just one book, THE WALK, but it's found money. And it's gratifying to me to see THE WALK, which was out-of-print, on track to reaching more readers, and making more money for me, in a Kindle edition than it ever did in hardcover.

UPDATE 10/14/09: Joe posted this important disclaimer in the comments to his post:

I do not think that ebooks are able to replace the exposure, or money, you'd get with a print publisher.
To All New Authors: JA says try the traditional route first. Find an agent. Land a deal with a big NY house. Ebooks aren't there yet.
I'd hate to think some writer gave up on their print aspirations because of something I've said on my blog. I suggest you keep up the agent search. While I have no doubt others will be able to sell as many ebooks as I have, and probably many more, I still haven't made anywhere near the money I've made by being in print. Plus, everyone's situation is unique, and no writer should compare themselves to any other writer.
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