Ruth Lyons and the 50-50 Club Replay!

I still have to post a full report on the launch of Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV, along with some comments on signings. However, I've been too busy doing signings, giving talks, appearing on television and radio, doing print interviews, and writing articles.

Fortunately, you can see part of the book launch! As you may have heard, publisher Orange Frazer engaged actress Shelley Bamberger Baily to do her impression of Ruth in a mini-reenactment of "The 50-50 Club" at the launch and a number of signings. Shelley scripted an excellent show, with songs, a commercial, a quiz, prizes, and an interview with me. Click here or on the image above to watch the show!

As long as we're over-using "myriad ..."

It looks as if "myriad" is about to become as overused as "pair-uh-dig-em" (as always, why not say "pattern" or "template?") That being the case, do try to use the word appropriately. "Myriad" is an adjective. As in the title of Larry Niven's short story collection, All the Myriad Ways, and not as in "Would you like to buy a half-myriad of adjectives?"

The 50-50 Club's Ruth Lyons in Person, April 29!

Actress Shelley Bamberger will portray television pioneer Ruth Lyons in several upcoming signings for my book Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV. Shelley, who is also a presentation coach, will perform in character at five signings, beginning this Wednesday, April 29, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in eastern Cincinnati, at 7:00 PM. A complete list of her appearances is on this University of Cincinnati Web page.

Dressed in a period costume that includes Lyons' trademark white gloves and flower-bedecked microphone, Shelley will conduct a recreation of "The 50-50 Club," Lyons' long-running TV and radio program.

During the show, she will sing, interact with the audience, do an unscripted commercial for the host (a Lyons specialty), interview the author, and present prizes to the audience. This promotion is probably unique in book publishing.

Shelley's media career has been long and interesting. Among many other roles, she was the first Wendy for Wendy's Old Fashioned Hamburgers. Shelley blogs here, and you can learn more about her at I-Cue (Intelligent Communications, Unsurpassed Exection).

Ruth Lyons Tops Talk TV's Family Tree

John Kiesewetter penned an excellent article about Ruth Lyons for the Cincinnati Enquirer's Sunday, April 12, issue. Not incidentally, it talks about my biography of Miss Lyons, Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV (Orange Frazer Press, April 15, 2009).

The story (and the book) includes several previously unpublished photos.

The book is now available from Orange Frazer and Amazon.

Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons biography is now available!

Now Available!

You can now buy Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV, direct from the publisher, Orange Frazer Press, or Amazon.com. The 260-page hardcover is available at a discount from both (use the promo code RUTH at the publisher's Web site).

Foreign Rights Sales

My work has been published in several languages, including Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Italian, Greek and others. A few months back, Blogging Heroes sold to publisher AcornLoft in Korea, where it was published in Korean. An image of the Korean edition cover appears here.

What's does a foreign rights sale mean for the author? Normally, half the money--which is okay because it is normally the English-language publisher's foreign rights department that does all the work.

The amount of money and how it's paid varies. Sometimes you get a flat rate payment for the translation rights. In 1990, for example, a Spanish-language publisher paid $5,000 for the right to publish a book in Spanish. I got $2,500, and several copies of the book. In other deals, the foreign publisher paid a few thousand dollars as an advance against anticipated royalties that the book would earn.

An agent who works directly with foreign publishers or agents may get you a better split.

Online Transaction Safety -- NOT!

Wouldn't it be wonderful if you could pay for an online transaction without fear that someone would reach into your bank account or credit card and rip you off?

There is a way. However, greedy online "entrepreneurs" will not allow it to be used.

How can you pay online without risk? Use rechargeable Visa cards or Visa Gift Cards. If there's a $29.95 deal for membership at a Web site, buy a card with just a bit more money on it, and spend the balance at Wal-Mart or wherever. End of story. Unless you put more money on the card, there's no way anyone is going to use the card's number to rip you off.

Of course, it costs $3.95 or five bucks or whatever to buy such a card, but the fee's nothing when weighed against losing hundreds or thousands of dollars, and having to cancel and reopen cards and worry about identify theft.

But as implied, some greedy bastards are blocking this legitimate, legal, and safe means of doing online transactions, by refusing to accept Visa cards that aren't tied to your credit or your bank account. Why? Because they sign you up to open-ended agreements where they can "conveniently" renew your membership or whatever you bought online by taking money out of your account without asking.

Yes, it is a crime--it's an ethical crime. These companies know that a large number of people will forget about the commitment and the charges will go on for months, or years. And still others will sign up and not get it--missing the tiny print that says they are signing up until the heat death of the universe. (There is NO way that ANY online seller running this scam will EVER state in clear language that they're pulling this scam.)

It's more than a little ironic to think that we are prevented from utilizing a safe and secure means of conducting online transactions to enable these clowns to rip us off.

