Robert Rosen

As promised last week, the updated and expanded e-book edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is now available from Barnes & Noble and Scribd. You can download it from B&N by clicking on the above image, and you can read it on Scribd by clicking here. Scribd, for those unfamiliar with it, is a digital library offering unlimited access to e-books, audiobooks, and magazines for a monthly subscription of $11.99.

 

If you'd like a signed copy of Nowhere Man, A Brooklyn Memoir, or Bobby in Naziland please contact me by clicking here and I'll send you the details.

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My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

The updated and expanded edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon continues to reach more online bookstores. It's now available as an Apple e-book, which you can download by clicking on the cover, and as a Kobo e-book, which you can download by clicking here.

 

Soon it will also be available from Barnes & Noble and Scribd. The final frontier, of course, is your local book store, and in due time you'll be able to find the paperback edition there, as well.

 

Stay tuned for more updates on the availability of Nowhere Man.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

The new Nowhere Man, the first update to the print edition in 20 years and to the Kindle edition since 2015, is slowly working its way into distribution channels. The Kindle became available this week. You can preview or download it by clicking on the buttons above.

 

In additions to updates, corrections, and clarifications, the book contains six new chapters, including Mersey Beat founding editor Bill Harry's interview with me; a discussion of conspiracy theories surrounding John Lennon's murder; and "In My Own Write," a new introduction, available in the preview, that grapples with the question: Did I have the right to tell this story? Check out the table of contents to see what else is new.

 

In the coming weeks, the e-book will also be available on Apple Books, Kobo, Scribd, Barnes & Noble, Overdrive, and all other online bookstores. The paperback will be available in your local bookstore in late November.

________

My latest book, A Brooklyn Memoir, is available on Amazon, Bookshop, all other online booksellers, and at your local brick-and-mortar bookstore.

 

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter or my eternally embryonic Instagram.

 

Cuando los periodistas me preguntan si alguno de los Beatles ha leído alguna vez Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon, mi respuesta es un inequívoco: “Sí, absolutamente... aunque ellos nunca lo han admitido en público.”

¿Cómo puedo yo estar tan seguro? Es fácil. Es un hecho bien establecido que yo tuve acceso a los diarios de John Lennon, y lo que he comunicado en Nowhere Man es la esencia de lo que había en esos cuadernos. Hasta que los diarios sean publicados, lo cual no sucederá en nuestro tiempo de vida, Nowhere Man es lo más cerca que puedes llegar a la autobiografía de Lennon.

Si tú fueras un Beatle, especialmente si fueras Paul McCartney, ¿no querrías saber lo que Lennon escribió sobre ti en sus diarios?

La respuesta es por sí misma evidente.

Lo que McCartney descubrió tras la lectura de Nowhere Man, fue lo que Lennon pensaba de él todo el tiempo, y que estaba locamente celoso por el éxito incesante de Paul. El espíritu de McCartney embrujaba realmente a Lennon. Él oía la música de McCartney en su cabeza cuando Paul estaba en la ciudad. Él escuchó la música de McCartney, cuando trató de salir de su mala racha creativa y compuso las canciones para el Double Fantasy. La “I Don’t Want to Face It” de Lennon —grabada para el Double Fantasy, pero lanzada en el Milk and Honey—, fue una respuesta directa a la “Coming Up” de McCartney. Además Lennon, disgustado por las demandas de McCartney sobre una reunión de los Beatles, se refirió a él como McOjodeculo, y se regocijó cuando Paul fue detenido en Japón por posesión de marihuana, dándole el crédito a Yoko Ono por causar el arresto al lanzarle un hechizo mágico. “Yo quiero a Paul como a un hermano”, escribió Lennon. “Sólo que él no me gusta.”

Hoy, el 74 cumpleaños de Paul McCartney, quedan nueve días hasta el lanzamiento mundial del e-book Nowhere Man 15 aniversario ampliado y recién traducido. Tú puedes pre-ordenar el e-book en Amazon, iTunes y Barnes & Noble. Entonces, el 27 de junio, podrás conocer aún más sobre la tormentosa relación Lennon-McCartney.

Mientras tanto, vamos todos a desearle a Paul un 74 cumpleaños feliz y saludable. Que él siga brillando.

Te invito a unirte a mí en Facebook o a seguirme en Twitter.

