University press paperback gross sales were up
29.4% from November 2004 to $26.5 million,
while gross sales of hardcovers fell 17.5% and
gross sales of professional book fell 5.3%.

So much for the hardcover book …

The Reincarnation of Abraham Lincoln
About fifty years ago a great master of yoga, Paramhansa Yogananda, declared that Abraham Lincoln had been a Himalayan yogi in a past life, and that he was reborn as the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh. But what do the histories show? Is there anything in the lives of these two men that validates Yogananda’s statement?

No.

Next!

THE SOLOMON KEY AND BEYOND went live on Google Book Search. Impressions were close to what I had projected using the Google Adwords Traffic Estimator, but clickthroughs were disappointingly low. The reason seems to be that GBS is serving up only weakly relevant ads on detail pages. A message to GBS support seemed to produce a slight improvement in algorithm performance.

The HYPOCHONDRIAC’S GUIDE series went live on Amazon. Sales were surprisingly strong considering that we are in “stealth” marketing mode.

The pub date for UNAUTHORIZED A FEAST FOR CROWS ANALYSIS has slipped to March 30.

Successfully migrated the website from Blogger at wfzimmerman.com to WordPress at nimblebooks.com.

Plans for February:

• Complete UNAUTHORIZED A FEAST FOR CROWS ANALYSIS.
• Complete two more HYPOCHONDRIAC’S GUIDES.
• Update Amazon.com metadata for all titles.

Visit Military Gallery at:
http://www.defencetalk.com/pictures/

DefenceTalk.com Military gallery features over 4200 Military categories and sub-categories organized in such a way that make finding the pictures very easy. It has become internet’s largest categorized Military gallery to upload and share your pictures with users around the globe.

I love stuff like this.

According to Lavrov, Russian intelligence estimates that Iran is now capable of detonating this non-weaponized nuclear device - or in other words carrying out its first nuclear test.

DEBKAfile sources add: This estimate which Russian president Vladimir Putin passed to President George Bush some weeks ago is challenged by US and Israeli nuclear experts, who do not believe Iran is up to the stage of a nuclear device. However, on Jan. 21, the opposition FDI claimed Iran would carry out its first nuclear test before the Iranian new year, which falls on March 20.

Let’s see what happens.

Last year, he showed the working principles of the system to French president Jacques Chirac during a visit to a Russian military facility. Live Russian television coverage of the Putin press conference was cut off before the last sentence.

DEBKAfile’s military sources add: For many years, Russian missile experts have been working on a hypersonic ballistic surface missile able to change its flight path and potentially outwit any anti-missile system in the United States and the West. However American and other Western experts strongly doubt if the Russian system has attained operational capability. Aside from last year’s test launch of a prototype, no further tests have been reported and they doubt the Russians have financial resources for bringing the system to completion.

“We’ve added more balance and created some intrigue,” says Bob Abramms, ODT’s founder and product development director. “The map image itself is unchanged,” Abramms explains, “but everything around the image has been brought forward into the 21st century.”

“The balance is in a broader perspective that is offered — the intrigue is in the variety of additional images,” says Ann Hopkins, ODT’s Sales Director.

The original Peters Map, introduced in 1974 by Arno Peters, put forth a world-view that featured accurate sizes and proportions of countries. Peters’ accompanying text declared his “equal area” map projection to be “the map for our time” which was “fair to all peoples.” He compared it to what he noted were the biases and distortions of the traditional Mercator projection map. Some critics found Peters’ words to be too self-aggrandizing. …

What’s new about the 2006 version of the Peters Map? There are dramatic changes in the supplemental text including informative panels that present other perspectives, and other maps that explain, rather than demonize the traditional Mercator Map. The new thumbnail images of other equal area maps at the bottom of the Peters Map include the Waterman Butterfly and the Hobo-Dyer Projection. A range of perspectives is also emphasized, such as the familiar images of Goode’s Homolosine and the Winkel Tripel compromise projection. Len Guelke’s startling Chicago-centered Azimuthal equal area projection is also included. The 2006 edition of the Peters Map also includes a web references list, brighter colors, and upgraded paper stock.

Worth sharing.

Amazon.com–News Release
With Amazon Connect, a customer is automatically presented with author posts directly on that customer’s Amazon.com home page. To ensure that author posts are relevant, the posts are shown only to customers who have purchased that author’s work in the past, or to those who explicitly sign up to receive that author’s posts. The posts are prominently displayed in standard blog format (reverse chronological order).

“We invite authors to communicate with their readers in a way that hasn’t before been possible,” said Jeff Bezos, Amazon.com’s founder and CEO. “Amazon Connect brings the author’s message to the reader instead of waiting for the reader to find the message.”

“Amazon Connect creates a relationship with my readers that didn’t exist before,” said author James Patterson. “Communicating directly with my readers about anything I want, whenever I want, is extremely powerful.”

More than 1,000 authors are enrolled in the program to date, including Marcus Buckingham, Michael Covel, Robert Crais, Nelson DeMille, Anita Diamant, Frank Gallinelli, Caroline Myss, Karen Katz, Elizabeth Kostova, John Lithgow, Elizabeth Pantley, James Patterson, Jodi Picoult, Ann Rule, Karma Wilson and Meg Wolitzer. Authors can post as often as they like, and their posts will appear to Amazon.com customers immediately.

The net effect of this should be positively reinforcing for authors with big audiences … the rich get richer! A great idea.

And now for this month’s big news.

Those of you who have been with us from the beginning will know how much I love the work of Lawrence Block. It wasn’t an accident that we chose one of his books, GRIFTER’S GAME, to kick off our series, or that we chose another — THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART — to follow Stephen King’s THE COLORADO KID. Over the past half century, Block has consistently produced some of the very best crime novels being written, and like many of Block’s readers, my only complaint is that I’ve read everything he’s written and crave more.

Well.

Way back in 1964, the year before Block wrote THE GIRL WITH THE LONG GREEN HEART, he wrote another novel about a crook and the dangerous woman he falls for — only he didn’t publish this novel under his own name, he published it under the pseudonym “Sheldon Lord.” The book has been unavailable for nearly 40 years and has never been published under Block’s real name. It’s a terrific book — and no matter how big a Lawrence Block fan you are, there’s practically no chance you’ve read it. The book’s title is LUCKY AT CARDS, and it’s one you’re not going to want to miss.

Amen.