DiPinto Belvedere Deluxe with retro good looks to keep your inner Rockabilly Rebel happy!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Adorned with lashings of mother of toiletseat, this DiPinto Belvedere Deluxe guitar is highly reminiscent of the weird and wonderful guitars produced in Europe during the 1960s Beat Boom.

Despite its retro looks, it's a modern guitar with modern appointments and playability. The semi-hollow body - beneath all that bling - is of mahogany, whilst the bolt-on maple neck has an ebony fingerboard with star inlays and white binding.

Pickups are a pair of "vintage twang" mini-humbuckers, while a Tune-o-matic bridge and Bigsby vibrato complete the picture.

This guitar is currently being offered for sale on eBay UK with a Buy It Now price of £375.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Yamaha SG-12 - the holy grail of offset waist guitars, perhaps?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's another guitar photo plucked from the comments on this blog. The Yamaha SG-2 and SG-3 guitars from 1966-67 are known to be extremely hard to find - not many having made it outside of Japan in this first place - but they are nothing to this, the virtually unknown Yamaha SG-12, the 12-string version of the SG-3.

This example was owned by Guitarz reader "Peer", who said:

I had a 12 string version of the SG-3 once... waaay ubercool! I miss it... it even made me forget how much I hate 12s.

I've only seen one of these before pictured in the hands of Eduardo "Gato" Alquinta, singer/guitarist of Chilean folk/rock band Los Jaivas, who actually had his strung as a 6-string.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Interview with Scott Doornbosch

I first met Scott Doornbosch in 2003.

I was at the Magna Cum Murder conference in Muncie, Indiana, waiting for the elevator with my buddy Robert W. Walker, ready to head up to my room for some Jack Daniels because the hotel bar was too expensive. Scott was standing there in the lobby, looking out of place, so I asked him if he wanted to join us for a shot of whiskey. He agreed, and has been following me from writing convention to writing convention ever since.

Whenever I ran into Scott, I hounded him to finish the book he was working on. I did this for eight years.

I'm happy to say that Scott's first novel, Basic Black, is now live for Kindle and Nook at $2.99, and in print via Createspace for $13.95.

Joe: Let's get the maudlin stuff out of the way first. You were recently diagnosed with Stage 4 melanoma. What's the prognosis?

Scott: I started chemo in February but in April they told me it wasn't working. I just started a new treatment that was just approved by the FDA. My doctor has high hopes for this new drug. If anyone else out there is dealing with this same issue and needs to talk, they can always e-mail me at scottdoornbosch(at)aol.com

Joe: Where did you come up with the idea for this book?

Scott: This was actually supposed to be the third in the series, but after completing the first two I went with this one for the first book. I don't really know why for sure. I guess I just liked this story line the best for the debut novel.

Joe: How long did it take you to write Basic Black?

Scott: This book took 5 years to write and it's all your fault. After meeting you and partying at the conventions I let the writing slip. I was having so much fun and meeting so many wonderful people and so many personal obligations got in the way that I let the writing fall by the wayside. About a year ago I couldn't justify spending the money to keep going to all these conventions just to party. I decided it was time to either do it or give the whole thing up. At that point I really only had about 20,000 words. In less than two months I had added another 60,000 and was finished.

Joe: What is your feeling about self-publishing?

Scott: I am thrilled about self-publishing. I know many people might not consider me a real writer for going this route, but I'm very excited about the whole project. I had never given it much thought in the past, but after attending the last writing convention I thought about it more seriously and decided it was the way to go. Mainly because the publishers that were represented at the convention weren't for me. Not one of them were giving advances for the books, some of them weren't even interested in putting up a version on Kindle and there were so many other restrictions and limitations put on the writer that I didn't even bother to pitch my book to any of them at that convention. Then the more I heard about this route the more I was convinced. You of course were one of the first to convince me, but I also found many other authors I know doing the same thing now. I was amazed when I found out how many of them were turning down huge advances to publish their next books themselves.

Joe: Are you working on a sequel?

Scott: There is a sequel in the works called BLACK TIE AND TALES, but it still has a long way to go. Even though it was one of the first ones I wrote, I joined a writers group and found out that I had a lot to learn. So I am in the process of re-working it. That brings me to a bit of advice which was not part of the question but I feel I have to say it. Newbie writers have all heard this, but you really need to find a writers group. You will be amazed to find out how much you don't know. And yes, you need a writers group even though your mother told you your book is wonderful. If it wasn't for joining a writing group, BASIC BLACK would never have been in any shape to be published. Joe, you of all people know how bad that first draft was, and I thank you for not destroying my ego after reading it.

Joe sez: In the interest of full disclosure, I have a personal interest in this situation. When I heard about Scott's cancer, I knew there was a potential time issue involved. Holding your first book in your hands is one of the true joys of being a writer, but if Scott had pursued the legacy route, he might not have had that opportunity. Since he's getting creamed with medical bills, and had no knowledge of how to self-publish, I covered the cost of this and did everything for him, hiring a proof reader, formatter, cover artist, and layout artist. I did this without Scott asking me to, and he makes all the money from it.

I'm not admitting this to show the world what a generous guy I am. Scott simply needed someone to step-up and help.

You can help, too, by buying his book. Kindle and Nook for $2.99. Print for $13.95 via Amazon. Feel free to spread the word.

Scott's a dear friend, and not doing so well. Please keep the comments upbeat.

Attack of the Self-Publishing Memes! - A Guest Post by Barry Eisler

Barry Eisler has posted a number of smart comments on this topic here and on a few other blogs, too, and I asked him if he'd mind pulling them together in a single post. It was either that or another online conversation, and since we can't seem to do those in under 10,000 words and both have books to finish, this seemed the better bet.

Here's Barry:

Thanks, Joe, for the opportunity to pull together some of my thinking on literary agents helping authors self-publish. I see two primary false memes that have emerged in response to agents offering their clients new services. These are: (i) such agents are now publishers; and (ii) the new model creates a conflict of interest with the old. Let me address these in turn.

1. Are agents who assist their self-published clients now really publishers?

The problem here is that many people are conflating two business models: those in which literary agencies are trying to acquire rights in authors' works, as publishers always have; and those that acquire no rights, and instead simply facilitate their clients' self-publishing efforts.

We're still in the early days of digital publishing, and it's natural that there's some confusion about what makes a "publisher." Most of what people associate with a publisher -- editing, marketing, distribution -- are the artifacts, not the essence. The essence of publishing is control of rights.

For the reasons Joe and I discussed in Part 3 of our online conversation Be The Monkey, Amazon's Thomas & Mercer is no legacy publisher. But there's no question that T&M is, in fact, a publisher, because the company is buying the rights to the books it sells. By contrast, no matter who she chooses to hire to assist her in getting her works to readers, an author who retains rights to her works is self-published. And the company she hires to help her is not a publisher.