And for the English speakers:

When journalists ask me if any of the Beatles have ever read Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon, my answer is an unequivocal: “Yes, absolutely… though they’d never admit it publicly.”

How can I be so sure? Easy. It’s a well-established fact that I had access to John Lennon’s diaries, and what I’ve communicated in Nowhere Man is the essence of what was in those notebooks. Until the diaries are published, which will not happen in our lifetimes, Nowhere Man is as close as you can get to Lennon’s autobiography.

If you were a Beatle, especially if you were Paul McCartney, wouldn’t you want to know what Lennon wrote about you in his journals?

The answer is self-evident.

What McCartney discovered upon reading Nowhere Man was that Lennon thought about him all the time and that he was insanely jealous of Paul’s unabated success. McCartney’s spirit veritably haunted Lennon. He heard McCartney’s music in his head when Paul has in town. He listened to McCartney’s music as he tried to break out of his creative slump and compose the songs for Double Fantasy. Lennon’s “I Don’t Want to Face It”—recorded for Double Fantasy but released on Milk and Honey—was a direct response to McCartney’s “Coming Up.” Yet Lennon, repulsed by McCartney’s demands for a Beatles reunion, referred to him as McAsshole, and rejoiced when Paul was busted in Japan for marijuana possession, crediting Yoko Ono with bringing about the arrest by casting a magic spell. “I love Paul like a brother,” Lennon wrote. “I just don’t like him.”

Today, on Paul McCartney’s 74th birthday, nine days remain until the worldwide release of the expanded and newly translated 15th Anniversary Nowhere Man e-book. You can pre-order the book on Amazon, iTunes and Barnes & Noble. Then, on June 27, you can learn even more about the stormy Lennon-McCartney relationship.

In the meantime, let’s all wish Paul a happy and healthy 74th birthday. May he continue to shine on.

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. Read More 

Abajo hay tres breves extractos de Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon, seleccionados por el traductor René Portas. La edición e-book recién traducida de este clásico de culto sale a la venta el 27 de junio. Tú puedes pre-ordenarla en Amazon, iTunes y Barnes & Noble.

La marihuana de John
Durante dos años estuvimos en un viaje mágico y misterioso. Cuando Seaman estaba en la ciudad, cruzábamos por toda Nueva York y más allá, una vez yendo tan lejos como hasta Montreal, en el flamante nuevo Mercedes Benz verde manzana de Lennon, fumando porros gruesos de la potente marihuana de John, y resonando rock ‘n’ roll en el personalizado sistema de sonido Blaupunkt.

John en Jerusalén
En el interior de las murallas, deambuló por las calles, por la vía Dolorosa, ocultándose tras sus gafas de sol, con su cabello largo por los hombros fluyendo como el de Jesús, por debajo del sombrero de Panamá. Miraba absorto a los árabes con sus tocados, sentados en los taburetes afuera de los cafés antiguos, fumando inmensos trozos de hashish, tres o cuatro de éstos halando de narguiles enormes, como Alicia en el país de las maravillas. Él también quería fumar, pero tenía miedo.

Una pareja en crisis
Algo andaba terriblemente mal con John Lennon y su esposa, Yoko Ono, mientras la nueva década amanecía en el Dakota. Sus vidas se estaban haciendo pedazos. La plegaria anual de John por el disfrute continuo de su salud y riqueza, había caído aparentemente en oídos sordos. La situación se había vuelto tan desesperada, que los sirvientes especulaban entre sí sobre la posibilidad de un suicidio doble.

Te invito a unirte a mí en Facebook o a seguirme en Twitter. También puedes unirte a René Portas en Facebook. Read More 

The e-book edition of Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon is now available for pre-order on Amazon, iTunes, and Barnes & Noble and will go on sale June 27, worldwide, on all platforms. You can download a free sample here.

The list price is a numerologically harmonious $9.99, but if you bought the print edition, published by Random House Mondadori, on Amazon, you can download the e-book for 99 cents.

I’m writing this in English because my self-taught Spanish, which I can read on about a fourth-grade level, is not up to the task. That’s why René Portas, who translated the original Spanish edition, has returned to do a new and improved translation.

