Early Reviews-n-Stuff

 

Monday kicks off the “Mother of All Weeks” in the narrow world of my book, Year Zero.  Tuesday is my publication date, and Monday is … well, the day before my publication date.

I’m expecting at least two major reviews to hit next week – but a couple of early ones are already popping up on the book blogs.  This one, from Justin at Staffer’s Book Review is smart and detailed, and includes some fun ruminations about the early days of Napster.  I’m also a bit partial to it because he describes Year Zero as “the funniest piece of fiction I’ve ever read.”  Whoa – thank you, Justin!

Another very thoughtful and detailed review has just been posted to the Minneapolis music and culture blog, Perfect Porridge.  I met its author (Greg) right after I gave a talk at the South By Southwest Interactive conference in March.  His blog post includes some slides from my talk, and a detailed write-up of Year Zero.

There are also (literally) dozens of other reviews – some of them brief, some quite detailed – at the GoodReads site.  Why so many reviews for a book that has yet to be published?  It turns out that GoodReads has a VERY cool early access program for its members.  Join their site, and you can enter giveaways for pre-release copies of books.  In exchange, they ask that you rate and review the books that you get, so that other members can get an early feel for the upcoming releases.  Random House gave GoodReads a few dozen early copies of Year Zero, and the fruits of that (38 reviews as I write this!) are now up on the site.

Finally, it’s not a review, but Rick Goetz over at Musician Coaching just published part one of a long interview with me (part two is coming out next Tuesday).  It’s quite wide-ranging – including topics like why it’s so important for creative folks (like musicians – and authors) to build direct relationships with their audiences these days.

That’s it for now – more to come next week …!