There's been some silliness along the lines of, "But if the agent uploads your book, she has to have rights to it, and if she has rights to it, she is a publisher, QED!" As David Gaughran has ably pointed out, if this is true, then Smashwords is a publisher. They're not: they're a distributor with a limited right to upload and to collect and distribute the author's earnings. They acquire no rights to a book beyond these and an author can pull his book from Smashwords at any time. For that matter, Amazon and B&N acquire certain rights in the books they distribute, too. So far, I haven't heard anyone make the claim that by ceding those rights, self-published authors have turned Amazon and B&N into their publishers.

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/major-us-agency-moves-into-publishing-or-do-they/

As the copyright holder, an author can transfer all sorts of rights. It's important to keep them straight in one's mind, and to remember that rights to upload files and to collect money, especially when revocable at the author's discretion, are not the same as publishing rights. For more, see Joe's post on J.K. Rowling's decision to self-publish her ebooks (and the comments to that post).

(Joe sez: Also, we can rightly assume that Amazon has worked with literary agents in various deals. A lit agent could upload ebooks to Amazon for a writer without the writer relinquishing rights.)

2. Are agents who assist their self-published clients faced with a conflict of interest?

Let's start with a definition. According to Wikipedia, "A conflict of interest occurs when an individual or organization is involved in multiple interests, one of which could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_of_interest

It's hard to see how this applies to an agent who in neither the legacy nor the self-published model acquires rights, and who in both instances earns the same percentage. As long as the agent makes the same 15% whether brokering a sale to a legacy publisher or assisting the author publish the work herself, the agent is incentivized to recommend the route that looks most likely to make the author the most money. So no multiple interests, or at least no more so than has been the case with traditional agenting. Or, to get back to the precise definition of the term, no "multiple interests" in the additional model, nor any way in which one aspect of the business "could possibly corrupt the motivation for an act in the other."

Full disclosure, so that people can judge for themselves whether I have my own conflict here: Laura Rennert of the Andrea Brown Literary Agency, which is also assisting its clients who want to self-publish with a 15%, no-rights-acquisition model, is my wife.

Here's a thought experiment I hope will lead to some more clarity on this issue. Imagine you're an author, and you have offers of representation from two literary agencies that are identical in all respects save one: one will assist its clients in reaching readers only by attempting to sell its clients' works to legacy publishers; the other will assist its clients in reaching readers by attempting to sell its clients' works to legacy publishers *and* will also help clients self-publish their works if their clients so desire.

Which offer do you accept?

Unless you're sure that: (i) you will never self-publish anything; or (ii) that even if you do, you will handle it all yourself, I think it's pretty clear that you'd go with the agency that offered you the more complete set of services.

Or, to put it another way: which of the two hypothetical agencies I describe above would a writer want for representation as legacy publishing contracts? The one that says, "Sorry, we can't sell your manuscript because there are so few buyers?" Or the one that says, "We can't sell your manuscript because there are so few buyers, but we can help you another way?"

I have a hard time imagining agents nefariously trying to steer their clients to a new model whereby the agent's percentage is the same, but where there is no advance, where the agent has to invest significant additional time and her own money, and where there is no certainty of a return on the investment except perhaps in the very long term. So if anything, I think people might argue that agents who offer both models might be tempted to steer their clients toward a traditional deal because it represents a relatively quick and easy payday. But would this be a conflict of interest? An interesting question, because it ignores the fact that this is what agents have always done simply by default. Still, self-published authors, beware! Your agents might be trying to steer you toward legacy deals.

Actually, I'd go even further (and for this point I'm indebted to Livia Blackburne, who shared this thought at Writer Beware). The real conflict of interest arises when an agent with a single, legacy model has to advise a client who is considering self-publishing. Where do writers think they're likely to get the most disinterested advice: from an agent who can only make money if she sells the writer's manuscript to a legacy publisher and who stands to make nothing if the writer self-publishes it? Or from an agent that stands to make 15% either way?

http://tinyurl.com/3dmckyq

So upon further consideration, I do think that today there is a potential conflict of interest in agenting. It exists among those agencies who can only make money by directing their clients toward legacy deals.

Part of the basis for the conflict of interest misunderstanding is a misunderstanding about the nature of the agent's role. As Victoria Strauss has argued at Writer Beware, "[T]he author-agent relationship... is founded on the premise that the agent's job is to sell the client's work for the best possible advance to the best possible publisher."

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2011/06/agencies-becoming-publishers-trend-and.html

I would argue that this is defining the author/agent relationship premise too narrowly. Most fundamentally, the purpose -- the end -- of the agent is to help authors get their books to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success. The means by which this end has traditionally been achieved is a sale to a legacy publisher. Because the "sale to a publisher" route has until quite recently been the only means to the "getting the book to the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" end, it's easy to conflate the two. But just as railroads were not in the railroad business, but rather were in the transportation business, agents are not in the "selling to publishers" business, but rather are in the "helping their authors reach the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success" business. Agents who miss this fundamental distinction are making the same mistake the railroad companies made, and will achieve similar results.

The saddest thing about these false memes is that they distract from the real and important questions writers need to grapple with: exactly what are agencies going to provide in their new models, and will those services be worth 15%? Whether 15% is worth it is something authors and agencies will have to decide for themselves (I think David Gaughran is asking excellent questions in this regard, and Joe and I talk about it much more in Be The Monkey). But whether a service is worth providing or worth retaining at a given price is a question for the market to decide. It has nothing to do with conflicts of interest, or with the inherent value of agencies finding news ways to assist their clients reach the greatest number of readers and achieve the greatest possible commercial and literary success.

http://davidgaughran.wordpress.com/2011/06/28/major-us-agency-moves-into-publishing-or-do-they/

There's more to say, but I gotta get back to The Detachment (out September 15, BTW ;) ). But just one last observation. It strikes me that the "If you hire someone to help you run your business, you're no longer self-publishing" meme is the mirror image of the "If you don't go with a legacy publisher, you're uploading unedited schlock" meme. Each is driven less by thought and evidence than by ideology and a weird form of narcissism. Which might be a common reaction in all revolutions, not just in the one we're witnessing in publishing.

http://tinyurl.com/3vntzj6

Joe sez: As I said in the comments of my last blog post on this topic, it's good to be skeptical. But it's also good to keep an open mind until all the facts come it. In other words, don't knock it until you (or someone you trust) has tried it.

I'm trying it. My agent will manage one of my self-pubbed properties. I'll report on how it goes, good or bad.

Until then, let's try to reserve judgement. Anything else is specious.

Kettle Creek guitar by Ethan Harris

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's something a little bit different from the usual Strat, Tele and Les Paul derivatives. It's a Kettle Creek guitar by (retired?) luthier Ethan Harris of Kansas. The guitar features some stunning quality timbers without the finish being too OTT, has a bolt-on neck and currently sports a pair of Tom Anderson humbuckers.

Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a But It Now price of $850.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Mutant doubleneck Strat with additional shortscale bass neck somehow shoehorned into place

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I think I said it all in the title. More or less. I'd give this DIY doubleneck guitar and bass customization top marks for resourcefulness and inventiveness but zero marks for elegance and design. And I can't imagine that bass neck is going to sound too great with an ultra-shortscale length which is less than the Squier Strat neck that its been grafted next to.