René, who’s in Buenos Aires, and normally translates Russian writers like Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Chekhov, reminded me how vital yet under-appreciated translators are. Translation is not a matter of simply substituting a word in English for a word in Spanish. Rather, it’s a magical process. A great translator gets inside a writer’s head and somehow transforms his (or her) distinctive voice into an entirely new idiom.

That is what René has done with Nowhere Man. And after a 13 year absence from the market, the book will once again be available. Start spreading las noticias!

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. Read More 

When Random House Mondadori (since renamed Penguin Random House Grupo Editorial) first published Nowhere Man: Los últimos días de John Lennon in Spanish, in 2003, it sold out immediately. Since then, the book has become so difficult to find, some online dealers have been pricing it at more than $1,000.

For the past few months, the book’s original translator, René Portas (who normally translates the works of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, and Chekhov), has been putting together the definitive (and long-awaited) Spanish-language incarnation of the 15th anniversary Nowhere Man e-book, which was published in English last October, on Lennon’s 75th birthday.

The Spanish edition will be available worldwide within the next month—exact publication date to be announced.

In the meantime, René continues to work on making Nowhere Man perfect. And the price for this perfection will be a far more reasonable $9.99.

Stay tuned.

I invite you to join me on Facebook or follow me on Twitter. Read More 

If you missed my previous appearances on the John Lennon episode of Hollywood Scandals, the Reelz channel will re-broadcast the show, coast-to-coast, on the dates and times below:

Saturday, November 7: 3 P.M. ET, 2 P.M. CT, 1 P.M. MT, 12 P.M. PT

Sunday, November 8: 12 P.M. ET, 11 A.M. CT, 10 A.M. MT, 9 A.M. PT

Reelz is not available on demand, so set your DVR if you can’t tune in at the appointed times. (In New York City, Hollywood Scandals is on Time Warner Cable 128 and Fios 233 .) Click here to find the show on your local cable or satellite system.

If you’re wondering why Hollywood Scandals asked me to talk about Lennon and my bio Nowhere Man (which has just been re-released as an e-book), there are a lot of good reasons. You can find the latest one in a just-published book titled The Beatles: Having Read the Book, by Greg Sterlace. In this volume, the author, using Robert Christgau’s “Consumer Guide” format, reviews “the best and worst of the Beatle tomes.” In his Nowhere Man critique, he calls me “the Woodward and Bernstein of rock” and gives me an “A.”

That’s a title and a grade I can live with. Read More 

THE TIME WARPED HOUR 10/23/15; ROBERT ROSEN & THE RE-RELEASE OF "NOWHERE MAN" by Daniel Zuckerman on Mixcloud

In 2002, when the paperback edition of Nowhere Man was published, I started keeping track of interviews. I'd already been doing a lot of talking about the book for the two years since the hardcover had come out, and I knew that I was going to be doing a lot more. Also, having developed an abiding interest in numerology, I found numbers... significant.

Since the release of the 15th anniversary Nowhere Man e-book on October 9, I find myself in the midst of another interview frenzy. My chat with Daniel Zuckerman on his Time Warped Hour podcast—my second appearance on the show—is #179 since the publication of the paperback 13 years ago.

Zuckerman and I cover a lot of ground, discussing everything from conspiracy theories to John Lennon’s eating habits to (naturally) his music.

Over the course of the interview, Zuckerman, a Beatles aficionado, plays a lot of good Lennon tunes, including some obscure cuts that I’d never heard before. Perhaps the most surprising track is Elvis Costello’s cover of Yoko Ono’s “Walking on Thin Ice,” the song she and Lennon were working on the night he was assassinated.

So turn off your mind, relax, click on the player, and float through 86 minutes of provocative music and conversation. Read More 

If you haven't had a chance to download the Nowhere Man e-book, I'm happy to report that it's now available everywhere e-books are sold.

Below are links to Nowhere Man on the main online booksellers. Please note that if you've already bought the print edition on Amazon, you can download the updated e-book for 99 cents.

AMAZON

BARNES & NOBLE

iTUNES

KOBO

SCRIBD

SMASHWORDS

And if you don't want to pay for it, ask for the Nowhere Man e-book at your local library. They’ll pay for it. Read More 

For those of you not fluent in Latin or legalese, res ipsa loquitur means "the thing speaks for itself." And the following review of Nowhere Man, which I found today on Goodreads, does just that.

