Nimble Books LLC » GLOBALISTAN

February Letter to Nimble Authors

wfz-admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 01:59:25 +0000

Dear Authors,

I have decided to do a better job of keeping all of you informed about what’s new at Nimble, because I have observed that there is something of a tendency for authors to feel that you are “inside a bubble” that is wrapped tightly around author and book, when, from my perspective, you are all tightly connected to a thriving enterprise that is doing a lot of interesting (and related) things at a fast tempo. This “inside Nimble” info may or may not be of any great practical significance to you, but I hope that it will at least be energizing and thought-provoking. February has been a busy month.

On a strictly procedural note, a few days into February (slightly after the official due date, sorry!) I sent out Form 1099-MISC for all of you who are US taxpayers and received income from Nimble Books in 2008. I used http://www.paycycle.com, which did a great job for this small business at $39 for the whole project. …

Late in January, I cranked out the second volume of Joe Hind’s ten-volume THE SHIP KILLERS: THE DEFINITIVE ILLUSTRATED HISTORY OF THE TORPEDO BOAT. The cover image of the first Confederate torpedo boat, the CSS David, wraps around the spine in a pretty cool way. The series has been picked up by the online bookstore at the Weider History Group’s HistoryNet.com, which has 2,500,000 unique visitors a month and growing. Now it’s on to volume three–Joe and I are chugging out a volume a month until we’re done!

The first four AGE OF OBAMA books finally made it all the way onto online bookstores, and they should be showing up on Amazon Search Inside the Book and Google Book Search sometime next month.

THREATS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA landed on INSTAPUNDIT on the 17th! http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/70038/.
Mark Curtis’s MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 2008 (as I like to think of it, being a longtime fan of Theodore H. White ) is selling extremely well.
Nancy Snow’s PERSUADER-IN-CHIEF has been picked up by the management school at Syracuse University.
OBAMA DOES GLOBALISTAN has a great cover, thanks to Pepe Escobar’s wife, Cecilia, and we are just about to begin the big publicity push for it.

Tom Myer and I redesigned the cover of his FROM GEEK TO PEAK, a terrific book about your first 365 days as a technical consultant–very pertinent in the current climate! You can seethe redesigned cover here. The old cover (still up on Amazon — it takes a while for these changes to percolate through the system) got too many complaints about being a travel guide to Michigan! I will be the first to admit that I am not the world’s greatest cover artist, although I have my moments. I am generally open to helpful ideas, although it usually doesn’t work well when authors want to do everything themselves, as there are both technical and substantive reasons why I need to be hands-on, so that I can get the persnickety details right and so that I can maintain some common look and feel over all Nimble titles.

Pete Jones and I changed the trim size and re-launched his We Tried to Warn You: Innovations in leadership for the learning organization, his insightful monograph on what it actually takes to succeed at developing innovative products inside a large organization. (Hint: socialization). Pete is a PhD expert in user interaction and product design, and he will be editing a series for Nimble called Designing Organizations that Matter. I became interested in interaction design when I managed the “HF” (human factors) group at LexisNexis, and I continue to believe strongly in the value of the people who fill that role and provide their skills to the product development process. (I like to use Nimble to “put my money where my mouth is”, as I did with my very first book, BASIC DOCUMENTS ABOUT THE TREATMENT OF DETAINEES AT ABU GHRAIB AND GUANTANAMO, which was motivated by my outrage and anger at the stupidity and wrongness of those unfolding scandals.)

I am always looking for books on technology and business because I enjoy the topics and think that the “best of breed” in those genres can be very valuable indeed, although, to be perfectly honest, I have not yet cracked the code of how to identify the books on those topics that will be strong sellers in the Nimble business model.

In February I also added some excellent new titles to the list of forthcoming books (some of these are at handshake stage)

Dark Navy: the Regia Marina and the Armistice of 8 September 1943 by Vincent O’Hara (author of The German Fleet at War, 1939 – 1945) and Enrico Cernuschi
Secrets of the Modern World: F.W. Maitland and Yukichi Fukuzawa by Alan Macfarlane, professor in the Department of Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, author of more than twenty books and one of the great social anthropologists of our era.
Eclipses of the Sun by Jay Pasachoff, Field Memorial Professor of Astronomy at Williams College
The Cold War Saga by veteran diplomat Kempton Jenkins and
The Ultimate Guide to Harry Potter Fandom by Erin A. Pyne

Coming in March:

The Definitive Illustrated History of the Torpedo Boat, Volume III: 1900 – 1939; minor fix to Volume II
Panzerschiffe Deutschland (Lutzow) by Antonio Bonomi (Kriegsmarine Ship Histories)
The Call of Nepal, by famed jungle warfare expert and Asian linguist J. P. Cross, with a foreword by James Fallows.

I hope this finds you all well, and please don’t hesitate to drop me a note if you have any ideas or questions.