Thanks to Greg Cadman for alerting me to this monstrosity via our Facebook page.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1983 San Dimas-era Charvel Star

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's a San Dimas-era Charvel Star circa 1982-83, possibly one of only 150 examples made around that time. This guitar beautifully marries together the Gibson-inspired body with the bolt-on Fender-like neck.

Currently being offered for sale on eBay with a Buy It Now price of $1,625.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1967 Eko Kadett bass and more...

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Following Bertram's blog post yesterday about the Eko Kadett guitar, there were some great comments that I felt should be given more prominence on the blog. Jozef Porazen tells us that:

I have bass version of Kadett - made in '67. Honestly, as far as bass goes, the body is horrible. Neck dives like mad, body is too small, that body 'horn' goes right under your right hand and it hurts :-P

The neck is pencil-like, strings are floppy, due to short-scale, but overall its nice little funky bass nonetheless :) I did change the bridge, coz original was broken and the tuners (put in some small schaller ones, just like the guitar-ones, but for bass). Here's the pic [see above], bad one, I used phone.

So, it seems that sometimes these vintage quirkily-designed guitars come at a price other than the purely financial; that is to say that if you want to play one you have to compromise and/or upgrade components to make them practical usable instruments.

Ryan Waldron also commented about Eko guitars:

From album covers and pictures, I've noticed that EKO guitars seemed to be omnipresent in West Africa in the late sixities and early seventies - they must have been heavily distributed there. Here's a great clip of an orchestra in Mauritania rocking a three Eko line-up:

Thanks for that, Ryan. It's a great clip indeed!

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Estributors Redux

About 18 months ago, I was looking at the rapidly evolving ebook climate, and realized the need for a new type of service for authors. A facilitator who could be a buffer between the author and the business end of self-publishing.

I called this position an estributor.

The more I began to self-publish, the more I realized what a time suck it was to take care of all the non-writing parts of the job. When you go indie, you essentially become a small business, and take on all the responsibilities for running that business. That cuts into writing time. Doing quick and dirty assessment of my time management and my productivity, I concluded that I could make more money if I gave an estributor 15% to take care of the business side for me, because my increased writing output would more than make up for that cost. Plus, I'd be happier, because I'd much rather write for a living than run a business.

So it pleased me to learn that my agents, Dystel & Goderich, have begun to assume this position. Here's their latest blog entry:

Word gets around the publishing industry pretty quickly (which is not surprising since we’re in the communications business). So, we wanted you to hear our news from us first rather than pick it up through inaccurate scuttlebutt in seedy back rooms on the web.

As those of you who’ve been reading this blog for the last few years know, we have been following developments in e-publishing with great interest. As an agency that has prided itself on being a bit of a maverick among the stodgy old guard, we have always been more intrigued than scared about this new world of e-books. The consensus among us, even after listening to the doomsayers, has been that e-publishing will re-energize our business and create more readers. That’s right, instead of bemoaning the death of publishing as we know it, DGLMers have always felt that e-books and electronic media offer a tremendous opportunity to expand our reach and that of our authors.

That said, we have been very clear all along that we are literary agents. We are proud of the job we do, the services we provide, and the help we’ve given to countless authors over the years in fulfilling their dreams of publishing their work. We are also more cognizant than most of the superb work traditional publishers have done and continue to do in producing beautiful, lasting, quality books.

Over the past months and years we’ve come to the realization that e-publishing is yet another area in which we can be of service to our clients as literary agents. From authors who want to have their work available once the physical edition has gone out of print and the rights have reverted, to those whose books we believe in and feel passionately about but couldn’t sell—oftentimes, after approaching 20 or more houses—we realized that part of our job as agents in this new publishing milieu is to facilitate these works being made available as e-books and through POD and other editions.

Right now, you’re thinking, oh, DGLM is going to be another of those agencies that has decided to become an e-publisher and charge clients whose books they can’t sell 50% of their income for the privilege of uploading their work. Some of you may be mumbling, “Uh…that’s a conflict of interest.” We get it and we understand how that can be the perception. However, we have no intention of becoming e-publishers. As we said above, we have too much respect for the work that publishers do and too much respect for the work we ourselves do to muddy the waters in such a way.

Again, what we are going to do is to facilitate e-publishing for those of our clients who decide that they want to go this route, after consultation and strategizing about whether they should try traditional publishing first or perhaps simply set aside the current book and move on to the next. We will charge a 15% commission for our services in helping them project manage everything from choosing a cover artist to working with a copyeditor to uploading their work. We will continue to negotiate all agreements that may ensue as a result of e-publishing, try to place subsidiary rights where applicable, collect monies and review statements to make sure the author is being paid. In short, we will continue to be agents and do the myriad things that agents do.

Our intention is to keep on trying to find books we think we can sell to traditional publishing houses, to negotiate the best deal (always), and to give our authors as many options as we can. Because we will continue to be commission-based, we will not be automatically pushing authors into e-publishing. Again, we want to give our authors options and empower them to do what they set out to do all along: have their work read by the largest possible audience.

We are excited about this new part of our business and hope you will be as well. We welcome your thoughts, comments, and concerns.

Joe sez: I'm going to be working with my agents on my upcoming novel, Timecaster Supersymmetry. My goal is to finish the book, then let someone else handle all the heavy lifting.

Some people think it's a bad idea to give away any percentage of income, and that paying a flat fee is smarter. Perhaps. But my hope is that working with D&G will provide me with ongoing support, rather than a one-time service. If I were to pay a fulltime employee for ongoing support, I don't see any difference between that and paying an estributor a royalty percentage. In both cases, I'm paying for a lifelong service. And, as I'd already established, if this allows me to write more, it will be worth the money to me.

Naturally, I'll keep my blog readers posted on how this arrangement is working out. I also invited D&G to visit this blog and answer any questions anyone might have.

1975 Eko Kadett - one of the finest Italian guitar design

guitarz.blogspot.com

I know I've shown an Eko Kadett before, but I can't resist to show again this one, for it is one of my favorite guitars ever. The square horns and pointy top are so strong and sexy, without pointless extravaganza! No wonder that weak souls favored the vapid stratocaster, this is just too much for them, this guitar had to die...

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Gretsch Model 7264 solidbody from 1979

guitarz.blogspot.com:

I can find out almost nothing about this 1979 Gretsch Model 7264 solidbody resplendent in transparent red finish. It has a bolt-on neck, and the eBay seller tells us that the build date is Jan 5, 1979.

It does look remarkably similar to the Gretsch TK-300 that we looked at in 2008; in fact from the photos alone I can't detect any differences. I'm wondering perhaps if I'd somehow come up with the wrong designation for that one. Are there any Gretsch enthusiasts out there who can enlighten us further?