I received a copy of the galley to this book several years ago, before it was published. I could not put it down! Robert Rosen effectively delves into John Lennon’s dark side, but from a wholly analytical, non-judgmental perspective. Rather, Rosen affords an in-depth exploration of the complexities of Lennon's often-tortured psyche, with the insight and precision that only a seasoned journalist can provide. His writing is stark, intelligent and authoritative. I highly recommend this book. —Alissa Wolf

Having just released an updated 15th anniversary e-book edition of Nowhere Man, now available on Amazon (for the unbeatable “matchbook” price of 99 cents) and Smashwords, this review, to say the least, reminded me why the book has endured for those 15 years.

Thank you, Alissa Wolf! Read More 

Never have so many people, in so many places, done so much, for so long, to keep one book alive and relevant. Most of these people I've never met in person.

If the original publication of Nowhere Man was "like the end of the Vietnam war and I'm the Vietcong" (as I told M. A. Cassata when she interviewed me for Goldmine magazine in 2000), then the release of the e-book edition has been like a Ho Chi Minh Day parade celebrating 15 years of postwar survival.

A core group of supporters have been doing all they can to help me introduce the digital edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon to a new generation of readers.

Louie Free, the book-loving host of The Louie Free Radio Show: Brainfood from the Heartland, remains a rare independent voice carrying on the nearly forgotten tradition of free-form radio. In early 2000, during our first interview, a scheduled 15-minute chat turned into a four-hour Nowhere Man talkathon. Since then, from his base in Youngstown, Ohio, Louie has interviewed me dozens of times, most recently on October 9, for Lennon’s 75th birthday. I’ll be back December 8, and you can listen live here. And be sure to tune in for the holidays, when Louie will be playing Mary Lyn Maiscott’s “Christmas classic” (his words) “Blue Lights.”

M. A. Cassata and I once worked for the same publishing company. She edited and wrote for rock magazines; I edited men’s mags. Now she runs The MacWire, where she’s posted an interview and an article about the e-book.

The passion of the Spanish-speaking world for Nowhere Man took me by surprise when the book was first published in that language, in 2003. Nowhere is that passion more evident than on 10, Mathew Street, a Beatles Website based in Madrid. To celebrate John Lennon’s 75th birthday and the release of the e-book, they’ve run an interview with me in English and Spanish.

Fifteen years after Lady Jean Teeters and I first spoke about John Lennon for her Absolute Elsewhere site, I’ve come to regard the interview as a classic—an empathetic conversation that took place just as my life was undergoing a radical transition. For the e-book edition, Jean has posted promos on AE and on History Unlimited, another site she runs. You can also connect with her on Facebook’s The Spirit of John Lennon page.

Daniel Zuckerman’s The Time Warped Hour podcast and Bryan Schuessler’s Shu-Izmz site and podcast are two recent arrivals to the circle of support. Stay tuned for links to their upcoming John Lennon shows.

And a special thanks to Chris Reeves who designed the cover, an homage to the original design by Celia Wiley; to Ann Schneider who helped me secure the rights to the cover photo; and to everybody else who’s stood by me over the years. You know who you are. If you don’t, you should look here. Read More 

The new introduction to the 15th anniversary e-book edition of Nowhere Man, on sale tomorrow, in commemoration of John Lennon's 75th birthday, is titled "(Just Like) Starting Over." It's one of the many updated and revised sections of the book, which Amazon is offering for 99 cents to anybody who's bought the print edition on the site.

In the intro, I look back over the past 15 years, to the multitude of things that have changed in the world, in book publishing, and in my own life since Soft Skull Press released the original hardcover.

I also address the book’s critics, some of whom were driven into what I describe as “a state of spluttering apoplexy” by my “controversial” author’s note: “Nowhere Man is a work of investigative journalism and imagination.” I go into more detail about what, exactly, that sentence means.

Tomorrow, you can read the complete intro on Amazon. It begins like this:

What you’re now reading on your “device” is the latest incarnation of a book that was rejected by everybody before Soft Skull Press, a tiny independent operating out of a tenement basement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, published it in July 2000.

