Another good review for Cheater’s Guide
DMZ · April 30, 2007 at 5:54 pm · Filed Under Off-topic ranting
Hey, if you haven’t picked up the book already, the latest Sports Weekly’s got a review, and they loved it.
This book offers a complete, well-researched and entertaining look at every single kind of cheating. It offers both a historical perspective and a practical guide for both players and fans who want to learn to cheat or spot cheating.
It goes on for a while.
Wooooo! It’s on page four of the April 25-May 1st issue.
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54 Responses to “Another good review for Cheater’s Guide”
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fine, fine
You need to have a book event in Tacoma. Within the next week, perhaps.
Alternatively, have one in McCall, Idaho. We have a bookstore over there.
What is the proper route to get to the book store in McCall?
From Seattle?
I-90 East to Vantage
SR-26 East to Colfax
US-195 South to Lewiston
US-95 South to New Meadows
ID-55 South to McCall. Turn right at the end of the ice rink, and then its the first bookstore on the left, right before the stop sign behind the Chevron station.
…or drive till you see the last of civilization disappearing into the rear view mirror. Then drive some more.
Forgive me; I can’t resist a cheap shot sometimes. I’ve never ventured much past Colfax, so I wouldn’t know at exactly what spot civilization ends.
Amazon? I’ll go get it now.
…or drive till you see the last of civilization disappearing into the rear view mirror. Then drive some more.
He said McCall, not Oklahoma City.
Question about the book (which I loved):
Did you mess up your diagram of the direction of the spit ball’s flight?
Don’t speed thru Colfax on the way to McCall…..best speedtrap in eastern washington.
Gratz on the book DMZ. I got my dad a copy for his birthday and he loved it.
That dude was right. This guy is pimping his book again. Your next book should be “A guide on how to toot your own horn”.
Not the authors need any help defending themselves but…you come to their place and start crap? WTF? Next time we visit your place, how about we take a piss in the living room?
I couldn’t tell if this was meant to be facetious or not.
You know, if you’re really mad that after closing on four years of writing all this M’s stuff and giving it away, running the site out of pocket, that we sometimes use USSM to point people to our side projects, be they charity or, in this case, my first book, sorry.
But I’m proud of the book, and if you’re here at USSM you’re my target audience (and appear in the acknowledgements, albeit as a group) so if you’re really that annoyed, we’ll miss your readership.
Obviously meant for folks like you–they’re in the series BEFORE you get to the “X for DUMMIES” books.
I have a great idea for your second book that could sell millions of copies.
How about a biography of Port Orchard’s very own Willie Bloomquist?!?! Er…maybe not.
Just bought the book at Barnes and Noble in Indianapolis. Now I’ve got a lot of devious plans for city league softball this year!!
i’ve gotten it through amazon…great by the way…but i also saw it for sale this weekend at Barnes & Nobles…
Oh, my god, you wrote a book, and got it published, and now you’re using your blog, which happens to be on the same subject, to promote it? Alert the clue police, an ethical travesty is takin’ place, Mabel!
Or not. The book is kick-ass, and you can promote it here every day if you want. Not only is it your right, but it is in fact the right thing to do. And “that dude” and his buddy should go away.
The book is the best baseball book I’ve read in a while, and I read many baseball books. For a first book, published in trade paperback, the amount of attention it has received is actually quite an achievement. And I would like to point out that it’s also available at fine independent bookstores.
The book was great DMZ (I just finished it last week). Pimp it all you want, this is your home turf!
I also enjoyed the book quite a bit.
I actually finished reading it while waiting for the tide to go back out so that we could escape from the peninsula we were stuck on in the Sea of Cortez.
Hand to God, not making that up.
maybe someone should talk to Positively For Kids about it? they could call it “Overachieve!” … or maybe Jarrett Mentink– he’s been specializing in local athletes lately
Seems like the beginning of the end for this once informative blog. This is how it all starts. Site gets a tiny following, creator writes a fun-book, author starts selling out on blog. I better install a new pop-up blocker because it is obvious that is the next step. How much will the fees be to subscribe to this blog in a few months, once you get your beak wet? Oh how the world is changing. Shame on you ussmariner, shame on you.
