Tangotiger Blog

Friday, November 29, 2024

The Book - available at a discounted 17.95$

From now until the end of 2024, we are making the printed version of The Book available for the discounted price of 17.95$ at Amazon.  The e-book is always available for 9.99$ if you prefer.

Sunday, March 12, 2017

Weekend at SABR’s (part 1 of 3)

?This is the non-technical post.  Part 2 will have the new stuff I did on "What If" and Part 3 will have the new stuff on "Shifts against RHH".  Both are work-in-progresses.  Which is really what Statcast is, every question answered, uncovers another two.  Our LACK of knowledge will grow exponentially with more Statcast findings!  More accurately, the awareness of our lack of knowledge will do so.

There's plenty of terrific people I met, and I don't want to go through the whole list, out of fear I'll be missing some.  Let me pick out a couple of youngsters, to make a larger point.  If I even have one.  I have no idea, I'm just typing right now.  Alex Marcotte came down from Montreal to see me and Mitchel (who I met for the first time as well).  Alex is a kid.  I don't know if he's a teenager or in his early 20s.  Alex came into our saber world when I had put out an APB to have someone fix my Wiki.  My webhost did some upgrades, which affected the software I was using.  And I had NO inclination to spend time trying to fix it. That's a job for someone in their 20s, maybe 30s.  That's not me any more.  He offered, and a few hours later, with some back and forth suggestions on my part, he restored my wiki into archive mode.  That was my very first dealings with him.  When clubs and then Mickey was looking for some tech help, I immediately sent Alex their way.  Terrific kid, and it was great that he made the trek from Montreal, all with his Expos cap on.

After the presentation, there was a line forming, which took me very much by surprise. Alex was in that line to thank me, when really I should have been the one to thank him. Whatever he thinks I may have done for him, he did more for me.  Then there were a couple of girls also in line, probably no older than Alex, named Tess and Julia.  You gotta understand, this saber-thing is dominated by men, to an absurd extent.  To a very inefficient extent.  There's no reason that the % of women fans can't also be the same as the % of saber fans.  And I gotta figure that attendance must be some 40%+ women.  Everyone should commit to adding one female follower on their Twitter feed every day, just to try to counter the bias.  So, I was very surprised to see The Book, released a bit over 11 years ago when so many weren't even teenagers, somehow have the staying power to have whatever impact it had on Tess and Julia.  I thank them as well.  And in due time, I imagine they'll make their mark on the saber world.

I also met Bill James. His presentation was directly before ours.  But I didn't meet him then, nor did he see our presentation.  He wasn't aware of the schedule, and he had other media committments.  I spent two hours with him and Tom Tippett later in the weekend.  Tom Tippett basically led the saber-life I had envisioned for myself.  He's about ten years older than me, so you can say he hit the saber-world at the exact perfect time. Tom's path is the one I admire, but Bill is the one we all revere.  Brian Kenny called him "genius emeritus".  A perfect title for Bill.  Just as the hockey world is lucky to have Gordie Howe as the face of hockey, one that later generation stars Wayne Gretzky and Bobby Orr still will instantly deflect to whenever their own exploits are brought up, I'm glad we have Bill James as that face.  There's several dozen people you can hold out as having had or will soon have great impact on the saber world.  But it's Bill's world, and he was the perfect guy to start it all, and to continue to inspire even more.  None of us is Bill James, which means we can all find our own little place in this saber world, without thinking that someone is trying to get to the top.  It's a big playground, and we're all on the same team.

Now that I typed that, I see I had no larger point to make.  Let me now post those slides.  See you in another thread...

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

The Book is now 10 years old!

?I should check the actual date we sold our first book, but it was right around mid-to-late February.  The book was packed and shipped out of my garage.  I still remember the first 25 boxes that arrived with 500 books.  We did it without investing a single penny.  We simply put out a call to our faithful readers, offering a 15 or 20% discount for a preorder.  We got about 200 pre-orders, which was enough to finance the first set of 500 books.

By the time the baseball season ended, sales were quickly slowing.  We ended up with 1500 units sold.  Since we had a target of 1000 units, we figured we exceeded our modest expectations and tapped out our market.

Fast forward to today, and we sold 3000 units this past year, pretty much the same figure every single year of The Book's existence.  Word-of-mouth is simply tremendous, and we have no idea who is doing all the talking.  But for The Book to experience no decline and no jump in sales astounds me every year.

Thank you to everyone for your support!

Saturday, June 06, 2015

If you can read The Book for free, is there any reason not to?