New York that summer was a place where it was still possible for an underground entity like Soft Skull to exist. The city itself had not yet become a real-estate playpen for anonymous oligarchs who sheltered their fortunes in $100 million apartments in thousand-foot-tall glass towers. The Twin Towers and the economy had not yet collapsed. George W. Bush was not yet president. The U.S. had not yet invaded Iraq. People did not yet assume that every word they launched into the electronic ether was stored and possibly analyzed by the NSA. And the publishing industry had not yet been turned upside-down by e-books, piracy, and the Internet. There was no Twitter, no Facebook; there were no smartphones. I didn’t know what a blog was. It was, in short, the final moment before the Old World gave way to iWorld—and an obscure, middle-aged writer could publish a book exclusively as hardcover with a gritty indie who, through a combination of old-fashioned PR skills and relentless audacity, could ignite a conflagration of media attention that would send that book rocketing up best-seller lists in multiple countries and in multiple languages. Read More 

Book publishers can be a timid lot. The mere threat of a lawsuit, even a baseless one, is often enough to get them to cancel a book contract. Deep-pocketed entities with tightly held secrets (like Yoko Ono and the Church of Scientology) understand this all too well and employ the tactic routinely.

Soft Skull Press, Nowhere Man's original publisher, was a notable exception. In 2000, a young man with a George W. Bush "Bring it on!" complex was running the company, and he was fearless when it came to lawsuits. That's why Soft Skull published Nowhere Man when virtually every other publisher had turned it down.

Soft Skull acted as though lawsuits were a good way to get publicity and sell books, an attitude that almost destroyed them, as the documentary Horns and Halos—about Fortunate Son, a George W. Bush biography they published that detailed Bush’s cocaine habit—vividly demonstrates.

For Nowhere Man, Soft Skull used the back cover photo from Lennon and Ono’s Two Virgins LP for the cover of the galley, which they sent out to the media for review. The cover served one purpose only: to provoke Ono.

“You’re crazy!” I told the publisher. “It’s her photo! She’s going to sue you!”

Sure enough, within hours of Soft Skull’s releasing the galley, Ono’s attorneys demanded that they cease and desist, and in an uncharacteristic act of sanity, they withdrew the galley and reprinted it with a plain white cover.

Now, more than 15 years later, as I prepare to launch the Nowhere Man e-book, its cover an homage to the cover Soft Skull ultimately used for the best-selling hardback, the galley—there might be about a hundred in circulation—has become a newsworthy artifact, though I’d never sell it on eBay.

Instead, I should hang it on my wall as a symbol of all the insanity Nowhere Man has survived.

 Read More 

The long-awaited e-book edition of Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon is at last available for pre-order, exclusively on Amazon.

The new introduction talks about all that's happened to me and to the book since Soft Skull Press published the original hardcover edition in 2000. The cover is a 15th anniversary homage to the Soft Skull cover.

There are also five bonus chapters and additional revelations about Lennon and Yoko Ono that I was unable to include in previous editions. I’ll discuss this in more detail in future posts.

The release date is October 9, Lennon’s 75th birthday.

Anybody who’s bought any edition of Nowhere Man on Amazon can download the e-book for 99 cents. (The regular price is $9.99.)

So please, click here to pre-order the e-book, and click here to like Nowhere Man on Facebook. Read More 

Dear Ted,
I read your piece in Salon, "The Future Is No Fun," about self-publishing your e-book, West of Babylon, and I wanted to let you know that it might be the most depressing story about the publishing industry I've ever read. I got about three quarters of the way through it before I had to stop and put it aside. It was just too bleak to go on. Too much "extreme cruelty." But I came back to it the next day, and skipped to the end, just to make sure it wasn't a suicide note. Then I kind of read it backwards, paragraph-by-paragraph, and felt a little better. I did appreciate your epiphany--if you can call it an epiphany--that you now understand how rough it is out there, and that from now on, you'll help anybody who asks you for help. I feel the same way.

You say that your working life now consists of sending out hundreds of e-mails to people in the media who might want to review your book. You say that you consider it a good day if someone gets back to you, even if they tell you, politely, to fuck off. What you don't seem to realize is that that's how it is now, even if your book isn't self-published. What you spend far too much time doing sounds disturbingly similar to what I've spent far too much time doing since a small, London-based indie published my latest book, Beaver Street, as a paperback and in all e-book formats, two years ago in the U.K., then last year in the U.S.

