Gott in Himmel, it’s finally happened: Copies of Junkyard Jam Band are shipping and in stores! It’s 400 pages of awesome, covering 16 projects with 300+ pics, diagrams, schematics, and illustrations. Each project includes mods and expansion, plus there’s a dozen extra circuits, and appendices that will get the total newbie soldering and give the total neophyte a leg up with music theory. It took me almost four years to write the damn thing, and it was almost 30 months late.
There’s so much of my blood, sweat, and tears invested in this damn book that each copy of the book is technically as closely related to me as either of my children.
Folks have been asking me what the “best” way to buy the book is. Short answer: Any damn way you want! Long answer:
- In terms of cash in my pocket: Buying the book from me at an event puts the most money in my piggy bank. In those situations I’m selling books that I personally purchased wholesale from the publisher, and I see ~10x as much money as I do when you buy from a store or Amazon or the publisher. BONUS: You can get your copy personalized! DOWNSIDE: I don’t do a ton of events, and they are almost all pretty damn local. That said. if you really want a signed copy, they have a few left at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore on Washtenaw Ave. in Ann Arbor, MI. You can also order a copy through my website or catch me in downtown Ann Arbor (I’m reliably in my Main Street office about once per week. Contact me to make arrangements.)
- In terms of my career: Frankly, every other option is about the same, although for different reasons. No matter what you pay, I’ll see the same amount of cash (my royalty is a percentage of the wholesale price, where-as discounts generally come out of the retailer’s margins). But buying through a store makes my Bookscan numbers better, which in turn impacts how willing places are to carry the book and the kinds of events I get invited to, so it’s not a terrible trade-off.
- In terms of your wallet: You’ll probably get the book cheapest from Amazon, and Amazon sales make me look good, as those sales numbers and author rankings are a common metric of “success.” Other online stores offer similar deals, and it’s about the same to me (here’s B&N and O’Reilly.) Incidentally, I see about the same money and karma boost from selling ebooks as print copies, but I’m going to level with you: While I love the PDF versions of my books (they’re actually the exact same files that the printer uses to make the paperback copies), I’m less enthusiastic about the .mobi and .epub versions (with the proviso that I have an old eInk Kindle; it might look more rad on a newer eReader, especially something that’s more of a full-blown tablet).
- In terms of the “industry”: My publisher is happier if you buy direct from them (naturally). The upside for you is that they throw in the PDF and other ebook formats for free, and the PDF is fantastic. Also, they’ll basically match Amazon’s price if you use the coupon code included in the Jam Pack PDF. (Sign up for the newsletter, download the PDF, and you’ll find the code on the first or second page of the PDF. BONUS: That coupon code works for both my books; easy Non-Denominational Gift-Giving Holiday shopping right there.)
- In terms of your local economy: It is perfectly rad to get the book at any physical bookstore you dig; lots of shops stock it (including many U.S. B&Ns), and anyone can easily special order it.
- In terms of culture at large: Finally, of course, lots of libraries are getting it, because craft books are an easy sell to libraries, and in much demand by patrons. If your library doesn’t have it, they will almost certainly be thrilled to order a copy; fulfilling patron requests is part of their mission (hell, my library—the Ann Arbor Public Library—started loaning digital oscilloscopes and analog synths because that’s what patrons wanted. They are awesome!)
, will be steeply discounted next week.