Kenneth Atchity's Blog, page 208

Making Dashes Correctly

If you want to be perceived of as a professional writer, one of these days (sooner, I hope, rather than later) you’ve got to learn (and teach) how to make a correct dash. There are two kinds of animals that look like dashes:



1)    The em dash (so called because it’s the length of the small letter “m” in most typefaces)…used as you use it here—to separate parts of a sentence, or as casual punctuation; and



2)    The hyphen (known to copy editors as the en dash, because it’s the width of the letter “n”). Used to separate compound words as in forty-seven, tightly-wrapped, etc.



When you confuse one with the other, you cause a nightmare for the copy editors who prepare a book for publication. Every single wrongly-made dash has to be fixed by hand.



So…here’s how to make the em dash on keyboards that don’t HAVE AN ACTUAL em dash (some few do):



          Type two hyphens together, with NO space BEFORE, BETWEEN or AFTER them—like this, not like this- - or like this – or like this – etc.



          The minute I see a manuscript where the dashes are made correctly, the minute I can concentrate on the message it contains instead of on its faulty messengering!

Anatomy of an Amazon Book Page — Deconstructed by BadRedhead Media!

You may not realize it, but each Amazon book page is a wealth of
information, much of which you probably don’t even see or notice. Or if
you do, perhaps you’re not sure how to interpret it all.







Amazon has always had brilliant retailer marketing. They make it as
easy as possible for us to spend more money without much effort (Prime
membership and 1-click ordering are just two examples).



Let’s start at the top and work our way down. It might be helpful to visualize this, so open up my book page for Broken Pieces (shameless plug), and follow along:



1)    Search bar: At the very top of every Amazon page is the
search window. Duh, you probably already know this. But did you know: if
you type in the name of your books(s) and/or author name, you will move
up in Search? Yea, truth. So get on that. Books at the top of search
tend to get more hits.



2)    Book Title: In black type is the book title, and just
below that, author name. I also suggest adding your editor, graphic
artist, and, if applicable, who wrote your forward. It’s nice to give
people credit who work so hard for us.



3)    Top left: Book cover. This is key. Amazon’s background is white. If your cover is also white, it can fade into nothingness. My suggestion: add a splash of red
if possible. Red draws the eye in. If red doesn’t work, add a splash of
a bright shade, like green or purple. Even yellow works. Avoid: all grey or black without a splash of color (think Twilight – all black with a bright red apple or ribbon – despite what you think of the writing, the covers rock).



Tip: Be sure to activate the Look Inside feature
(You should find the Look Inside feature enabled one week after your
book is made available to readers for purchase. If you have a print book
enrolled in the Look Inside the Book program, both print and Kindle
versions will be available for online previewing). This not only
provides a free sample for readers (either to read right then or
download to their Kindle), but it also helps your Search rankings.



4)    Review count, Stars: Here’s where you see the yellow stars
(draws the eye in, remember?), and if you hover over the stars, you’ll
see an average rating. Also the total number of reviews. From a metadata
perspective, the overall number of reviews is most important – few
people will click on each star and read every single review. This is why
getting 1 to 2-star reviews is not that big of a deal because it
actually helps your overall review count (even though, yes, it brings
down your average ranking).



5)    Price: Price is listed below and to the right. On bright orange buttons (again, bright color).



6)    Book Description: This is where you write your book
description. I recommend keeping it short and sweet – a few blurbs, a
few bullets as to the content, and a call to action (purchase this book today and see why
… etc.). Only a few lines show without the customer pressing ‘see
more,’ so make what they see incredibly interesting! Most importantly,
include the same keywords you entered into your KDP (where it says
‘keywords or key phrases’). Again this ties to search.



7)    Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought: This is
called the ‘recommendation queue’ and tells you what customers like.
This is helpful as a reader so we can take a risk on other books that
seem to be like the one we just bought. No guarantees of course (except
that you can always return the book for a refund). Tip: If you copromote with other authors, you will commonly pop up in the same rec queue.