Still, I found your naïveté touching—calling the media “base hypocrites” because they run stories about authors turning to self-publishing but won’t acknowledge a self-published e-book unless it’s written by a celebrity who self-publishes by choice. You’re just learning now that the media is a viper’s nest of base hypocrites? Where’ve you been? You don’t get media attention by publishing books. You get media attention by committing a terrorist act or by assassinating a celebrity. Not PR gambits I’d recommend.

I should also mention that, though we’ve never met, I did know your father. He was one of my creative writing professors at City College, and as I found out, he could be a cruel bastard, as your sister, Erica, vividly recounts in her memoir, Yossarian Slept Here. But 40 years after the fact, I can sincerely thank him for helping to prepare me emotionally for what I’d have to face as I made my way in the book biz.

Your father, of course, had no illusions about the book-publishing industry. “You can’t live off royalties,” he told us the first day of class. “That’s why I’m teaching here.” (And he didn’t think too highly of agents, either, as I recall.)

All things considered, Ted, I think you’re doing OK. Do I really need to remind you that Salon is the media, and they are paying attention to you? Big time. I wish somebody at Salon would answer my e-mails.

Best,
Bob Rosen

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Jason Merkoski, a former employee of Amazon, was the leader of the team that built the first Kindle. Today he released an e-book, Burning the Page: The eBook Revolution and the Future of Reading.

Though I've not yet read the book, my sense of it, based on an interview with Merkoski in The New York Times, is that Amazon doesn't come off especially well. In response to a question about how people might react if they knew what was going on inside companies like Amazon, he said that Amazon, as well as Google and Apple, "have entire buildings filled with lawyers" whose job is "to keep people like me from even answering this question." He suggested, as well, that if the "veil of secrecy" that surrounds these corporations were lifted, people might boycott them.

Merkoski also mentioned that when it comes to censorship, a problem that I was dealing with last year, he does not trust the executives at any e-book retailer. Most of them, he said, “would rather pull e-books from the store, effectively censoring them, if that would avoid bad press.”

I’ve no doubt that this is all true. But I do question one point that Merkoski makes. “In 20 years,” he said, “the space of one generation, print books will be as rare as vinyl LPs.”

I’m not saying this won’t happen. I am saying that if it doesn’t happen, it’s because there are too many people, like me, who think reading on a screen is far less pleasurable than reading a printed book. Reading on a screen eliminates the sensuality and the connection you feel with a printed book. It’s more difficult to get lost in an e-book than it is in a printed book. Based on what I’ve heard and seen, I think there’s already an intense resistance to e-books among certain readers of all ages.

This was not the case when CDs began replacing vinyl LPs in the mid-1980s. Yes, there was some resistance to them among aficionados, but most people, myself included, couldn’t wait to get their hands on CDs, even if they already had the record in vinyl. That’s because people believed that CDs provided a better listening experience (and they took up less room).

Nobody, I’d argue, would suggest that e-books provide a better reading experience than printed books. Their advantages, as far as I can see, are that they take up less space, they’re cheaper, and they’re searchable. And that’s not enough to drive printed books into near extinction. Unless, of course, it is. Because when it comes to the book business, nobody knows what’s going to happen 20 minutes from now, much less 20 years.

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There have always been alternatives for people who'd rather cut off their thumbs than download a book on Amazon Kindle. The best known are the Barnes & Noble Nook and various Apple devices, which allow you to buy e-books directly from the Apple store. There's also a company called Kobo, which offers both a variety of e-readers and a wide selection of books.

But Kobo, as I’ve just learned, allows you to do something that no other company does: buy a competitively priced e-book, which you can read on any device, from your local independent bookstore.

Just go to Kobo’s list of participating stores, click on one near you, and download the book. I can’t think of a better way to get your hands on the e-book edition of Beaver Street (or any other e-book) while supporting a local brick-and-mortar business.

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The print edition of Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography is scheduled for publication in the US on March 23. But much to my surprise, the e-book has jumped the gun and is now available in Amazon Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook formats for the unbeatable and numerologically auspicious price of $9.99. (It’s also available on Kindle in the UK, and on various generic e-reader apps.)

So if you’re one of those people who love to read e-books on a sleek little tablet, why wait for the print edition? Download your copy of Beaver Street now!

Thanks for reading! And if you should see Beaver Street available as an e-book on any other sites, please, let me know.

 Read More