Join the “B” Team
Posted on July 20, 2012 Posted by John Scalzi 35 Comments
If you were at Comic Con, one of the things you could do is get a groovy button from to the Tor Books booth promoting The Human Division. These buttons has one of two URLs on it: JoinTheBTeam.us and PickYourSide.us. And if you typed either of those URLs into your computer or phone, you would go here, a page at which you could, by leaving your e-mail address, get a free e-Book version of “After the Coup,” my Old Man’s War-related short story, and be signed up to get the first episode of The Human Division, called “The ‘B’ Team,” a week before the common schmoes.
And you say, oh! If only I had been at Comic Con! But here’s the thing: I’m telling you about it right now. So you can sign up for it, even if you did not go to Comic Con! Because that’s the sort of caring, awesome person I am. And because I think you’re the best. No, I do. Also that you smell really nice. Is that a hint of floral? I thought so.
Thank you, John!
John,
You have become the banner ad for Amazon’s all things science fiction. Just got a promo email from them, for a book named Shadow Show, entitled: New and Similar to “Redshirts: A Novel with Three Codas”
Done.
And they seem to have an error on the name of your website: The Whatever. I thought it was just “Whatever”. I have no clue if that is the type of nit-pick you appreciate/need.
2nd nit: our phones are computers these days.
Why does 1980 show up twice in the dropdown… my birth year must have lots of people in it to have to show up twice :)
Questions on the sign up form: “Postal Code” = Complete Address? and Birthdate is MM/YYYY? I assume it is but wanted to check. Thanks!
Thank you John! I just finished reading “After the Coup”, and REALLY enjoyed it! I can’t wait for the new stories…keep up the good work! (and I will keep buying!)
I was very pleased to see the “Yes, please send me e-mail updates” ticky-box unchecked by default. (I checked it, anyhow.) Very classy on the part of Macmillan!
Robert Kazmiercak @11:42 am: “Postal code” means ZIP code if you live in the U.S.
Yesss! I love this story, thank you for sharing!
“Also that you smell really nice” politely references the Fan mantra: “In each 24 hours at Comic-Con, pick any two out of three: sleep, shower, eat. Note that eating does not replace showering.”
Going to get them all at once in “old school” book format, very excited. Thoroughly enjoyed RedShirts.
I just signed up. So we get the first episode for free? It’s good to see the publishing industry taking marketing lessons from crack dealers. Not that I’m complaining, of course.
Reblogged this on C W Reynolds and commented:
If you are already familiar with the Old Man’s War universe of John Scalzi, this is quite a treat. If you are not already familiar with it, this is an excellent opportunity to be introduced to it.
Thank you!
And thanks for the tip… better wash up before I get near my wife or it’ll be THAT conversation all over again…
Apparently they won’t let you sign up unless you check the newsletter box. I left it unchecked and when I submitted the form, I got the following error:
“Atleast one Newsletter/Author Alert should be selected.”
FYI – “After the Coup” is available in the LinkedIn reading list feature. Gotta love this marketing-via-social-media!
I also signed up w/ MacMillan. Looking forward to The ‘B’ Team !!
I guess the check-box for email spam is the thing that let them send us the b-team instalment in the first place. Also, the postal code seems to be numerical only. Being in Canada, it wouldn’t accept mine. I guess I’m glad it wasn’t required!
Done and done.
I use After the Coup as an entry point for readers into the Old Man’s War universe. Hook them with that, push them to your books, viola.
Thanks for letting us know! I just signed up.
Yeah, you might want to note in the OP that you have to check that box, otherwise a lot of us who never check boxes by default will have to do it twice :)
Downloaded and ready to load onto my Nook. Thanks!!
Okay. I love the OMW stories. And you write great hand-to-hand combat scenes. But typos drive me nuts. For decades I’ve had to suck it up and move on because authors were generally inaccessible communications-wise. But now there’s the internet. And while I do not want to become the sort of obnoxious pedant who offers unwanted advice, these are bugging me. So, in After the Coup (which was a great read over breakfast this morning), there are two definite typos and one possible typo:
Should probably read: The point was he said that your willingness to follow orders even when winning was in your grasp showed that you could make
ashort-term sacrifices for long-term goals.That a is crossed-out in case it’s hard to discern.