8)    Editorial Reviews: If your book has been reviewed by a reviewer from an editorial publication (Kirkus, San Francisco Book Review, etc.), this is where you put these reviews.



9)    Product Details: Key info like date of publication, page count, etc. is listed here. What’s most important is your Amazon Best Sellers Rank. This is where your book is ranked at that particular moment in time. This is updated hourly. Below is a snapshot in time of where Broken Pieces
is at the moment I’m writing this. Given that there are millions of
books on Amazon, I’m okay with this. I can also tell if the categories
(see below) I’m using are the same lists I’m ranked on.



Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #9,827 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)


#8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction >  Women’s Studies
#38 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences >  Gender Studies
#47 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences >  Women’s Studies



10) Customer Reviews: this is the breakdown of reviews. If you
as a reader have traveled this far down the page, most likely you want
to know more, right? They also pull out quotes from reviews, because
most of us simply scan a page rather than read the whole review.



11) Most Helpful Customer Reviews: While you can’t influence
how people feel about your book, you CAN affect this particular area of
the page. How? Simply click YES on what you feel are the most helpful,
and NO on the ones you feel are not. Ask others to do the same. (Some
people call this ‘gaming;’ however, according to Amazon’s own
guidelines, they encourage people to do this. The point is to be
‘helpful.’ Take that as you will.) If this bothers your sensibilities,
don’t do it. In conversations with Amazon directly, they encourage this
practice.



12)  Most Recent Customer Reviews: On the far right is a
sidebar that contains the most recent six or seven reviews. The will
automatically update as more reviews come in.





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Los Aldeanos Documentary: How They Did It

by Jesse Acevedo







Los Aldeanos is an underground rap duo based in Havana whose lyrics challenge the status quo of Cuba’s dictatorship. Filmmaker Jesse Acevedo went to Cuba to document their movement at the risk of imprisonment. This is how he did it.

Initially, I went to Cuba to make a film about a Rumba dance competition, not about Los Aldeanos. Three weeks into production, however, someone in my crew invited me to a Los Aldeanos rap concert. Without hesitation, I told him, “No. I don’t like rap!” But he insisted that this would be different than anything I had ever seen and explained, “It is underground, we have to drive one hour outside of the city far away from the police.” Ultimately, I agreed to go out of pure curiosity.

The concert was in an open field on a precarious stage with a few lights and a bad sound system. In spite of only being promoted for a few hours before the show, they managed to gather a crowd of thousands. The energy was electrifying. This was Los Aldeanos, the underground duo who raps about revolution against the Cuban dictatorship. Their music was poetry and spoke to the large population of oppressed youth. For me, it was love at first sight!

That night I went back to my hotel convinced that I had to make a documentary about Los Aldeanos. Three weeks later, I had cobbled together a small production budget for my trip back to Cuba through loans, credit card advances and small gifts from my friends and family.

All I wanted to do was tell the story of Los Aldeanos, two rappers who captivated the hearts of thousands with their music. But in my initial excitement I lost sight of the potential consequences of my actions. The punishments in Cuba for any type of dissent—foreign or native—are severe. If a native Cuban is charged with anti-revolutionary activities, their personal belongings will be confiscated, and they will most likely be sentenced to 20 years in prison. In my case, as a foreigner creating a film that critiques the Cuban government, I could have been potentially imprisoned for a maximum sentence of 15 years.

As such, caution was the name of the game. We had to hide, cut corners and negotiate every shot and interview that we wanted to film for the Los Aldeanos documentary. Some of the methods that we used to shoot and smuggle the video out of Cuba were very dangerous. In order to stay under the radar, our crew used a variety of cameras. Because of their small sizes, we shot with the Sony PD150 DV camera, the Sony HDR-FX1000, and the Panasonic HC-V100. Shooting with small cameras enabled us to easily pass as tourists.

