1.) They never have my book at airport bookstores. That’s understandable now; the book came out almost two years ago. But I never saw it in any airport bookstores in late 2008/early 2009, either. Waaaaaah.
2.) Flying at the end of the month has a drawback: the crossword puzzle in the in-flight magazine is always finished. Double waaaaaah.
I love U2 fans. I’ve spent the better part of two decades defending U2 fans (whenever needed) to others who think we’re all a bunch of Bono-worshipping nutcases. In the mid-1990s, I almost wrote a book extolling the virtues and awesomeness of U2 fans.
U2 fans are, for the most part, Good People. “Cool U2 fans” as a percentage of “all U2 fans” is a much higher number than “cool people” as a percentage of “all people.” So you can imagine my disappointment and general WTF? reaction to seeing this in the daily analytics report for U2diary.com, the web site for my book:
(facepalm)
Some U2 fan did a web search hoping to find and download a free, digital copy of my book. S/He wanted to steal the book, basically; to get it for free.
Pretty sure no such digital copy/torrent exists, so I hope this “U2 fan” (using the term loosely) instead found the section of U2diary.com where I’ve published almost 10 book samples.
Just another day at the office for the bigtime author here. I mean, don’t we all get our picture on the same web page as Bono, Avril Lavigne, and Kate Winslet?
Who am I kidding with the fake conceit? This is awesome!!! That’s the Lifestyle section of Vecernji, a Croatian newspaper that covered the launch today of the Croatian translation of my book, U2 – A Diary. The publishers over there held a big press event because it was the first book they decided to translate, and it was covered in newspapers and even on national TV. For realz!!!
The publishers invited me to come to the launch event, but since they weren’t paying my airfare, that was out of the question. (In case you haven’t checked lately, Pasco to Zagreb with one-week advance purchase runs about $3k.) So instead, they asked me to send a 10-15 minute video introducing myself, talking about the book, what makes it different from other U2 books, etc.
During the event today, they played a highly-edited, 5-minute version of the video which can be seen here: http://www.vecernji.hr/lifestyle/matt-mcgee-predstavlja-knjigu-u2-dnevnik-video-3363.
Oh, might be hard to see on the screenshot above, but my name below the photo is “Matta McGeeja.”
Life is sometimes tremendously surreal.
It’s both incredibly cool and incredibly strange to see my name on a book cover image.
My publisher has chosen a tentative image for the cover of U2, A Diary, and that image is now available on Amazon. But, it may not be the actual image on the cover when the book is published later this year.
For those interested in knowing why, or just interested in seeing the cover image, I explain it all on the book blog:
It’s strange: Amazon has had my book listed for a few months now, both on the main .com site and on the UK site, too.
Meanwhile, Barnes & Noble? Nothing. Zilch. Nada. Doesn’t exist.
I wish I knew more about publishing. I know Amazon is the biggest book seller in the world, but why would there be such a huge separation between when they know about it and when everyone else knows about it?