Anyway, it's a beautiful guitar, and is currently listed on eBay with a starting price of $999 with no bids as I write this and only a day and a half to go before the auction finishes.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Dean ML Matt Heafy (from Trivium) Signature with Rising Sun Japanese War Flag Finish (I so love long titles)

guitarz.blogspot.com

Something I still quite don't get about electric guitars - though I've been interested in the topic for the last three decades - is that their design is supposed to determine the kind of music that should be played on them... The idea that a musical genre depends from the sound of specific gear - pickups, amp, effects - is already bizarre to me, since reproducing a sound and a style that already exist feels of limited interest if you're a spirited musician, but when it comes to looks, we are in the blur domain of utter stupidity...

Take for example this Dean ML with its Rising Sun finish: all the reviews I read about it say that its clean sound is quite good, that its neck is extremely playable and its special design makes it both well balanced and good-sounding, making it a perfect guitar for blues. Well, it's no surprise, since it's more or less a combination of Gibson's classic models, the Flying V and the Explorer, both designed in the 1950s and meant for bluesmen. And those humbucker pickups have been on jazz guitars for over half a century, so it's for sure a perfect instrument to play Hoochie Coochie Man - or Boys Don't Cry if you feel like it. 

The fact that this ML is the (short lived) signature model of the guitarist of some metal band called Trivium that I never heard about due to my general indifference to metal music (but a few bands like Suicidal Tendancies, Napalm Death, Burzum, Meshuggah or Sunn o))), but I'm not so sure of what should be called metal or not, and should Motörhead be included?) is of little importance, but this guy being half-Japanese kind of justifies the cool Rising Sun finish.

Yeah, I say again that the Rising Sun looks cool on a guitar, even if last time I said this there's been a slight controversy about it. For me, it's a beautiful design, very Japanese, sober, eloquent, and it's really part of European punk culture - I guess I love it since I saw it on a Clash cover in the late 70s, don't remember which one, not even sure BTW. I personally find it less disputable than the Confederate Battle Flag that ornates other signature models of the ML, and it is still in use in Japan for example for the fishermen union, and on the front page of some newspaper - nothing like the Svastika that is drastically forbidden in Germany (I'd probably think different if I was Chinese or Korean of course).  

Bertram

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Interview with Catherine MacDonald from BookRooster.com

Reviews are important. Customers often look at the average star rating, and the number of reviews a book has, before buying. But getting reviews isn't easy. For my last several ebook releases, I gave away free copies to fans in exchange for reviews, but this is time-consuming and labor intensive.

Now there's an easier, quicker solution to getting reviews that doesn't require having thousands of fans or begging friends and family.

BookRooster.com is a community of over 2,200 passionate readers/reviewers drawn from BookLending.com and other Kindle reader communities. We organize the distribution of review copies of your novel (in MOBI format for Kindle) to reviewers in exchange for their objective Amazon customer review.

I became aware of them about two weeks ago, and gave the service a try for my ebook Flee. So far Flee has accrued over twenty new reviews in the last few days, and has climbed considerably in the Top Rated rankings for Police Procedurals and Romantic Suspense.

The service costs $49, making it an affordable solution for authors who would like to have more reviews. If you read some of the reviews of Flee, you'll see they're honest and mostly well-written, and many of the reviewers hadn't ever read my work before, and have said they'll go on to read more of it. So BookRooster doesn't just offer reviews, it also can potentially widen an author's fanbase.

I asked the founder, Catherine MacDonald, a few questions about BookRooster, and she graciously responded.

Joe: Where did you come up with the idea for BookRooster?

Catherine: As the founder of Kindle lending community BookLending.com, I have had the chance to talk to authors and readers and to learn about the Kindle publishing ecosystem. Some informative blogs and articles (your blog, of course, is at the top of my list) brought me up-to-date with the upheaval is happening in publishing.

Then, as a reader starting to read books by indie authors for the first time, I began to realize how many fantastic books are not getting the readers they deserve. It seems that customer reviews are key to ensuring that books get discovered by other readers.

While authors sometimes struggle to find readers, there are huge numbers of passionate readers looking to discover new books -- over 26,000 of them on BookLending.com alone! I had seen authors use various approaches to find reader-reviewers and it just made sense to draw on the enthusiastic community of readers we have to create an easier way for authors to get their books to prospective Amazon customer reviewers.

Joe: Do you believe reviews help sell books?

Catherine: I think good books sell books, but sometimes good books don't get the attention they should, and that's where reviews come in. As a book buyer, I rely on reader reviews, and so I think that it's important for a book to have enough objective reviews so that readers are able to decide whether or not they are likely to enjoy it.

Joe: Can anyone join and review books?

Catherine: Any reader with an Amazon account can submit her name, email address and preferred genres. Depending on demand, she'll begin receiving invitations to review books within a few weeks.

Joe: How long is the wait for authors who would like to use this service?

Catherine: Right now, we're booking review copy distribution beginning the third week in July. Many authors book their spots in advance; we can be flexible about dates as the release date approaches and authors can forward specifics about the book, as well as the file itself, as they become available.

Joe: Is there any policy for dealing with reviewers who reveal spoilers, or are flat-out abusive?

Catherine: Our reviewer guidelines mirror Amazon's customer review guidelines. We read all the reviews written by BookRooster.com reviewers and it's safe to say that if a reviewer breaches Amazon's guidelines by revealing spoilers without warning or posting a dishonest review, he or she would not receive review copies through BookRooster.com in the future.

Joe: Besides Amazon, do you encourage reviewers to post elsewhere, such as Goodreaders, Smashwords, or B&N?

Catherine: Not at this time, but it's a definite possibility in the future.

Joe: As you accrue more reviewers, do you anticipate BookRooster raising its prices?

Catherine: We launched with an introductory price of $49 because we appreciate that this is a new and untested service and we wanted to give our "early adopter" authors an extra good deal to thank them for jumping in with us. Given the amount of work that goes into administering the service, we will likely be raising the price by $10 to $20 sometime soon so that we have some breathing room to develop new features and hire administrative help.

Joe sez: Considering how obsessive some authors are about reviews, and how essential it has become to have reviews, this is $49 well spent. But keep in mind that neither BookRooster nor its reviewers promise to leave glowing praise. If they don't like your book, they'll say so.

Also, I believe this service is different than something like Kirkus Reviews of the new PW Select, where gullible authors pay lots of money for a single review in those journals. As I stated earlier, I always give out free copies in exchange for reviews. That's the same thing legacy publishers do, giving away galley copies. BookRooster just makes it easier.

Recommended.

Jolana Iris bass - faux thinline Tele bass from 1970s Czechoslovakia

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's another Czechoslovakian-made Jolana, the Jolana Iris bass, a short-scale bass styled roughly after the Fender Telecaster Thinline (of which there never was a bass version). However, this is not a true thinline as the photos reveal; at the angles shown you can see that the "chamber" beneath the f-hole is barely larger than the shape of the hole itself. It's all about aesthetics and the hole gives a good place to locate the Jolana logo.

This example looks to have been well used and isn't in as good condition as the Jolana Iris guitar we looked at before. Still, it'll appeal to those who like "relics".

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Your Second Storefront

I just had a long conversation with Barry Eisler (no, we're not writing this one down) and one of the things we touched upon was what makes a bestseller a bestseller.