?I presume it's available via inter-library loan.  But, it's also available via Amazon's Look Inside.  And if you know how to search, you can pretty much read the whole book.  For example, go to Amazon.  Then click the image of the book (helpfully reminded about the Look Inside feature).  The do a search for: batting lineup.  You'll be presented with page 123 or 124, which is the start of the chapter.  (If you can't get the very start, we have excerpted on our site.)  When I tried it, I was able to get to page 128, then it restarts at page 139 up to page 149.  I think Amazon randomizes the pages, so you can get out and try to get back in.  And you can try other search words, like Leadoff.  When I did that, I was able to get to page 129 and read until page 137.  And I was able to get pages 150, 151, which is the end of the chapter.

So, that's about as easy as I can make it for someone to read for free. 

Wednesday, May 13, 2015

Batter-Pitcher Matchups, Hot-Cold Streaks and all that Book Jazz

?There's nothing new here in these articles for regular readers around here, but I enjoyed reading them anyway.  The author was nice enough to cite The Book throughout, and it opens the door to new readers.  At the very least, it allows for a good discussion to take place.

Sunday, February 08, 2015

Support The Book: buy anything other than The Book at Amazon

Next time you make an Amazon purchase (The Book or not), use this link. I get a referral cut, and it costs you nothing at all. It's win-win. And don't feel bad if you haven't done so in the past. Half the time I buy something at Amazon, I forget to use my referral link to get a commission. As for The Book sales themselves: they are the same every year. It's #59 right now in baseball books at Amazon, and I could have written that in any of the past several years. I really have no idea how to explain it. If it was trending down say 20% or 50% every year, I'd get that. If it was trending up 20% every year, then it'd have some multiplier effect (and eventually, I'd expect it to burst). But as it stands, we sell the same number of units every year since 2006 (more or less). I have no idea how to forecast that. I thank everyone who has been generous enough to write about, talk about it, or otherwise recommend it via word-of-mouth.

Thursday, November 20, 2014

Who wrote what in The Book

?Mickey wrote the Sac Bunt chapter, the Streaks, and Game Theory.  Andy wrote Clutch, Platooning, IBB, Appendix, and the last section in the Tools chapter.  I wrote most of the Tools, Matchups, Batting Order, both Pitchers, and Base Stealing.

Monday, April 28, 2014

The Book, now Print-on-Demand

?Going back to our roots of self-publishing, The Book is now available directly from the publisher (i.e., us) via Amazon's CreateSpace.  Interestingly, CreateSpace uses the same printing press as our original edition.  It also comes with a Matte cover, for those interested in such things, as well as the thin white paper (rather than the thicker cream paper from the previous publisher).  You can buy it there:

http://www.createspace.com/4539644

Put in promo code JAZCJFML to get 35% off.  Including 3.59$ for shipping, that comes out to $17.86.  We'll keep that going for a couple of weeks.  It'll be available at Amazon.com within the next few days right now.  List price is 21.95$, but with Amazon, they can and will give discounts based on their algorithm. In the last month, it was going for around 18$.

Oh, almost forgot: you'll have to create an account, even though CreateSpace is owned by Amazon.  For whatever reason, they never integrated their systems.  Kinda silly, but for those who don't want to create a new account, then wait for it to appear on Amazon.

Thanks again!

Tuesday, April 01, 2014

The Book - out of print

It took us quite a while to get here, but The Book is finally out of print.  But, all is not lost, so read on for a little bit of history.

The three of us (me, MGL, Andy) self-published The Book in Feb, 2006, shipping the book ourselves out of my garage.  We funded our operation with pre-orders from the Straight Arrow faithfuls (think of it like kickstarter, before kickstarter).  I think we gave a small discount in return.  Anyway, the response was great as we got some 200 orders or so.  We started with about 20 boxes shipped to my house (around 500 books).  Those quickly ran out, so we ordered another though smaller batch.  We ?kept that cycle going, until it seemed we exhausted the demand.  I think that was about 1500 books sold. 

At the end of 2006, figuring that we did the best we could, and thinking that the demand would slowly die down, we decided to transfer publishing rights to a publisher.  However, The Book remained a constant seller, neevr getting those dips.  Those publishing rights reverted back to us a bit over a year ago.  In the process, we bought the remaining inventory, and through ACTA Sports, were able to sell these final copies.  Which it finally happened on Amazon a day or two ago.

In the meantime, with Herculean efforts by Straight Arrow reader, pretzel-maven, and all-round good guy Brad, we went into the ebook business.  The no-fuss, no-muss Apple/Amazon experience is tremendously appealing.  The Book simply... exists.

Anyway, Amazon offers a POD option (print-on-demand).  We're going to work toward that.  Until that happens, the hardcopy version of The Book is no more.  Expect the prices on Amazon to skyrocket, based on past experience, as the automated programs that set the prices are going to be perplexed by the lack of supply.

 

Sunday, November 24, 2013

The Book now available on Kindle!