Best regards,

OBAMA DOES GLOBALISTAN by Pepe Escobar is out

wfz-admin — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:45:06 +0000

The fourth Age of Obama book, Pepe Escobar’s OBAMA DOES GLOBALISTAN , is finally up with full cover color on Amazon and at the AGE OF OBAMA store.

Pepe is a gifted author who provides a coherent, provocative take on international politics that is radically different from standard American political discourse. That alone would make it well worth publishing him, but beyond that he is an enormously cultivated man, a true globe-trotter who speaks several languages and has a dazzling “kaleidoscopic” writing style that really captures the vibrancy, diversity, and (if I may) insanity of the 21st C.

If you want an idea of what Pepe’s all about, take a look at his first Nimble Book, GLOBALISTAN, which was a tour de force that met with extremely positive reviews, or at “:the best of Pepe Escobar” on Asia Times.

Call for “Nimble” Books on Themes in THE AGE OF OBAMA

wfz-admin — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 15:55:39 +0000

Beginning January 20, 2009 Nimble Books began releasing a series of “Nimble” books about THE AGE OF OBAMA.

Released so far:

AGE OF OBAMA: A REPORTER’S JOURNEY WITH CLINTON, MCCAIN AND OBAMA IN THE MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 2008 by Mark Curtis of MarkCurtisMedia.com
THREATS IN THE AGE OF OBAMA edited by Michael Tanji of Threatswatch.org and with contributions from Daniel H. Abbott, Chris Albon, Matt Armstrong, Matthew Burton, Molly Cernicek, Christopher Corpora, Shane Deichman, Adam Elkus, Matt Devost, Bob Gourley, Art Hutchinson, Samuel Liles, Tom Karako, Carolyn Leddy, Adrian Martin, Gunnar Petersen, Cheryl Rofer, Mark Safranski, Steve Schippert, Tim Stevens, and Shlok Vaidya
PERSUADER-IN-CHIEF: GLOBAL OPINION AND PUBLIC DIPLOMACY IN THE AGE OF OBAMA by Dr. Nancy Snow of Syracuse University
OBAMA DOES GLOBALISTAN (Pepe Escobar, Asia Times and Real News Network)

The open invitation for proposals remains open. The specs are:

8000-100,000 words (32 – 240 pages)
Some repurposed material ok
Edited collections ok
Any political viewpoint ok
Illustrations OK, either B&W or color
Nimble Books standard contract.

Pepe’s Picks Widget

wfz-admin — Mon, 19 May 2008 19:12:35 +0000

Books recommended by Pepe Escobar

VENTUS now a free CC downloadable!

wfz-admin — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 22:16:16 +0000

Karl Schroeder’s Ventus now a free CC download – Boing Boing

Award-winning sf writer Karl Schroeder has just released his debut novel, Ventus under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs license, meaning that you can download it, share it and copy it as much as you like.

Excellent. What this book in particular needs, I think, is some annotation around the pages … collaborative world-building.

Earlier this year, Nimble Books author Pepe Escobar released his GLOBALISTAN with a CC license.

RED ZONE BLUES is up on Amazon!

wfz-admin — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 16:36:12 +0000

Amazon.com: Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge: Books: Pepe Escobar,Jason Florio

Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Paperback)
by Pepe Escobar (Author)

RED ZONE BLUES is up on Amazon! Order now …

Juan Cole on Pepe Escobar

wfz-admin — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 00:50:42 +0000

Informed Comment

Pepe Escobar in the Asia Times demolishes the ‘al-Anbar myth’ being promoted on the American Right. He does so on the basis of an actual interview with the late Sattar Abu Rishah, on the basis of a close analysis of tribal alliances in al-Anbar, and on the basis of recent opinion polling that shows 92 percent of Sunni Arabs support attacks on US troops and 98 percent despise the al-Maliki government. The tragedy is that Escobar is right about everything he says, but that virtually no one in the Washington power or journalism elite will probably ever read his important piece. Some nonentity who wouldn’t know the Dulaim from the Jubour will declaim some nonsense at NRO, and that will be what the Repub staffers on the Hill believe, having fed the nonentity the warped info in the first place.

Pepe’s new book, RED ZONE BLUES, will be available from Amazon and other online booksellers this week.

RED ZONE BLUES by Pepe Escobar

wfz-admin — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 19:35:55 +0000

The cover is ready!

Detail page here.

RED ZONE BLUES by Pepe Escobar

wfz-admin — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 19:13:33 +0000

Coming soon from Nimble Books LLC: RED ZONE BLUES: A SNAPSHOT OF THE SURGE IN BAGHDAD by Pepe Escobar, a correspondent for Asia Times.

You have successfully purchased GLOBALISTAN by Pepe Escobar.

wfz-admin — Mon, 21 May 2007 19:20:24 +0000