Another great camera for undercover shooting was the Canon 60D, a still photo camera that also takes high quality video. It was very discreet as most people simply thought we were snapping stills. Additional footage was also collected from people, who shot video on their cell phones, point-and-shoot cameras, iPhones—whatever we could get our hands on.

los aldeanosThere were some truly intense moments during the making of this Los Aldeanos documentary, particularly surrounding some of the incendiary interviews. To shoot one of the more dangerous interviews, for example, we drove across Cuba to avoid capture. But when we returned to Havana, there was still the question of how we would smuggle that footage back to the United States.

Because there was more video than we could fit onto flash drives, we took the precaution of partitioning computer hard drives. By partitioning the hard drives, we ensured that the information would be hidden when the computer was booted normally. We then created a dummy account on the computer, so that in the event that security personnel did start up our computer to look for illegal footage, all they would find were tourist photos, which we had downloaded from a random Facebook account.

I remember sitting in that little Havana hotel room, scared, partitioning drives and erasing SD cards and backup drives in case they fell into the wrong hands. And it’s a good thing that we were so careful because some of these same drives were later confiscated by the Cuban police, and my computer was checked at the airport.

Making the documentary was difficult and almost impossible. Not only were the risks taken very real—Alan Gross and countless others in prison would testify to that—but the fear for my crew was like a strange energy around me, which was overwhelming at times! To this day, many of my crew members must remain anonymous in the credits in order to protect themselves and their families.

But, ultimately, all the risks were worth it and made sense because I was following the duo and their music. In my heart, I wanted to make a film that could inform and inspire, and with a little pluck and ingenuity, we pulled it off. VIVA CUBA LIBRE: RAP IS WAR was the result!

Jesse Acevedo is a film director born in Mexico and based in Los Angeles. He has worked on feature films, documentaries, music videos and commercial



Viva Cuba Libre: Rap is War from Aaron Ohlmann on Vimeo.



VIVA CUBA LIBRE: RAP IS WAR by Filmmaker Jesse Acevedo visit the MovieMaker Magazine home page.

Examiner.com Book review: Nobody Walks by Dennis Walsh

Nobody Walks by Dennis Walsh is a true crime book about the author seeking justice for his brother's murder. The book relates his experiences finding witnesses and encouraging them to contact the police through to the trial and sentencing. While the flow is not that great sometimes making it an easy book to abandon and never finish, the completeness of covering it from when he found out to the sentencing and revealing pertinent information as he found it out does help portray the realistic experiences and emotions.

To some extent Nobody Walks almost seems like some Hollywood script (before they cut out the fluff). The murder victim, Christopher Walsh, was a meth addict and criminal leading his brother to feel it was necessary he get witnesses to come forward or the case would become cold. While he mainly seems determined to have justice through the police and court system, he also reveals his and his brother's struggle to let it happen that way including how he does potentially taint the witnesses and provides cause for mistrial.

Overall Nobody Walks is a good read that provides the unique perspective of the victim's family seeking justice. One of the strengths is that it provides a rather complete recounting of the brother's experiences over the four and a half years from the murder to sentencing. However, this also leads to its weakness of sometimes being redundant or hard to follow and stick to reading it.

WRITING TREATMENTS TO SELL Available on Amazon Kindle!

SAMPLE CHAPTER 



Who Are the Buyers?



THE MARKETS FOR TREATMENTS AND WHAT AND HOW TO SELL TO THEM







It's a fifty-fifty deal. Just make sure we get the best of it.