I've argued that brands, name recognition, and fanbases aren't as important as we'd like to think they are. In short, the authors who are famous bestsellers right now might not be famous bestsellers in the near future. Rather than repeat the reasons why, you can read the argument here.

In the legacy world, the more books you had in print, the more you'd sell, because you took up a lot of shelf space (both in a single store, and in thousands of stores.)

But in a digital world, every ebook has one slot on the shelf. You can increase shelf space by having many ebooks, but there are only a handful of stores (Amazon, BN, Smashwords, iBookstores, Sony, Kobo, etc) rather than the thousands of bookstores and thousands of other stores that sell books.

This is a much more even playing field. And while I disagree that name authors lowering their ebook prices will hurt my sales much (at low prices, people buy more), I do recognize the importance of standing out among the millions of other titles.

It is easier to make a sale in a digital world, but there it is still a multi-tiered process.

1. A reader must discover that your book exists.

2. A reader must be compelled to look at it.

3. A reader makes a decision to buy it.

4. A reader makes a decision to read it, and then possibly buy your other titles.

The first point requires some heavy lifting on the part of the author, building buzz, networking, trying to get some awareness. But the author has some help. Amazon is leading the pack in making it easy to discover ebooks. Their bestseller lists (which have been supplemented with their new best rated lists) and the "customers who also bought" make it easier than ever to find things to buy.

Once a reader realizes a book exists, the author has to make a good impression. A great cover, great blurb, and professional formatting are all subtle indicators that this is a quality product.

Believe it or not, the size of the author's name on the cover can subconsciously signal that the author is important. But there are other indicators, too.

Star rating, and the number of reviews (along with what is said in the reviews) can help sell books. Here's an interview I did with BookRooster.com, which I recently used to some success, and which helps authors get reviews.

But once the ebook is bought (or the sample is downloaded) there is yet another hurdle to overcome. Just because the book is on a customer's ereader doesn't mean it has been read.

In fact, everyone with an ereader has a choice of where to get content. They can go to Amazon (or whatever store they shop at) and look for new ebooks. Or they can peruse the content they've already downloaded, either as a sample or as a full book.

This has some disadvantages, however. Unlike a print to-be-read pile, where a reader can look at what they bought, it isn't easy to read back jacket copy on an ebook.

This means that some ebooks or samples that have been downloaded get forgotten, and it is a minor hassle to figure out what the book is about.

If you own an ereader, no doubt you've looked through the dozens (hundreds?) of titles on your device and probably forgotten why you downloaded some of them.

Here's the easy fix. Instead of beginning an ebook with the copyright page (that should come at the very end--no one cares about reading that) your ebook should start with the same description that is on the product page. That will jog a reader's memory, and make it easy for them to decide whether or not to read that ebook or sample.

That simple trick (which I stole from Blake Crouch) will improve your chances at being read. Then, once you are read, there are some other tricks to use.

First, make sure you have a clickable bibliography, which allows readers to directly access your other content. But this bibliography should be more than just titles. It should also include the product description of the ebooks (if not for all, then for at least a few of them).

You can also have excerpts from your ebooks, and other writers' ebooks. Again with links.

In other words, you've turned a customer's ereader into your second storefront. They can still find you by browsing online, but as more people buy more and more ebooks, more and more browsing will be within the ereader.

Make it easy for these readers to read you and buy you.

Höfner 173 and Höfner 173 II

guitarz.blogspot.com

Today we'll offer you not one but two vintage German guitars, two versions of the same model: the Höfner 173. On top is the Höfner 173 II - released in 1964, on bottom is the Höfner 173, one year younger. They are very similar - you'll notice the famous leatherette cream finish - and differ mostly by the bridges and tremtails, both very lovable (you remember my soft spot for these good old German trems!) 

Bertram (yes I'm back!)


© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Halo Guitars "The Reaper"

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Whoah! Do you think the guy cutting out the body shape had shaky hands when he did this one?

Joking aside, it's a Halo Reaper guitar with solid mahogany body, flamed maple veneer, transparent green finish, Halo humbuckers, and Floyd Rose Special trem, and it's currently listed on eBay with a very reasonable Buy It Now price of $299.

I've had Halo Guitars as a friend on my MySpace page for years now (not that I use MySpace any more... Why did they have to spoil it by trying to imitate Facebook?) and whilst they produce a number of exciting designs suited to the metal player, they also turn out the occasional beauty that others of us can appreciate too. Long-term Guitarz readers may recall that I blogged about the Halo Violon back in 2007.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Floyd Rose Redmond Series USA Speedloader

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This one is especially for Guitarz reader Matt-D6. The Floyd Rose Speedloader is a Strat-type guitar and would seem pretty unremarkable if you didn't notice the headstock. This isn't a headless guitar as such, but the headstock is present purely for balance and aesthetical reasons. So, the $64,000 question is, how do you tune it? Well, you need special Speedloader strings to start with. These are made to the correct gauge and length for this guitar, so you just drop them in to the retaining slots, tighten and they are more or less in tune rightaway, save for a little fine tuning which can be achieved down at the bridge as is normal for a Floyd Rose trem. At least, that's my understanding of how the system works. It makes a lot of sense, but the idea never really caught on.

I'm not sure how easy the Speedloader strings are to come by, but this seller on eBay is including five sets along with the guitar which could last you a while, depending of course on how long a set of strings lasts you! This guitar is currently available on eBay for the Buy It Now price of $1,000.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

JK Rowling Will Self-Pub Harry Potter Ebooks

Yes, you read correctly.

According to Wired.co.uk, the billionaire author is forsaking her print publishers and releasing her novels on her own.

Whoa.

A few years ago, I was critical of Rowling's decision not to release ebooks of the Potter series. Piracy became the only way to get her ebooks, and those bootleg copies thrived. I wouldn't be surprised if she was the most pirated author ever, simply because fans had no other choice if they wanted to read her on their ereaders. That means she missed out on a lot of money.

Looks like she found a way to get that money back.

Naturally, I think she's brilliant for making this self-pubbing move. She'll be the first superstar to do so, and others will no doubt follow suit.

This comes on the heels of Amazon's Thomas & Mercer imprint acquiring the rights to more than forty titles in Ed McBain's backlist. McBain died in 2005, and has sold more than 100 million books. I love the 87th Precinct novels, and they were one of the main reasons I chose to write police procedurals. It will be great to see them in ebook form, and in print once again, even if the Seattle Mystery Bookshop won't carry them.

They also won't carry Barry Eisler, who turned down half a million dollars from St. Martins in order to self-pub. (For those with Kindles, our entire three-part 35,000 word conversation is now nicely formatted and available for 99 cents. Ditto Nook, and free on Smashwords.)

And, of course, let's not forget that John Locke is the first indie author to sell a million ebooks.

Borders recently got a one month extension to find a buyer before they're forced to liquidate.

Barnes and Noble is hanging in there, and sales are up 20% over last year. But this is mostly due to increased BN.com sales, many of which were ebooks.

So what does all of this mean?