Speech Patterns

I recently had occasion to give close attention to exactly and literally what several participants in a conference were saying over several hours' time. It's fascinating how much verbiage is wasted in speech. For example, one of the participants prefaced nearly every statement with "No. Yes. I agree." Over and over and over. It finally came to me that this was his way of making sure he got into the conversation, by blurting out something--anything--to take the floor.

The same guy was heavily into making very lengthy sentences, ramming conjunctions into place with rapidfire enunciation before anyone else could get a word in or even think about saying something and often saying nothing of consequence or just repeating himself to hold the floor while he was thinking about what to say next and actually that was what he was doing when he opened sentences with "No. Yes. I agree," more or less talking without thinking which is something that you'll probably notice people doing now that you've read this but in the end he came off as very foolish and even uneducated despite the fact that he was trying to sound educated and urbane by using phrases like "from the perspective of."

Semi-stuttering was another floor-holding tactic. At one point, the guy slowly said, "Well, the da-da-da-da-da-data," before forming and launching into, "is indicative of a profound shift in para-dij-em from the perspective of the financial sphere..." blah, blah, blah. It all makes me glad that writing dialogue in literal imitation of reality isn't in vogue.

Upcoming Signings for the Ruth Lyons Biography

This URL tells where I'll be signing Before Oprah: Ruth Lyons, the Woman Who Created Talk TV: http://www.booktour.com/author/michael_a_banks

There will be more. Note that at four of the signings an actress portraying Miss Lyons will be present, complete with authentic 1960s dress and pearls! The signings begin on April 29, and the book itself ships on April 18.

English as a Foreign Language

Have you studied another language? (Spoken human language, that is: Vulcan, ASL, COBOL and the like don't count.) If so, you have a tool you can use to yourself ahead of the crowd as a writer.

I say this because studying a language forces you to examine how the words go together--once you get past the vocabulary. Until one has a good slice of vocabulary memorized, along with some conjugation, I think the mind treats another language like a code to crack.

When you begin to construct valid sentences in the other language, you're at the point where you should be applying the same sort of analysis you use to learn and apply the language to English. I observed this phenomenon with the first foreign language I studied, Spanish. And it came back in different ways when I studied Japanese and German. If you haven't noticed this in your own mental processes while you're writing in English, try to work in consciously. In addition to making you think about how words go together in sentences in different ways for different effects, it will also help you see how your readers perceive what you're writing.

Useless words ...

At some point in the near future, I'm going to write an article on transient words and phrases--my name for overused and casually used terms that flare up for two or three years, then fade away.

Why be concerned? You'll date your writing--especially fiction--if you use transient language. Use words and phrases that are really popular (those that writers pass around to show off or make people think they're with it), and people may think you're too derivative. Or, as in the third example below, you'll only be spreading words devoid of real meaning.

A few samples: "frisson," which enjoys extensive overuse in fiction, "leverage" (oh, go ahead and say what you mean; no one will think you're ignorant for using a one-syllable word: "use"), "more bang for the buck" (translation: "we can't think of a definite positive to describe the product"), and the five year-old, consciously-copied "absolutely!" (Regards "absolutely" ... just say "yes!")

You might stop and think when you use "basically," too. "Basically" is basically an empty prefix. It's been around more than a decade, and grows more hollow each and every time it is uttered or written. Listen to people around you, or on TV or radio, when they try to describe something: "Well, basically, I'm shopping for a car." What? Either you're shopping or not--there's no "basically" about it. "Basically, he was shot and killed." Ditto.

Personal Observations About Public Radio

Well, I haven't posted in several weeks. No topics that I can talk about here (yet) have come up, until today:

You really have to wonder when a university operates a radio station that is staffed by paid employees. I mean, why was the broadcast facility established, if not for use as an educational tool by university students and faculty?

This came to mind when I learned that Miami University of Ohio is sort of contracting out its operations to WVXU (formerly Xavier University’s station) and firing a half-million dollars’ worth of employees. WMUB (Miami) will mostly simulcast WVXU's programming. (Which, of course, comes primarily from paid or unpaid non-students.)

But—get this!—there’s a bright spot in that Miami just may use faculty and students to generate programming. Duh! You idiots wouldn’t be in this mess if you had put the station to that appropriate use from the beginning.

Why is it that public radio stations affiliated with universities are run mostly by people from the community and not from among faculty and students? Yes, a station needs a couple of real engineers. But not a paid staff sucking up a half-million a year when the university as been squealing like a pig stuck in a picket fence over exceeding their budget?
Did public radio become a scam to get broadcast licenses after the FRC/FCC stopped handing them out of anyone who could writing a convincing letter?