--Samuel Goldwyn, instructions to his business affairs office



Some writers don't care whether their writing sells, or whether it
sells soon. They have the luxury of writing nothing but what they
like, and the freedom to continue doing it without needing to depend
upon it as a source of income. If time, for you, is not of the essence,
you'll simply write what you want to write and let the results find
their way onto the screen in their own time. But if you're interested
in moving your career along the fastest possible track toward receiving
financial rewards in proportion to the effort your making, it's more
than just a good idea to keep in mind who your buyers are going to
be while you're in the process of identifying good dramatic stories
and bringing your treatments of them into focus. Keeping market considerations
in mind you'll be able to expedite your career success. For those
who are interested in speeding along, this chapter provides information
on who your prospective buyers are, and what they're looking for.
Of course both buyers and what they're buying change as rapidly as
anything else in our accelerating world. The general observations
that follow should be supplemented by current research (through phone
calls and through checking the most recent directories).



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TIPS: New Smashwords Research Helps Authors and Publishers Sell More Ebooks

Mark Coker, Founder, Smashwords

 













Last year at the 2012 RT Booklovers in Chicago, I released a first-of-its-kind study that analyzed sales data for self-published ebooks. Our goal was to identify potential factors that could help authors sell more ebooks.

Two weeks ago at the 2013 RT Booklovers convention in Kansas City, I shared new, updated data in a session titled, Money, Money, Money -- Facts & Figures for Financial Payoff.

Some of the results were surprising, some were silly, and some I expect will help authors and publishers make their ebooks more appealing to consumers.

2013-05-15-wordcloud.pngFor the study this year, we analyzed over $12 million in sales for a collection of 120,000 Smashwords ebooks between May 1, 2012 through March 31, 2013. We aggregated our sales data from across our retail distribution network, which includes the Apple iBookstore, Barnes & Noble, Sony, Kobo and Amazon (only about 200 of our 200,000 titles are at Amazon). As the world's largest distributor of self-published ebooks, I think our study represents the most comprehensive analysis ever of how ebooks from self-published authors and small independent presses are behaving in the marketplace.

Imagine dozens of levers and dials attached to a book that the author can twist, turn and tweak. When you get everything just right, your book's sales will increase through viral through word-of-mouth. In my free ebook, The Secrets to Ebook Publishing Success, I refer to these tweakable levers as Viral Catalysts. A Viral Catalyst is anything that makes a book more available, more accessible, more discoverable, more desirable and more enjoyable to readers.

The survey attempts to identify Viral Catalysts by analyzing the common characteristics of bestselling (and poor-selling) Smashwords ebooks.

We posed a series of questions to our data to reveal answers that might help authors reach more readers.

The questions included:

    Do frequent price changes help authors sell more books?

    Do longer or shorter book titles sell more books?

    Do longer or shorter book descriptions sell more books?

    How do sales develop over time at a retailer, and what factors might spark a breakout?

    Do longer or shorter books sell better?

    What's the average word count for the 60 bestselling Smashwords romance books?

    What does the sales distribution curve look like, and how many books sell well?

    How many words are the bestselling authors selling for a penny?

    What are the most common price points for indie ebooks, and what changed since last year?

    How many more downloads do FREE ebooks get compared to priced ebooks?

    How have Smashwords sales grown at the Apple iBookstore in three years?

    How does price impact unit sales volume?

    What price points yield the greatest overall earnings for authors and publishers?

    What does the Yield Graph portend for the future of publishing?

One-Day Deals Making E-Books Brief Best Sellers

By

JULIE BOSMAN



One Sunday this month, the crime thriller “Gone, Baby, Gone,” by Dennis Lehane, sold 23 e-book copies, a typically tiny number for a book that was originally published in 1998 but has faded into obscurity.

“Gone, Baby, Gone” had been designated as a Kindle Daily Deal on Amazon, and hundreds of thousands of readers had received an e-mail notifying them of a 24-hour price cut, to $1.99 from $6.99. The instant bargain lit a fire under a dormant title.

Flash sales like that one have taken hold in the book business, a concept popularized by the designer fashion site Gilt.com. Consumers accustomed to snapping up instant deals for items like vintage glassware on One Kings Lane or baby clothes on Zulily are now buying books the same way — and helping older books soar from the backlist to the best-seller list.