More than a year ago I predicted that ebooks won't destroy the Big 6 because readers will abandon print (even though they're doing just that--ebook sales up 157% in March, print books down 22%-40%), but rather it is authors who will render the Big 6 obsolete. The more authors who choose the self-pub route over legacy, the harder it will be for legacy publishers to stay afloat.

Some bookstores will survive if they learn how to adapt. But it'll be tough, and I think everyone agrees that the heyday of bookstores is over. From now on there will be more stores closing than opening.

As I've said before, this is a death spiral.

What happens next is obvious. After more bookstores close, publishers will follow suit. They'll keep ebook prices high to make up for their print losses, but won't be able to sustain their overhead. Since ebooks now outsell print, very few authors are going to sign new legacy deals for 14.9% ebook royalties, so publishers will have to offer more or lose them.

It's only a matter of time before the house of cards collapses.

Galveston B.B. Stone: ERiC AiXeLsyD's "square guitar"

guitarz.blogspot.com:

We've looked at the Galveston brand on this blog before, but alas have never really found out very much about it.

This "square guitar", almost like a Bo Diddley rectangular guitar with cutaways, is called the Galveston B.B. Stone and is owned and played by Guitarz reader Eric.

He tells us that:

B.B. Stone is apparently a Korean blues artist and guitar-builder, and he designed the guitar with Jerker Antoni of Sweden’s Eagle Instruments.  There are 24 pieces worldwide, the ones around the world are branded with the groovy Eagle headstock.

For more, please see Eric's own blog. He has also made a website for the Square Guitar.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

A Swedish surf guitar! The Hagström Futurama Coronado Automatic

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Correct me if I'm wrong, Hag fans, but from what I can work out on the net, the above-pictured guitar is a Hagström Futurama Coronado Automatic from 1963. Apparently only 200 of this model were built for Ben Davis, owner of the Selmer company in London, and would have originally retailed (with case) at 77 guineas.

As you can see it takes its shape from the Fender Jazzmaster/Jaguar but the controls are very "European". The head too is very Fender-esque, but unlike any Fenders of the period the guitar is of through-neck construction.

This example is currently listed on eBay with a starting price of £600 and just over a day to go before the auction ends (as I type this).

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Washburn Bantam doubleneck headless bass with fretted and fretless necks

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This bass is so very 1980s, but with its minimalist design and lack of headstocks (meaning this will never be neck-heavy) the Washburn Bantam doubleneck bass must surely be one of the better designs of doublenecks, a species of guitar and/or bass frequently known to be cumbersome and unwieldy. Note also that the player gets a good choice of strap buttons to use!

If my memory serves me correctly this model was played back in the day by German session bassist Frank Itt.

The pictured example (thought to be one of only six imported into the UK) is currently being offered for sale on BassGear.co.uk priced at £750.

Thanks to Marky for bringing this instrument to my attention.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1930s Regal Le Domino tenor parlour guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This 1930s Regal Domino tenor guitar is beautifully proportioned having a parlour-sized body, unlike many other tenor guitars where a skinny 4-string neck is attached to an body designed for six strings. Notice the domino inlays for fingerboard position markers, which sadly are all but worn away in places.

The Regal Musical Instrument Company, established in 1908 in Chicago, are perhaps best known today for their production of resonator guitars from their first development up until 1941. They produced components and bodies for both National and Dobro guitars and by the 1930s were one of the largest manufacturers of musical instruments in the world.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Ebook Sales Down?

I've been asked to speculate about the future in several emails, mostly from panicked authors whose Kindle sales have gone down in June. My sales have also dropped off about 15%, pretty much across the board. I was averaging 831 daily sales in May. So far in June, I'm at 725 a day. On Nook, I was averaging 50 a day. This month, I'm averaging 40.

In the print world, it's normal for sales to slow down. But this is the first time I've noticed a downward trend in ebook sales.

Here are a few reasons this might be happening. Again, this is speculation.

1. June is usually slow. Kids are getting out of school, lots of graduations, people planning vacations, spending more time doing outdoor activities. Buying ebooks isn't their priority.

This may be true, because this seems to be happening across the board for all authors.

2. Amazon had their summer sale and dropped the prices on 600 ebooks to under $2.99, which hurt a lot of authors' rankings.

While that could explain Amazon sales, mine haven't rebounded since their promotion ended. It also doesn't explain my 22% drop in Nook sales.

3. More competition from a huge influx of new ebooks, both indie and legacy, is making it harder for ebooks and authors to be discovered.

Possible, but not probable. If this is oversaturation, it happened really fast. To account for a 15% loss in sales, that would mean Amazon had an influx of at least 150,000 new ebooks in June (Assuming they already have a million Kindle titles.) I say "at least" because that would assume all 150,000 of those new titles are selling well enough to hurt my sales by 15%.

That doesn't seem likely.

4. Perhaps there are too many ebooks for too few ereaders.

Possible again, but there are millions of ereaders sold, and hundreds of millions of devices capable of reading ebooks. Plus, ereaders continue to sell well. It seems impossible to ever fully saturate this market.

Hit books like The DaVinci Code or the Millenium Trilogy or Harry Potter are bought by hundreds of millions of readers, but they still haven't reached everyone. An ebook author should be able to sell several million ebooks before this becomes an issue.

5. While ebooks do sell for longer periods, there is a natural decline in sales, just like print books.

I believe ebooks are forever, but what goes up must come down. Neither Locke nor Hocking have also seen slower sales, based on their rankings.

6. People have grown tired of ebooks, and are no longer interested in buying them.

If that's the case, they must have gotten tired of books in general. Both Borders and Barnes & Noble have recently posted big losses. But B&N had a digital sales jump.

Obviously, we need a few more months of data to see if sales continue to drop, if they stabilize, or if they rebound.

That said, here are my thoughts.

Ebooks will continue to rise in popularity and become the dominant form of reading. This hasn't changed.

Obviously there will be more competition as more authors publish ebooks, but a constant influx of new customers buying new ereading devices (and an eventual global market for ereaders) will continue to drive sales.

Summer is slow. But once the holiday season comes around again, there will be another boost in sales across the board. This year should be bigger than last year, as ereader prices come down and move from early adopters into the mainstream.

In other words, no one needs to panic. No business has constant, unstoppable growth. Sales fluctuate. This is normal.

So what should authors be doing?

1. Keep writing. New ebooks will buoy the sales of backlist titles.

2. Cultivate a fanbase. Make sure they know when you have a new ebook released.

3. Experiment with different marketing techniques. Facebook, Twitter, bundling, putting ebooks on sale, using freebies, excerpts, clickable bibliographies, and so on.

4. Cultivate relationships with the epublishers. This is very difficult to do, but getting in good with the people selling your ebooks can only help your sales.

5. Be patient. I've heard from countless authors who are concerned that they aren't rich yet. Building a backlist, and a fanbase, takes time. Don't expect instant success. As I've said, this is a marathon, not a sprint.

I've also said that ebooks are forever. That's a long time to accrue sales.