Should probably read: She also says that she never wants to see you again.
This one is iffier, but should perhaps read: But I like the idea that I
hadchoreographed having the crap kicked out of me down to that level of detail. Makes me feel like a genius, it does.The pluperfect had isn’t technically ungrammatical, but it does make it sound like Harry is referring to someone doing the choreographing for him, which doesn’t quite jive with his feeling of genius.
Sorry if I’m being a pain in the arse, but I find at least a few typos, and sometimes many more, in every friggin’ book I read, and it yanks me right out of the story.
Thanks for setting this up and letting all of us non=con-goers in on the goodness!
Re: Gulliver – I think that last sentence is correct. If Harry was referring to someone else doing the choreographing, it would be “But I like the idea that I had having the crap kicked out of me choreographed down to that level of detail.” Like “I had my hair cut,” or “I had my shirts washed.” As is, it’s just referring to a point earlier in the narrative timeline.
I sympathize greatly with your plight, though. Typos scream at me, too…
A generous offer, however, I will wait for the complete, hard-covered dead-tree version.
I signed up and got the email telling me to download “After the Coup” and it did so into Google Docs. But what program should I use to open it? I don’t have a Nook, Kindle, or other e-reader. It doesn’t open in plain old Docs format for me.
Gulliver @4:14 — Thank you for doing what I always want to do. Typos and “skippos” drive me absolutely batshit, and as you say, they yank me right out of the story too. Makes me wanna be a freelance copy editor, it does, except I don’t know where to start asking.
@Birian at 2:00pm: I thought the lion’s share of John’s musical interest and time were claimed by his ukelele and tenor guitar. When did John start playing the viola?
@ Chris Gladis
Taking another look separate from the story, I think you’re right. What threw me was that in character dialogue I normally would write that as: But I like the idea that I’d choreographed having the crap kicked out of me down to that level of detail. Like I said, I was iffy on that one and mostly included it because I was covering the clear typos and figured John would know what he intended to say. Suffice it to say that Strunk & White and a freshman composition class in the 90’s do not an expert make of me and I should’ve left that one off :-/
Just so I don’t come off as trying to claim the QWERTY high ground, I commit plenty of my own typos and am fully aware that it’s easier to see them in the writing of others than in one’s own text where one sees what one expects to see. And I’ll wager that copy-editors sift through way more words than I do at ~ two books a week. When you’re scanning text instead of reading story, you simply won’t catch as much.
I suspect some authors appreciate extra eyes and some would prefer not to be bugged about such errata, and certainly either is a respectable stance given that they’re their creations. I hope I wasn’t too presumptuous in this instance.
@Linkmeister 4:40 – You can get free PC/Mac readers from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo. Or if you like something totally opensource and crossplatform, you can use Calibre ( http://calibre-ebook.com ) which has a built-in reader.
Actually, I completed everything. Unfortunately it still came up with the “you have failed” screen, but at least I got my ‘After the Coup’ which was awesome, so thank you!
why thank you, kind author person.
Mr. Saus @ 3:02am, Thanks! I downloaded and installed Calibre and have added Mr. Scalzi’s book to the list of two e-books (the other is the Calibre user guide) I have. And I can read it!
Just read “After the Coup” and smiled all the way through it. It reminded me of the best of Laumer’s Retief stories. Very entertaining!
As someone who doesn’t go to Comic-Con, thanks, John! I’m still torn between buying as I go, or waiting for the collected edition. (Yeah, I know…I could buy both!)
In the “not your fault/problem department”: whoever designed that web page was too smart for their own good, making the postal code field of type “number”…so my browser helpfully gives me a little increment/decrement control and shows a comma between the first two and last three digits. ;-)
Thanks John! I’m very excited – more than one piece of Scalzi fiction in a year – I’m doin’ the Happy Dance!
John, I’m talking up your fiction to everyone I meet now that I have moved to Florida, in the hopes you might get to come here during your next book tour. Sometimes they get you confused with WWSB, Channel 7 Sarasota’s weatherman, but I correct the misunderstanding. (is the weatherman a relative? forecasting the weather does have a bit of a story-telling quality to it…)
Thanks! (Not exactly a thread enriching comment, but heartfelt.)