“It’s the Groupon of books,” said Dominique Raccah, the publisher of Sourcebooks. “For the consumer, it’s new, it’s interesting. It’s a deal and there isn’t much risk. And it works.”

Finding a book used to mean scouring the shelves at a bookstore, asking a bookseller for guidance or relying on recommendations from friends.

But bookstores are dwindling, leaving publishers with a deep worry about the future of the business: with fewer brick-and-mortar options, how will readers discover books?

One-day discounts are part of the answer. Promotions like the Kindle Daily Deal from Amazon and the Nook Daily Find from Barnes & Noble have produced extraordinary sales bumps for e-books, the kind that usually happen as a result of glowing book reviews or an author’s prominent television appearances.

Web sites like BookBub.com, founded last year, track and aggregate bargain-basement deals on e-books, alerting consumers about temporary discounts from retailers like Amazon, Apple, Kobo and Barnes & Noble.

“It makes it almost irresistible,” said Liz Perl, Simon & Schuster’s senior vice president for marketing. “We’re lowering the bar for you to sample somebody new.”

E-books are especially ripe for price experimentation. Without the list price stamped on the flap like their print counterparts, e-books have freed publishers to mix up prices and change them frequently. Some newly released e-books cost $14.99, others $9.99 and still others $1.99.

Consumers are flocking to flash sales, said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon’s vice president for Kindle content, because the deals whittle down the vast number of choices for reading and other forms of entertainment.

“In a world of abundance and lots of choice, how do we help people cut through?” Mr. Grandinetti said. “People are looking for ways to offer their authors a megaphone, and we’re looking to build more megaphones.”

Mr. Grandinetti said one book, “1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die,” was selling, on average, less than one e-book a day on Amazon. After it was listed as a Kindle Daily Deal last year, it sold 10,000 copies in less than 24 hours.

Some titles have tripled that number: on a single day in December, nearly 30,000 people snapped up digital copies of “Under the Dome,” by Stephen King, a novel originally published in 2009 by Scribner. For publishers and authors, having a book chosen by a retailer as a daily deal can be like winning the lottery, an instant windfall of sales and exposure.

In February, a crime novel by the little-known author Lorena McCourtney, released by the Christian publishing imprint Revell, was selected as a Nook Daily Find. The sales from that promotion alone were enough to propel it onto The New York Times best-seller list.

At HarperCollins, executives said they have seen books designated as daily deals go from 11 copies sold in one day, to 11,000 copies the next.

Not all of them take off, though. One publisher said some books fizzle out quickly, attracting only several hundred downloads in a day. Another publisher said he is hesitant to discount that steeply, fearing that consumers will eventually resist paying more than a few dollars for a book.

But part of the allure of flash sales is what can happen afterward: a ripple effect that increases sales on an author’s other work.

If one book in a series is offered in a one-day promotion, readers who liked it will often buy others in the series.

“We’ve found that one of the key opportunities with it is the halo effect,” said David Steinberger, the chief executive of Perseus Books Group. “It’s hard for it to be highly successful economically at these very low prices, even if the volume goes up for a single day. But if you create awareness for the book, it can make a lot of sense for the author.”

The book that is discounted often sells at a higher level after the daily deal than it did before, even though it has returned to the regular price.

“Food Inc.,” the companion book to the documentary film, sold hundreds of copies each month before a one-day promotion on Amazon. On the day of the promotion, it sold thousands of copies; afterward, the book sold steadily at twice the level before the promotion, Mr. Steinberger said.

Tim Lavalli, a writer in Berkeley, Calif., said he reads at least two books a week, receiving almost all his recommendations from BookBub or Ereader News Today, another daily-deal aggregator.

It takes little time — and hardly any money — to download e-books when they are on sale, Mr. Lavalli said, making it easier to give up on a book if it does not keep his interest.