The Kala U-Bass solidbodies are available at last

guitarz.blogspot.com:

The Kala U-Bass is a diminutive bass with polyurethane strings and the most incredible sound somewhere between a double bass and an electric. It's quite amazing that you can get such bass from an instrument with a scale length of just 20". The first acoustic-electric U-Basses were essentially bass ukuleles using a baritone ukulele body with a wider neck. These new solidbody versions (with an increased 21" scale!) are available in fretted or fretless and four or five string versions.

I think the main thing that might put off bass players is the size of it - or should I say, "lack of size". Some might think they'd look a little silly playing one of these, as if they were playing a toy, but I'd say approach the instrument with an open mind.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Made in UK mystery guitar - any ideas what this is?

guitarz.blogspot.com:

This asymmetrically-shaped through-neck guitar is currently being auctioned on eBay with a starting price of £289. It features a DiMarzio humbucker and a Schaller bridge, with a possible non-original single-coil pickup in the neck position. The seller does not know much about it, only that it was made in the UK (which we can't take as 100% truth without any evidence to support it).

Does anyone have any clue as to the guitar's identity? The shape reminds me slightly of that of Scotland's own Egypt Guitars, but the bat logo on the headstock would suggest otherwise. Any ideas?

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Guild Studio 24 double cutaway 24-fret acoustic guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's a rarity from Guild from back in their pre-Fender ownership days. Designed by George Gruhn, it's a Guild Studio 24 circa 1986 and is a full size acoustic guitar with double cutaways and a 24-fret neck. According to the seller on eBay less than 150 of this particular model were produced. Unlike most other cutaway acoustics, full support under the fingerboard is given right up to the 23rd fret providing "clean, ringing notes that sustain in the upper register". The Studio 24 is built with top grade spruce, highly flamed maple backs and sides, inlaid headstock, inlaid ebony fingerboard and complete grained pearloid binding.

This guitar is currently being auctioned on eBay UK with a starting price of £2,750.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Adam's hand-built cocobolo electric guitar

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Guitarz reader Adam Kralic sent me these photos of a guitar he has recently finished building. For some reason Adam thought I might hate the guitar. Now let me say this, even if a guitar isn't to my particular tastes, I will always applaud good luthiery. Hey, it's not as if I've ever created anything as skilled as this. I've put together a few guitars from parts, Frankenstein-style, but that's about my limit.

The shape is a litte PRS-ish - well at least around the double cutaway end of the body, especially with that little scoop on the lower horn to aid access to the top frets, and I freely admit that I am no PRS fan. I think also that the headstock looks a little over-large for the body shape... but these are minor quibbles and my own opinion to boot. I'm not trying to knock the guitar at all. As I was saying, I wish I had it in me to be able to create a guitar from scratch. This looks to be a beautifully constructed and finished instrument, with top notch attention to detail.

Anyway, the specs:

• 25" scale neck with jumbo frets.
• 12" radius fretboard.
• Gotoh vintage/modern tuners (vintage style, modern 18:1 gear ratio)
• Black TUSQ nut (self lubricating and sounds great)
• Neck thru design.
• Figured Bubinga fretboard with offset abalone dot inlays. (side dots are abalone too)
• AAAA Flamed maple neck with thick mahogany laminates. (adds strength...and looks cool)
• Semi-gloss finish on neck; satin finish on body.
• (Paper thin finish! Resonates better by far than those 1/8" thick factory finishes on the import guitars.)
• KING Grade cocobolo tops and bottoms. 1/4" thick for both sets. Museum grade wood.
  (cocobolo is most closely related tonally to Brazilian Rosewood with many claiming Cocobolo is superior tonally)
• Seymour Duncan JB humbucker.
  (most versatile humbucker around...everyone from jazz cats to metal heads love the JB)
• Cocobolo control plate and truss rod cover.
• 500k volume and tone pots.
• Schaller Roller bridge.
  (hands down the most adjustable hardtail bridge on the market. Heavy too. GREAT sustain!)
• Hair under 9 lbs in total weight

Adam is currently offering this guitar for sale on eBay where it has a $1,200 start price and a But It Now of $1,350.00.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1930s Stella parlour guitar in crystalline blue finish

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Founded in 1899, Stella was part of the Oscar Schmidt Company based in Jersey City, New Jersey, and was the brandname applied to low to mid level stringed instruments which as well as guitars included mandolins, banjos and autoharps. Partly because Stella guitars cost a mere fraction of a Gibson or Martin, they ended up being played by blues musicians such as Leadbelly and Charlie Patton.

The Stella brand, as well as other Oscar Schmidt brands Sovereign and La Scala, was acquired by the Harmony Company of Chicago, Illinois in 1939.

Pictured above we see a 1930s Stella parlour guitar in a rare crytalline blue finish, created using "a technique that has been lost with time". Finishes were more commonly black, natural or sunburst. This is one of the later Oscar Schmidt Stellas and pre-dates the Harmony takeover.

Unfortunately, this particular example is not in very good condition and would require the attention of a luthier to make it playable.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Diego's Stocco's Experibass - 4 necks on a double bass

guitarz.blogspot.com:

OK, this is slightly off-topic because, of course, the double bass is NOT a guitar but rather a member of the viol family; however most would agree it IS a parent of the modern bass guitar and so is worthy of including here on Guitarz. Anyway, this isn't any old double bass. It's the creation of sound designer and composer Diego Stocco. As he explains:

I had an idea in mind for an instrument I wanted to build. My curiosity was to hear the sound of violin, viola and cello strings amplified through the body of a double bass. I came up with a quadruple-neck experimental "something" that I thought to call Experibass.

To play it I used cello and double bass bows, a little device I built with fishing line and hose clamps, a paintbrush, a fork, spoons, a kick drum pedal and a drum stick. I hope you'll like it!

While the music produced is mostly percussive, there's no denying the drama within it.

For more, see www.behance.net/Gallery/ExperibassHans-Zimmers-Score-for-Sherlock-Holmes/366637

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Rare Yamaha SG-2 circa 1966-67 on eBay now!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

From the eBay listing:

Yamaha SG-2 SG 2 their first electric guitar 60's MOJO

One of the coolest sexist guitars you will ever see.  From the 60's when guitars were COOL.  Yamahas first eclectic guitar.   Cooler looking than a Strat. 

Check out Link Ray playing his on youtube playing midnight lover   http://www.youtube.com/watch?gl=US&feature=related&hl=iw&v=-zBhViJYO9M  

And this site loves them http://guitarz.blogspot.com/2010/04/yamaha-sg-3-like-link-wrays-guitar-but.html  

High quality guitar, check out Harmony Central for the user reviews. 

Guitar looks great with just a small chip on the bottom, see pic.

Plays well and electronics work, sounds great, could probably use some contact cleaner, 

Output jack may need to be tightened or cleaned or looked at as it crackles if you move the cord.

Comes with the whammy bar. 

Comes with a guitar case that is not the greatest but works well.

(sic throughout)

It sure is a nice one. Don't you think it'd be a good companion for my SG-3? Anyway, Guitarz has linked through to hundreds - possibly thousands - of eBay auctions over the years. It's nice to see an eBay auction linking to us for a change!