Oh man, they are coming out of the woodwork now.
Assuming that that was serious.
Some seriously hilarious idiots posting on this thread … you get all this fantastic baseball knowledge updated daily for your consumption, yet you complain when Derek plugs his book which he is entirely entitled to do? I suppose you haters never read sites like the Times and P-I whicha re entirely supported by ads, or any roto sites with their popups galore. What a bunch of hypocritical, self-righteous fools.
Keep up the great work Derek and the rest of the site authors and thanks for all your efforts to make this one of the best sports blogs on the Web. You’re an inspiration.
no that was serious.
speaking of Fine Seattle Authors, Jonah Keri has a new column at ESPN–
“Welcome to the first edition of “Keri The 10.” Every Monday, we’ll take a look at 10 stories in the baseball world. Sometimes we’ll focus on big, honking headlines, such as Barry Bonds’ assault on the all-time home run crown. Other times, we’ll tackle the game’s little mysteries, like how anyone outside Port Orchard, Wash., would ever want to see Willie Bloomquist take the field for the Seattle Mariners.”
Site gets a tiny following, creator writes a fun-book, author starts selling out on blog…
Hmm. I think you’re talking about the wrong M’s blog. There is, cough, another M’s blog that has recently gone this route. Except, I’m pretty sure the other blog’s main author hasn’t written a book yet…
crap. I think I need Tags-R-Us or something.
I was talking to a lurker over the weekend about USSM. I don’t like how it’s getting to be about the book, he said.
I pointed out that Derek needed to sell the book if he was going to continue writing for the site. A friend I had been talking to said, “Baseball book?” and asked me about it. I told her, and she said she’d try to get one for her husband the baseball fan.
So it goes both ways. I know some people are complaining about the book pimping, but I don’t think it’s THAT egregious (though I’d tone it down personally), there aren’t any popups, and the guys have kept the ads to a minimum on the site anyway. And I’ve read other blogs that have been far, far worse in the pimping.
Selling a book like this requires some pimping and some hustling. In the current climate, books don’t sell themselves, and publishers are only going to spend the promotional money on their biggest investments. For the first-time writer, it’s flog the book and write off your expenses come tax time, because Houghton Miffin or Harper Collins aren’t going to throw $10K into sending an emery board and a corked bat to every critic in America, or running ads on sports radio. And even if Derek fires up the Mystery Machine and hits every bookstore from here to San Diego, he’s still not going to make all that much money. He’s not Tom Clancy here.
And yeesh, Derek’s already been put front and center on ESPN TWICE in the past month and Michael Wilbon said he wanted him booted out of the country as un-American. First-time writers wish they had publicity like that.
Plugging the book should be totally expected and accepted. I enjoy getting the the updates on reviews and readers comments. I haven’t purchased the book, and almost feel guilty in not doing so.
Turn the page.
Yeah, how dare an unemployed baseball blog author promote his baseball book on his baseball blog! >:
Let Capitalism Reign Baby!!!!
The same people bitching think the government should just print more money to solve poverty.
Don’t let the socialist leaches keep you down. Plug away.
Advertising is selling out?
Hey, Russia called. They want their communism back.
You mean this blog isn’t part of a community service sentence for getting caught in the Colfax speed trap?
Hmmm, in that case, I may have to buy a second copy of the book.
Yeah. Duh!
(although, given some of the folks I’ve seen on the Internet, I guess it DOES have to be spelled out for them).
Derek, I thought the book was great (once I had it translated into Canadian, of course).
As for pimping it, go for it. I’ve bought mine, so I don’t really need to be pimped at anymore, but it’s pretty damn easy to skip the pimping threads if they bother you.
C’mon, folks, have a little heart, here. I’ve learned more about baseball in 12 months of following this blog than I learned in the previous … well, let’s just say ‘many’ years of playing and being a casual fan. And for free, too. Let the man sell his book, get off his case, and go back to accusing him of being an ignorant WFB-hater.