“You can read the first few chapters and say, this guy can’t write,” he said. “Then you throw it away.”

Jim Hilt, the vice president for e-books at Barnes & Noble’s Nook unit, said sales generally peak on Wednesday and Thursday, when customers start planning for the weekend and thinking about which books they are going to read.

“Those are really good days to get the right piece of content in front of someone,” he said.

Ms. McCourtney, based in southern Oregon, said she was shocked to learn from her publisher in February that her most recent book, “Dying to Read,” was a best seller.

Ms. McCourtney, who has published 42 novels, said it was a career first.

“I had never made The New York Times best-seller list before, so I was delighted,” she said. “It certainly felt good.”
 

Guest Post Cosa Nostra News' Q and A with Hit Man Ray Ferritto's Wife Susan

Raymond W. Ferritto (1929 − May 10, 2004), an Italian American mobster from Erie, Pennsylvania, is best known for the 1977 murder of Irish mob boss Danny Greene.

In the 1970s, Danny Greene began competing with the Cleveland crime family for control of union rackets, resulting in a violent mob war. During this period, there were almost 40 car bombings in Cleveland and eight failed attempts to kill Greene. Finally, Cleveland family bosses Jack "Jack White" Licavoli and Angelo "Big Ange" Lonardo contracted Ferritto to assassinate Greene.

Upon hearing of Ferritto’s arrest for the hit, Licavoli put out a hit contract on Ferritto. When Ferritto learned that the Cleveland family wanted him dead, he became a government witness and testified against his co-defendants in the 1978 trial.

Ferritto served less than four years in prison for both murders. Ray Ferritto left the Witness Protection Program after one year and continued to stay in Pennsylvania.

There is much more to the story: What's past is prologue. He met Susan around this time, the two fell in love and married. Susan wrote a book about Ray -- "Ferritto: An Assassin Scorned" -- and answered some questions for us, below:

1.) Ray is known as the man who killed “The Irishman” then turned informant---that is true. But not many people know why. What was his motive?

Ray was well known as a highly respected underworld figure and member of La Cosa Nostra since the forties. His focus was to someday become boss of his own territory. Over the years, he had proven himself as a loyal soldier and was regarded as a mobster who could get things done, no matter what the job was. During 1976, Cleveland mob wars raged on killing several high profile gangsters and over thirty separate bombings had put the city in a tailspin. In eight separate failed attempts, different Cleveland hit men tried to kill Irish mobster Danny Greene who was stepping on their turf. The bosses were getting desperate and turned to Ray for help.
A COSA NOSTRA NEWS EXCLUSIVE


So when the Cleveland bosses offered Ray a leadership position and his own territory in return for killing their enemy…the Irishman…he jumped at the opportunity. However, the bosses were secretly plotting Ray’s demise once he got that job done, all for the sake of keeping their territory. They intentionally set him up to take the fall on Danny Greene’s bombing death. But it would take the Feds to convince Ray that he too was on their hit list. He felt he had done the Cleveland bosses the biggest favor of their lives when no one else could, and now they wanted him dead.

Ray was looking at murder charges along with the death penalty. So it was a choice of who was going to kill him…the State of Ohio or the Cleveland mobsters. At that point, he was a man with nothing to lose. In essence, his associates had betrayed him at the highest level and this was his revenge.


2.) He singlehandedly brought down Licavoli and his outfit?

 
Well, he did the unthinkable and initiated one of the most notorious takedowns for the feds in mob history. He waged his own public battle by turning states evidence to destroy those who had ordered his death. Unfortunately, his method of revenge took on a life of its own when the bosses started turning against each other to save their own skins. “If the mob knew what they did when they killed Danny Greene or what they were going to start (when they betrayed Ray) they never would have done it,” said Pete Elliott, retired United States Marshall.


3.) Ray amazingly started his own family when he got out. How did he pull that off?