? Here's the link to use.

You can also click on the image link in the top left corner of any page on this blog.

***

For you readers who have previously bought The Book in hardcopy, at Amazon.com, Amazon has a program for you.  We're still trying to set that up, but once it's up, you can get it for 2.99.  It's something Amazon calls Matchbook.

It'll be for a limited time only, so, be on the lookout for that.

Thursday, October 31, 2013

The Book to soon be out of print

As the last of the printed copies from our last publisher is being sold (estimated to finish by Jan, if not earlier), I just want you guys out there, who have been waiting, to go get it. Don't say you haven't been warned.  Our current distributor (ACTA) has been a pleasure to work with, as they help us unload the last of our print inventory throught their various channels (naturally, Amazon being the prime spot).

We will be transitioning into e-books (Kindle soon, and already out in iBooks/Apple for several months now).  We *may* allow The Book to come back onto the marketplace in a printed format as well, to co-exist with the e-version, several months down the road.  Maybe.  The plan is to see how the e-version does, with no print-competition.

***

Reminder: if you make any Amazon purchases, whether you are buying The Book or not, just click on the Amazon link in the top left corner, as we get referrals for any purchase made in that session, at ZERO cost to you.

Tuesday, October 01, 2013

GoodReads on The Book

?I didn't realize the extent to which readers at Good Reads covered The Book: 22 reviews, many pretty lengthy, and 265 ratings.  

It's pretty nuts that The Book continues to sell as consistently as it does, with the only visibility being this blog.  So, thank you to all who are spreading the word, which is really the best advertising we could get!

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Seven Years, and still top 40

?I have to say, I'm pretty impressed with you guys.  We published The Book back in Feb of 2006.  Amazon still has it in its top 40 for baseball books.  (If you knock out the duplicate titles, we're actually #31 right now.)

We do no advertising, outside of this website.  So, we really rely completely on word-of-mouth.

Anyway, thanks very much for whatever it is that you guys are doing.  It's working!

Review copy of e-version (iTunes) of The Book

We have available one promo code for iTunes, for someone wanting to review the e-version of The Book.  You have to be a site that has at least a medium amount of reach.  I'll be using Alexa.com to make that determination.  Email me at tom~tangotiger~net (hopefully, you can figure out my email from that). Promo code will be handed out tomorrow.?

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

The Book - 40% off

If you purchase directly from ACTA, either use this link, or enter promo code BOOK40.  You will see the price of 13.17$ when you checkout? (plus 3.49$ shipping for a total of 16.66$). The price at Amazon is sometimes lower than this (with the Supersaver Shipping), but not always (like right now).

Tuesday, March 26, 2013

Potomac, former publisher of The Book, sold to Nebraska Press

?Here's the news.

Monday, March 25, 2013

eTheBook? iTheBook? TheIBook?  Whatever… now available!

We'll have it for Kindle and Nook very soon, but for those with a preference for iTunes, download it here, for 9.99$:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/the-book/id625037452?mt=11

I'd suggest a couple of you guys take the leap, and report back to everyone else how it behaves in electronic form.  We have complete control, and a loyal The Book reader, Brad Lappin (*), ?took care of the whole thing for us, so we might be in a position to respond. 

(*) Brad has actually put in a tremendous amount of work into the design and production of it, and without him, I doubt we'd have anything ready for several more months.  The smartest thing we've done I think is having him as part of the team. If you like how the electronic version behaves, give him a big thanks.

There is zero new material.  It's actually the original self-published version of 2006, and not the reprint version of 2007.

Friday, March 15, 2013

Crowdfunding

Some interesting examples of crowd-funding, and low-price-selling.

The one with the software sounds like the standard "shareware" model, that you can use it for free, but the creator asks for donations.  If you have 250,000 users and 2% donate, that sounds like a typical conversion rate.

***

We kind of did our own "Kickstarter" for The Book, before there even was a Kickstarter.  As some of you know, we self-published, and had decided on "pre-sales" in order to fund the initial printing costs.  At the quantity we were printing, we needed about 6$ a book, I think like 3000$.  We could have funded that ourselves, but it also allowed us to guage interest in The Book.  I mean, why spend 3000$, if we're only going to sell 100 books?  We offered I think it was a 2$ discount, if you pre-ordered.   Anyway, we got enough interest to go ahead and at least breakeven.  And then we just kept reprinting as more sales came in.?

(I should note that we had already spent 1000+ man-hours in the research, writing, production, etc.  So, we were not going to "break-even" on that, just on the printing and shipping costs.)

 

Wednesday, February 20, 2013

The e-Book, coming soon

?A faithful Straight Arrow reader is working diligently on making the e-version of The Book top-notch.  We're still weeks away, but we'll get there soon enough.