Oh, one more thing while I’m typing… #6, if you’ve been to Colfax, you’ve already been past the end of civilization…
precisely.
You have obviously never been to John Day, Oregon….
I got as far as Kimberly, once, then decided to turn around and go home.
#40 – True, I haven’t, but there are a LOT of places beyond the boundaries of civilization, some of them are so far past the boundaries that they exist in a different time altogether.
Read this fast, ’cause if it’s not deleted for being OT I don’t know what would be.
it’s funny though, how polarizing something so seemingly innocuous can be; there is a review up on Amazon which doesn’t actually review the book– it just complains that the only people reviewing the book so far are all the author’s ‘friends and family’
If Derek pimping his book here bothers you, especially when he’s always careful to put the posts in Off-Topic Ranting which you can avoid if you so choose…go elsewhere.
We won’t miss you.
That requires a pretty broad definition of the word “friend”. I doubt Derek would count me as a friend (I’ve met him once, and have no evidence I left any sort of impression at all).
Like Manitoba.
I’m always perplexed by those who object to content, whether it be an innocuous but well targeted plug for a book, or a movie that offends ones sensibilities. Don’t read the post, don’t go to the movie that contains subject matter that is bothersome to you. Really it’s that easy….but oddly, some would rather consume and complain.
#44 – Any place that has an inferiority complex large enough to create its own gravity well MUST be part of civilization. Okay, on second thought, you’re right.
Careful, Evan, you will alienate the key Winnipeg market.
Derek, did you get that snap I sent you, of CGtB in the window display at the Harvard Bookstore?
In any case, I regard the book pimping as completely above-board. I’ve liked Derek’s writing since BP, before USSM, and (if I can posit a characterization) he’s a writer whose style depends on the intertwining of the personal with his topic. So, USSM is going to have a fair bit of DMZ with its dollop of M’s. That’s what you get with some writers, and some writers make you want that.
Jim Bouton apparently doesn’t like it, but hey, he has the bad taste to have sound on his website.
I’ve never thought of DMZ’s pimping as being any even close to advertising. I always felt like he was – sharing the news with us, I guess; letting the beloved USS Mariner community know how things were going with his book, ’cause obviously, we care about how stuff like that is going. And I assumed that we DID care. Anyway I cared; apparently “that dude” didn’t care.
One advantage of people getting driven away: it’ll actually be possible to connect to USSMariner.com at peak times such as during games on Felix Day.
As others have already said, I find the book mentions just a tad frequent, but it’s not something that would drive me away from the site or that I’d even comment about, if not for all the comments made here already.
If it causes some people to get fed up and leave, I think that’s no problem. There’s not a shortage of readers/contributors at USSM.
The book just got released. I think he’s allowed to mention it for the first couple of months.
I’m a long time frequent lurker who just now registered in order to comment on this topic. I don’t mind reading about the book. I like seeing how well it is being received. I haven’t bought mine yet but plan to. Are there any book stores in the area (I’m in Snohomish County) that have signed copies on hand?
Nicely put.
I do sales for a living. Funny…my ability to sell is directly related to my ability to market my product and ask for the sale. That’s how it works. Sometimes I have to ask for the sale more then once. Despite my efforts I still have to go ask every prospect to buy…they rarely just happen. If I were Derek, I’d put the link to buy that book on every page, as he really should.
Those of you who say you dislike sales…quit your job and go live in the woods. Seriously people…there isn’t one of you who cashes a paycheck that isn’t generated by the sales efforts of your employer. What happens when a company’s sales decrease? They fire people!
Derek(and other authors), your world, run it as you wish. Personally I love reading the other reviews that you provide us. I eat all this stuff up and wouldn’t know where to get it without someone making the effort to tell us about it.
I bought two books today because of this. The friend I gave it has been reading since lunch time and hasn’t gotten anything done. I guess there is no such thing as bad publicity.