This guitar was listed with a starting bid of $25.01 and bidding has already been enthusiastic with over 5 days left to go on this auction. I'd love to bid myself, but it would be incredibly hard to justify buying another guitar right now especially one so similar to a guitar I already own.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Bob Mothersbaugh's Les Paul with "droopy" lower horn

guitarz.blogspot.com:

The previous blog post reminded me of this - another Gibson guitar with a part of the body sliced off and reversed. The photo shows Bob Mothersbaugh in the video for Devo's "Whip It" with a very peculiar-looking Les Paul.

Bob tells the story of this guitar in this Premier Guitar magazine interview:

With all the technology being dangled in your face when you hit it big, did you ever use a guitar synthesizer?

Back in 1979, I used a device made by 360 Systems. It was a big box that sat next to your amp and required a special pickup. The 360 Systems people recommended I use a Les Paul, and at the time I was horrified—I thought Les Pauls represented arena rock, long hair, and Puka shells. But I got a Les Paul and took a jigsaw to it with the intention of making it look like a skull. I cut the little horn off at the cutaway and flipped it over backwards and thought it looked a lot better. The 360 was a horrible synth and really didn’t sound good. I only used it for one tour.

Read the full interview here.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

1979 Gibson "The SG" with partially reversed body!

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Here's a Gibson "The SG" from 1979 which at some point suffered some body damage so that the bass side of the body split away. The owner has stuck it back together again but reversed the top section for a certainly quite distinctly different look. You almost wonder why Gibson didn't think of it themselves, considering some of their recent design tweaks.

Gibson's "The SG" was a partner to "The Paul"; both were walnut-bodied budget-conscious versions of Gibson's two best-loved solidbody designs and were produced between 1978-1982.

Thanks to Colin Brown who suggested we look at this guitar via our Facebook page.

G L Wilson

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Andrei's doubleneck and 7-string guitars

guitarz.blogspot.com:

Hi Gavin, Nice blog! I sometimes play some funny guitars. Doubleneck:

Here I play 7 string guitar (solo, one guitar), 7th string fretless:

Maybe it will be interesting for you.

Best regards,

Andrei Krylov

© 2011, Guitarz - The Original Guitar Blog - now in its 10th year!

Notice to Appear

Once upon a time, years ago, there was a crazy author who spent a lot of time, money, and energy visiting forty different states in the US.

He signed at over 1200 bookstores.

He spoke at over a hundred libraries.

He attended dozens of conventions and conferences.

He went to many book fairs and literary festivals.

He spoke at schools and universities.

In short, he did what he felt he needed to do in order to succeed. Namely, meet as many people as possible, handsell books, and spread his brand.

It cost lots of money to do this. Lots of money and lots of time.

As a result, all of his books are still in print, while many of his peers (who didn't do as much) went out of print.

These days, he does very few appearances. He doesn't speak in public. He doesn't travel.

Yet he's still selling well. Better than he ever sold before.

So are appearances still worthwhile?

Have they ever been worthwhile?

One of the things about being a writer is knowing that in order to continue writing, you have to sell books. Because of this, many writers try to do things in order to boost sales. Some buy ads. Some have contests. Some blog. Some tweet. Some use Facebook. Some give away stuff.

Some make public appearances.

I've always believed that face-to-face time is valuable, and that there is no better salesperson for my book than me. But I never considered myself a salesman. I considered myself an ambassador, spreading information and good will. Often I taught what I learned. Sometimes I got paid, but mostly I dished out money for travel and hotels and convention fees.

And because of this, I've sold more books than I would have if I hadn't done anything at all.

That's the key. Doing something will help you sell more than doing nothing.

But for every book sale, there is a cost to pay.

The cost, of course, if both the monetary cost of travel, and the time cost of making an appearance.

Not too many writers openly talk about the costs involved in self-promotion, though all do it in some form or another. There is a reason for this.

Because all of us are failing. At least, when it comes to tangible returns on investments.

Writing is a solitary profession. But we need people (readers) in order to continue to write. So we try our best to find these readers, and appearances are one way to do this.

A damn expensive way.

I was just at the Printer's Row Book Fair in Chicago. The cost to me was $25 for parking, $10 for gas, and five hours of time.

I sold about a dozen books (paperbacks), and the royalties totaled $7.68.

So my personal appearance left me in the red almost thirty bucks, not counting the five hours I could have spent writing.

Walking the fair, I saw many of my peers, none of them doing any better than I did. Some traveled from out of state to attend. Some dished out major bucks and bought their own tables.

That's a lot of time and money for a few dozen sales.

Rewind to Bouchercon 2010, the biggest mystery con of the year. I attended, but not as an author. I'd just begun my hiatus from public appearances, and I wanted to hang out with my friends without the pressure of having to be "on."

Some authors sold a few dozen books. Most didn't even come close to that. Considering the hotel was $199 a night, and travel to San Francisco isn't cheap, I wouldn't be surprised if some writers were in the red several thousand dollars.

So why do we keep doing this? Why do we invest so much for so little in return?

Here are my thoughts.

1. We feel as if we have to do something. Doing nothing means asking for failure. So even if the costs of doing something far exceed the sales we make, at least we can say we tried.

2. There is a bit of peer pressure and "go with the crowd" mentality. Gathering together with fellow authors is a cathartic experience. We're all in the same boat, and to see others doing what we're doing makes us feel better about what we're doing, even if it is ineffective.

3. We count on intangible benefits. Even if a bestseller goes on tour, they're losing money. Pretend a big shot sells 100 hardcovers at an appearance. That's $300 in royalties--not even close to the cost of plane fare, hotel, and an escort. But meeting a fan once can make a fan for life, befriending booksellers can help your titles sell for years, and giving a good talk could help spread word of mouth, selling many more books than were signed. This can't be gauged, however.

4. We think this will be the "big one" where we sell in huge numbers. And big ones do occasionally happen. Unfortunately, there's no way to know which appearances will be worthwhile and which won't.

5. There's an ego aspect to appearances, especially at the beginning of a career. We want to make fans. We want to sign books. We want to hear how people enjoyed our writing. Having someone hug you and say they love you is a heady experience.

But eventually, like all good things that became spoiled once dollar signs were attached to them, dealing with fans becomes work. It's good work if you can get it, but it has diminishing returns that increase the more fans you acquire.

I do very few appearances these days. And it hasn't hurt my career.

While I don't advocate doing nothing, and I stand by my original position that the more you do, the more you'll sell, I've come to realize that one person, no matter how hard they try, can't make themselves a bestseller. Luck always plays a part.

The harder you work, the luckier you tend to get. But there comes a point where you can spend too much time trying to promote old work, when you'd be better served writing new work. That point can vary, book to book, person to person. But it is something to be aware of.

So next time someone asks to to speak someplace, or when the yearly convention sends you an email asking to attend, try to weight the pros and cons before automatically saying yes. Because while you will sell more books, it will probably come at too high a cost.