Advance praise for Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
DMZ · January 8, 2007 at 2:28 pm · Filed Under General baseball, Off-topic ranting, Site information
“It’s all right here, from Vaseline to superballs to licorice, from Arnold Rothstein to Gaylord Perry to Sammy Sosa — a book sure to find its place in the pantheon of underground manuals. Wielding his sardonic humor like a freshly corked bat—lightly yet forcefully — Derek Zumsteg knocks it out of the park. The Cheater’s Guide to Baseball is funny, true and entirely original.” — Jeremy Schaap, ESPN correspondent and author of CINDERELLA MAN and TRIUMPH
Pre-order now, folks. Your purchase supports me writing for USSM.
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69 Responses to “Advance praise for Cheater’s Guide to Baseball”
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Me too.
–Fritz Peterson
My birthday list:
BP2007
Cheater’s Guide to Baseball
I know most of us here frequent at least several baseball blogs on a daily basis…. I’ll use word of mouth to promote your book in relevant threads on SOS and Redszone (both pretty big blogs)…
The HOF balloting reveal would be a good opportunity to promote the book…
Also, Cincy has an all sports talk format station on AM with several shows devoted to local issues…. I can send the 3-6pm host a quick email to let him know about the book….I don’t know if you’re sending out advanced copies to guys like that, but an interview on air would be a great way to promote the book…..
BTW…thats how I came to buy Dewan’s fielding bible…. he did a 15 minute interview during my drive home right around the time his book was being released… this is perfect hot stove stuff…
and the nice thing about radio…. you can be interviewed from your living room…
I may be captain obvious but that Schaap quote would probably be helpful on the Amazon page for the book.
Anyway congratulations on the positive feedback. I’m anxious to receive my preordered copy. Is April the correct publishing date, I thought it would be earlier?
Generally speaking, unless you’re an A-lister, you’re SOL. There are some things they’re doing, and there is stuff in the book that should be interesting/controversial enough to get it some attention, and if that happens, they may well seize the moment. Or I might.
#52– speaking of which, doesn’t Grosby do a book-a-week thing on his show?
56. I get it. They throw throw enough at the wall and if something sticks…
Derek,
Our biggest sales came from pre-sales, which is the dedicated fans who bought the book sight unseen. You must already have that, since you would be #10 in this list, right after Hardball Times, and ahead of Larussa/Mick. So, this is good.
Alot of those people have blogs, and they spread the word. You should capture those reviews on a review page that you maintain. My policy is to link to all reviews, good or bad.
Our other great sales came from an article in the Wall Street Journal. My takeaway from that is that already paying subscribers of something makes for a good potential client.
Another great source is unbiased reviews.
And another one was online excerpts, the online equivalent of “flipping through the book”.
Finally, a dedicated page or site to all-things-book is necessary. We posted the first two or three pages of each chapter online.
The giveaways/goodwill didn’t really add much in most cases. Rob Neyer is wonderful, because he’s truthful and has a good audience. We didn’t ask him to say anything nice, but he was pretty good to us. King Kaufman was also good. Again, he spun an article out of the book, and he was unbiased as well. You don’t want an a$$-kisser.
If I think of something else, I’ll jot it down here.
40…Scott Simon is indeed a big baseball fan, but the NPR host who dropped out of sight for a summer was Neal Conan, who left to do play-by-play for the independent league team Aberdeen Arsenal. Conan would be a great target, since he hosts “Talk of the Nation” on NPR and often interviews Alan Schwarz about all things baseball.
There’s a site for the book coming.
I’d trade my other wife for a copy.
– Al Martin
All right, all right….your relentless badgering got me to buy a darn book! Just kidding. Can’t wait to read it. I purchased it from Barnes and Noble, not Amazon, since I had a xmas gift card…lol.
I suppose you have to be an A-lister to do The Colbert Report, but it seems like Stephen’s faux reverence would be a perfect match for your real irreverence.
Oh, and one thing USSM readers can do for you is to offer reviews on Amazon. There’s likely no more faithful+passionate group of readers than here, so there’s a definite way to drive interest. (Post-release of course)
I’d try to get some publicity through deadspin.com. Although the site isn’t focused on just baseball, the editor/main writer is a big baseball fan (and a book writer himself) and might be willing to do some shilling on your behalf.
The problem with Talk of the Nation is that it is only available in the Seattle area by streaming it, either through NPR or KUOW, which has an on-line service, KUOW-2.
As for reviews, in addition to maintaining links from the site you’re creating for the book, also make yourself a copy of the review pages themselves. They tend to disappear or go into “paid-subscriber-only” archives and other inaccessible places. You generally can’t (legally) post your copies online when that happens, but you still want your private copy for excerpts etc.
Amazon lets anyone write a review, and sometimes you get real whackjobs with an axe to grind. Keep an eye on your Amazon page and if that happens, recruit people to shout down the bad review (or at least push it down the page); in some cases you can get Amazon to remove reviews when they are completely out to lunch. (Hopefully none of this will even be an issue for you, but I have author friends who had to deal with it).
Heh, you know who would be the ultimate blurber for a baseball book? Fidel Castro. My mother was just in Cuba, she could have dropped off a copy at the Ministerio de Esportes for you 😉
“A wonderfully humorous summary of the Yanqui’s cheating ways, and the many techniques the working-class athlete has used to revolt against his capitalist owner/oppressor. I laughed so hard I bust my gut!”
– Fidel Castro