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Comment by DamnInteresting | Hacker News Reader

I am an author, and years ago I was invited to participate in an event at a bookstore where local authors were gathered to meet their fans and autograph books. Toward the end of the book signing, a fellow came to my table and said some very kind things about my work. He asked me to sign a copy of my book for him, and I obliged, asking "who should I make it out to?"

Turns out that fellow was Brandon Sanderson, by far the most famous and successful author participating in the event. It was around the time he published his first Wheel of Time book. Everyone around me knew who he was and they were all starstruck, and horrified that I was so oblivious. I felt silly for failing to recognize him, but he was totally cool about it. He was gracious and kind, and very supportive of this small-time author. In spite of his success, he was so down-to-Earth that his advice is probably worth heeding.

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This is incredible. I've been dying to go to an event and meet him and I'm hoping with Covid potentially winding down I'll get a chance soon.

P.S. what is your book's title? I'd love to check it out!

I am deliberately evasive about the book title because I do not wish to engage in obnoxious self-promotion. But if you are sufficiently curious, my username is a huge clue that should lead you to the title if you do some minimal Googling.

Disclaimer: The book was a bit of a fiasco, our website was an established property with an established audience, and the publisher insisted on taking the book design in a direction contrary to our values. I can recommend the content of the book, but its design makes me cringe to this very day.

And Brandon Sanderson, if you are reading this, thanks for being such a class act!

edit: If you really want a copy of the physical book, follow the breadcrumbs to get my email address,and I can mail you a free copy. I have a box full of them.

It's not that bad! It's not what you'd expect, though, if you were looking for continuity with the digital side of things.

Going to add your site to my list of top quality sources, thank you for the site!

Thank you for the kind words! The reason I found the cover so objectionable is because our project has always been very careful to cover subjects accurately, and without hyperbole or embellishment. Then they make our book look like a tabloid newspaper, the polar opposite of "very careful to cover subjects accurately, and without hyperbole or embellishment."

I will promote for you!

I’ve enjoyed coming across your website many times

https://www.damninteresting.com/the-damn-interesting-book/

Just wanted to chime in that I love your website and love binge reading articles from it every few months.. Thanks for all the work you've done on it!

I never actually read the book mostly because I tend to read ebooks and it doesn't seem to be available as one? Kind of curious about the exclusive content though.

Thanks! Yes, unfortunately the physical book was never released as an e-book. It was released around the time e-books were first becoming viable, and a few months after it was published the publisher proposed we release it as an e-book. But the new contract was very far-reaching, and would have granted the publisher half of all proceeds of any "electronic distribution" of the book's content. When I asked them to revise the contract to exempt the preexisting website from this condition, they lost interest.

Sigh, that publisher really seemed tone deaf between the cover and this... Is there still exclusive content in the book that never was published on the site?

Yes, though it is not a huge quantity of content. If memory serves, there were four writings made exclusively for the book.

The publisher really was a pain in the ass. In addition to what I already mentioned, they insisted that I be listed as the book's author, despite the fact that I only wrote about half of the content. I argued for the author credit to be "The [name of the website] Editors", but they ignored my input, claiming that books sell better when a single person is named as the primary author. In so doing they drove a wedge between me and my fellow authors.

Just a suggestion you can ignore, I don't like having to sign-in/up to facebook to see the alternate cover designs.

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