A Million Little Pieces of Bread Over the Fence

They just keep coming. First there was James Frey. You remember little Jimmy, don'tcha? Yeah, he was the one with the made-up book about his drug and alcohol experiences. You know, bloody and vomiting his guts out on an airplane. Frey always did have a line of b.s., but never could quite get it together as a novelist. For that matter, his b.s. wasn't all that close to the mark, either; anyone who's done hard time could tell he was lying by looking at him--or reading his books.

Besides all of which, his book was so poorly written that I could produce a better book by teaching a non-writer how to write. But he fooled the publisher, fooled Oprah, damaged the credibility of addiction recovery programs, and still has the money.

This month it's the Rosenblatts, with their fabricated tales of a Polish girl tossing bread and other goodies over a World War II concentration camp fence to a teenage boy ... the beginning of the perfect romance which goes on to have them meet by chance in New York years later and fall into predestined love. In addition to fooling the same publisher and Oprah once again, this one also damages the credibility of the Holocaust, according to the media.

Both books were exposed--but not before fooling Oprah and getting movie deals. Now I understand why Oprah decided there would be no more Oprah's Book Club. Between those and other recent fakes--among them the fabricated story of a white kid growing up in south-central Los Angeles and a fairy tale about a little girl rescued by wolves (a unified, transsexual Romulus and Remus?)--how can you believe anything you read?

Jimmy, Herm, Roma, Marg, Misha--where're your consciences? Just how many pounds did your respective editors and or ghosts sweat off in laboring to make your manuscripts presentable? And which of you pulled the old trick of getting shills to buy enough copies at bookstores around the country to force your title onto the bestseller lists?

What a bunch of useless clowns! Your trash sucked up money and attention that might have gone to authors of far more interesting--and true--memoirs.

Funny ... in all the uproar, nobody has brought up young Jayson, the New York Times reporter who faked sources and interviews. I imagine he's working on his life story; that should be a whopper!

Recent Reviews of On the Way to the Web

Here are a few recent reviews of On the Way to the Web

Practical PC Online
TA-InfoTech
Tom Duff
Gregory Tucker

The Practical PC review is particularly interesting in that is the first I've read that emphasizes the international content of the book.

Presenting Bill Gates' Concise History of the Internet

“The Internet didn’t happen and didn’t happen and didn’t happen—and all of a sudden it really happened!”
--Bill Gates (on The Charlie Rose Show, December 22, 2008)

Why the World is Messed Up

The world is messed up because the members of the conspiracies who took over spend all their time planting hidden messages and symbols to tell us they run the world, instead of actually running things!

Online History: Prodigy, the Model 100, and Cloud Computing

Those of you who lived through or are interested in the early days of the Internet and online services like CompuServe, Dialog, Prodigy, etc., may be interested to know that I've posted some new history in the "Classics Rule" blog at TechRepublic.com.

I'm doing a guest blogger spot and so far I've written two postings. The first is about "cloud computing" in the early 1980s with the TRS-80 Model 100. The second, posted today, tells the story of Prodigy, the online service that just didn't get it--a perfect illustrations of why it really isn't a good idea to try to regulate the Internet. This is original material, not taken from On the Way to the Web. Enjoy!
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com

Why Computer Books Are Better Than Help Lines

Made a call to a computer software or hardware company's technical service/customer help line lately? If not, you know someone who has. And you know the complaints: hour-long waits, people whose English is difficult to understand, the frustration of dealing with someone who has no real knowledge and instead is reading to you from a list of canned responses--none of which have anything to do with your problem.

Tired of it all? Here's a thought: Instead of calling help lines buy a book! Or borrow it from your local library.

Imagine! All the answers you need to be an effective Excel user in one place, literally at your right hand. When you get lost trying to set tabs, margins and columns in Word, just flip through a few pages and the answers are there--in minutes rather than hours.

The odds are good that the book will be written by someone for whom English is not a second language. Some are, but that fact is not discernable once a skilled editor finishes with the manuscript. Either way, the books are almost guaranteed to be understandable.

Hm ... perhaps customer service people on the other side of the planet should consult computer books. Just a thought.
--Mike http://www.michaelabanks.com

Another Excerpt from Blogging Heroes

Here's a free chapter from Blogging Heroes: the interview with Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes. Ina is a well-known figure in the online auction business. She keeps the auction public posted on just about everything that happens with eBay and other auction sites. Ina's blog and news service also covers support services such as sniping services, and major sellers.

More excerpts to come!

--Mike

Excerpt from On the Way to the Web: Monetizing the Internet

Curious about Internet and online service history? Wonder how the leading-edge packet-switching technology of ARPAnet was transferred to the commercial world. Learn about it in this excerpt from On the Way to the Web: The Secret History of the Internet and Its Founders.

Hosted by the DigiBarn Computer Museum, the chapter describes the earliest "monetizing" of the online world. It shows how the first real information superhighway was created (and named), and shows how entreprenuers built enormously profitable online businesses without investing in computers, software, or content. This excerpt also details the earliest commercial online content!