Well, after the trials, he refused the witness protection program and against the Feds advice, Ray returned home and picked up where he left off with prior business associates. He felt he could better protect himself on his own turf. He knew that he was just as capable of handling himself and the persons they would send in to kill him. Ray was a man of no fear and warned others to stay out of his way. Doing the unthinkable only seemed to earn him more respect from past associates when he hit the streets. Erie was wide open then. The older mobsters that were still hanging on to their territories now moved over for Ray and pretty much gave him some reign. He built it back up from there. Prior business ties and a multimillion dollar sports betting operation was his salvation. One thing you don’t do to the mob is cut the hand that feeds them, and Ray had been their moneymaker for years.


4.) Can you describe the night you met Ray?

We met at Orlando’s funeral Parlor in Erie. Ray had only been home a few months from his three year ordeal with the Danny Greene bombings when he found his business partner Bolo Dovishaw dead in the basement of his home. Bolo had been killed gangland style. Several days later, Ray and longtime friend and associate Cy Ciotti were at the funeral parlor when I walked in to pay my last respects to my old friend “Bolo”. Cy made the introductions and it was love at first site. I knew right then that Ray was going to be a big part of my life. Ray asked me if I would have dinner with him when this mess was over with. Jokingly, I said, “Sure kid, I can wait another two years till the feds clean this one up!” I left him with my phone number written in ink on his wrist. He phoned the following day and said, “I don’t think I can wait till the feds clean this one up…can I come over for coffee?” We were together ever since.


5.) What kind of man was he? How would you describe him to those who only saw the movie, TO KILL THE IRISHMAN?

 Ray was a remarkable man and one of many faces. He was always respected by his associates in the criminal world and was equally respected by the real world. He was a man of his word and knew where his boundaries were. His laid back, quiet, polite reserved mannerisms and demeanor made him a likable charming character. And, oddly enough, when in the company of his business associates he was a hard and temperamental dangerous killer, skilled safecracker, loan shark and knew how to organize business for the mob. I can’t dismiss his human side as well. He was a grandfather, a father, a brother, an uncle, a husband who was a caring compassionate, loyal and loving individual when in our presence.

The actor Robert Davi who portrayed Ray in the movie, definitely captured his demeanor and the business side of Ray as well as. But the well documented story focused on the life and death of Danny Greene and left the audience with …what ever happened to his killer…Ferritto?

All they could say about Ray at the end of the movie was that he just got too big for his own pants. Really??? The audience had no idea that the murder of Greene was only the real start of the downfall of the Cleveland regime. And it angered me that Ray was labeled “A Turncoat” in the eyes of the public. The reality was that when you kill the legend, you become the legand.


6.) What made you write the book? And, what does it mean to you?


I felt the need to defend his memory and to give his side of this story. I cannot condone these actions but I wanted to give him some justification. After all…Ray is the only mob assassin to my knowledge that escaped the death penalty and execution by the mob for turning states evidence. Sure, he wasn’t the first or the last for that matter of those who did turn government witness. He is however, the only mobster who went on to become a boss. That in itself is the remarkable story and unheard of in the criminal world. Others that became informants are either incarcerated, dead or hiding in the witness protection program. The need to defend his memory far outweighed my silence. And in this I found the closure that I was so desperately seeking after his passing.


7.) Do you keep in touch with mafia ties?

Yes, I do. Contrary to the belief that when a mobster dies, all his family relationships are severed as well…or shunned as they say. My case has been different. Several have reached out to me over the years and I will respect their privacy at this time.

I will take the liberty of mentioning one in particular as I can relate to his emotional journey back in time. Attorney Dennis Walsh, son of Robert Walsh (Ex-cop turned gangster and longtime associate of Ray’s) recently wrote his own book, recounting some of his father’s war stories and most importantly the quest for justice in his own brother’s murder. The name of his book is “Nobody Walks.”

Those who can't create, calculate ... ? [via David Angsten]

Solving Equation of a Hit Film Script, With Data


By

BROOKS BARNES




Vinny Bruzzese, chief executive of Worldwide Motion Picture Group, and Miriam Brin, head of script analysis.








LOS ANGELES — Forget zombies. The data crunchers are invading Hollywood.

The same kind of numbers analysis that has reshaped areas like politics and online marketing is increasingly being used by the entertainment industry.

Netflix tells customers what to rent based on algorithms that analyze previous selections, Pandora does the same with music, and studios have started using Facebook “likes” and online trailer views to mold advertising and even films.

Now, the slicing and dicing is seeping into one of the last corners of Hollywood where creativity and old-fashioned instinct still hold sway: the screenplay.

A chain-smoking former statistics professor named Vinny Bruzzese — “the reigning mad scientist of Hollywood,” in the words of one studio customer — has started to aggressively pitch a service he calls script evaluation. For as much as $20,000 per script, Mr. Bruzzese and a team of analysts compare the story structure and genre of a draft script with those of released movies, looking for clues to box-office success. His company, Worldwide Motion Picture Group, also digs into an extensive database of focus group results for similar films and surveys 1,500 potential moviegoers. What do you like? What should be changed?

“Demons in horror movies can target people or be summoned,” Mr. Bruzzese said in a gravelly voice, by way of example. “If it’s a targeting demon, you are likely to have much higher opening-weekend sales than if it’s summoned. So get rid of that Ouija Board scene.”

Bowling scenes tend to pop up in films that fizzle, Mr. Bruzzese, 39, continued. Therefore it is statistically unwise to include one in your script. “A cursed superhero never sells as well as a guardian superhero,” one like Superman who acts as a protector, he added.

His recommendations, delivered in a 20- to 30-page report, might range from minor tightening to substantial rewrites: more people would relate to this character if she had a sympathetic sidekick, for instance.

Script “doctors,” as Hollywood refers to writing consultants, have long worked quietly on movie assembly lines. But many top screenwriters — the kind who attain exalted status in the industry, even if they remain largely unknown to the multiplex masses — reject Mr. Bruzzese’s statistical intrusion into their craft.

“This is my worst nightmare” said Ol Parker, a writer whose film credits include “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.” “It’s the enemy of creativity, nothing more than an attempt to mimic that which has worked before. It can only result in an increasingly bland homogenization, a pell-mell rush for the middle of the road.”

Mr. Parker drew a breath. “Look, I’d take a suggestion from my grandmother if I thought it would improve a film I was writing,” he said. “But this feels like the studio would listen to my grandmother before me, and that is terrifying.”

But a lot of producers, studio executives and major film financiers disagree. Already they have quietly hired Mr. Bruzzese’s company to analyze about 100 scripts, including an early treatment for “Oz the Great and Powerful,” which has taken in $484.8 million worldwide.

Mr. Bruzzese (pronounced brew-ZEZ-ee), who is one of a very few if not the only entrepreneur to use this form of script analysis, is plotting to take it to Broadway and television now that he has traction in movies.

“It takes a lot of the risk out of what I do,” said Scott Steindorff, a producer who used Mr. Bruzzese to evaluate the script for “The Lincoln Lawyer,” a hit 2011 crime drama. “Everyone is going to be doing this soon.” Mr. Steindorff added, “The only people who are resistant are the writers: ‘I’m making art, I can’t possibly do this.’ ” 



 Audience research has been known to save a movie, but it has also famously missed the mark. Opinion surveys — “idiot cards,” as some unimpressed directors call them — indicated that “Fight Club” would be the flop of the century. It took in more than $100 million worldwide.

... “All screenwriters think their babies are beautiful,” he said, taking a chug of Diet Dr Pepper followed by a gulp of Diet Coke and a drag on a Camel. “I’m here to tell it like it is: Some babies are ugly.” 



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