Yeah, they were cheap shots that wouldn't be great in a standup routine. Presented the way they were, though, was pretty hilarious. It's the kind of thing that's good for a cheap laugh once, but if this stunt was done again it would be lame.
Yeah, I mean that's pretty much exactly what he said about it, it wasn't his A material and he didn't want to make people pay for his B stuff so he made it free. Then slip in a few of his better stories to give a taste to people who don't know who he is in book form. I agree that they are nothing spectacular in a vacuum, but you have to understand that he actually stepped up to the plate and tried to get them posted to the actual twitter accounts with his real money. Yeah, I'm sure he knew they would get rejected/deleted but would you have taken that chance? I'm currently enjoying Hilarity Ensues. I have to say though, the sext stories he keeps pimping are nothing great in my mind, but maybe that's because I'm already aware of bloodninja and it's basically the same thing. Though like stated above, he used his real name and phone to do it, that puts it on a different level than an anonymous screen name.
I read "Hilarity Ensues" last night, and it is easily the best of the three books, and a nice end to the trilogy. I wasn't expecting much, but it was far better than AFF, and much better written than IHTSBIH.
That is actually a brilliant idea. Has anyone tried this for guerilla marketing before? Do Google have any fair use policies?
I'm about half way through it right now and mostly agree. His style has gotten much better. The one thing I can't get over is how naive he still is about people: Spoiler He keeps saying HotNurse is a wonderful person and their relationship was about love and things just didn't work out even though she married and got pregnant from ANOTHER CELEBRITY LESS THAN A YEAR AFTER BREAKING UP WITH HIM. She is a starfucker, how can he not see this?
As long as he had some random post that mentions One Million Moms, and has at least 24 hours for this to stick.
I finished Hilarity Ensues, and while I do think that it is more well-written than both AFF and IHTSBIH, I didn't think that it was anywhere near as funny as either of those books. Most of the stories in Hilarity Ensues didn't even feel like they were supposed to be that funny. Tucker's commentary about the situations that he found himself in was hilarious, but that was also the case in his previous two books. The only stories that I actually found to be humorous were the one where he gets the stereo system for his car and a couple of the stories about Hate. It was a good read overall and I am really looking forward to see the books that Tucker is writing outside of the fratire genre.
To me the most impressive thing is that Hilarity Ensues is self-published by Tucker himself, and it debuted at No. 2 on the NYT Best Seller.
I didn't actually read this thread before posting this, so sorry if this has already been mentioned, but the second Talk of the Town piece in last week's New Yorker is about Tucker. I can't be the only person on here who finds that both hilarious/somehow tragic.
I've recently been wearing my Tucker IHTSBIH tshirt out in public (I got a swag bag from Gris after he toured with Tucker). I get TONS of comments on the shirt, but not one person has known the reference. Maybe it's a Canadia thing. I find it odd.
Personally I find that not much people in our country know the book very well. I have zero friends that have read or heard of it, and I myself stumbled by it just by chance--- I merely saw it on the shelf at the bookstore and thought it looked interesting. I would have thought this is the kind of book would be worn and dog-eared by anyone from 19-30 in a country that like booze as much as ours.
I'm not a regular user of DVD rental stores or anything - but still, the DVD shop near me keeps a fair chunk of IHTSBIH dvd's on the shelf - and they seem pretty popular. Every time I go in, at least a majority of the copies are rented out and there's just the place holder plate that this movie will be back soon. Anecdotally - very few of my friends have heard of it / watched it. But there seems to be some kind of audience for it here.
Is there any mention of the publishing process? Self publication from an established, million selling author is way different than the self publishing fat shut-in writing vampire fiction on a laptop covered in cat poop. Trent Reznor and Radiohead do this too. Apparently works in their favor. Metallica is making noises about it themselves. The latter I'd love to see how they do it considering their audience is fucking enormous. I'm a fan of the experiments Stephen King did with E-publishing in the late 90s, early 00s. They didn't work, but he tried. The stories also sucking ass didn't help the sales.
No clue. All I know is I noticed HE was published by "Blue Heeler" books, which I had never heard of, so I did a quick google search and discovered Blue Heeler is Max's own company. Pretty smart, if you ask me, seeing as how most publishing companies usually take more than just the lion's share of sales, and Max has already been through this process a couple times so he probably just learned the ropes (and likely stole some ideas...) and then was able to publish the book himself. Like you mentioned, the fact that he had two prior books that sold pretty well probably opened up a lot of doors for him. Looks like Blue Heeler may be picking up where Rudius failed... As a poster above mentioned, there is a New Yorker article that apparently addresses Max's self-publishing. I don't subscribe to the New Yorker, and so I haven't read the article.
This right here is why the publishing industry is going to shit the bed soon. They spend millions of dollars promoting authors, most of which will be complete failures and cost more than they produce. Now when they do find the diamond in the rough the writer has the means to cut the publishers out of the mix when they become profitable, that's pretty painful.
This is assuming that said writer is interested in marketing and distributing his material. I'm probably talking out of my ass here, but if I was a writer, I'd probably want to spend more time writing than dicking with marketing and distribution. While it's great that a guy like Tucker can distribute and market his own writing, he strikes me as a control freak of the highest order. I doubt a guy like Dan Brown really gives a shit about how his book gets to people, so long as he collects a check every month. As long as there are more Dan Browns than Tucker Maxs, I can't see the publishing model going away. At least immediately. I can see the balance shifting as more and more people stop reading books and getting their reading material on tablets and e-readers. But before that, no.
Yeah but knowing Brown, he sure as hell is interested in the size of said check. He's kinda a poor example, since Brown is someone who clearly writes with his mind on mass appeal and sales. In addition to desire, it's also probably a fair bet that Tucker has more of a talent for this sort of thing than, say, Jonathan Franzen does. Literature, especially Capital-L-Fancy-People Literature, seems likely to attract relatively few people with a knack for this kinda thing. I'm kind of surprised that authors like Tucker aren't tied into a sort of conditional contract. Something like the "team option" in sports, where you have a four year contract and the team has the right to extend it for a fifth. It doesn't seem that difficult to envision contracts along the lines of "We'll publish your book, and if you do well enough according to these barometers, it triggers this second deal for another book." Most contracts I've heard of seem to be either one-shot deals, or for X number of books. Conditional contracts seem like a good way for them to capture a lot of the downside without taking on a ton of additional risk. Or maybe that sort of thing is common and Max just avoided it. I admittedly have little expertise here.
My guess was that he was locked up for his two first books, because if he could have I assume he would have self-published AFF as well, but I'm definitely not sure about it.
I have a lot of thoughts on this. The Forbes Article- It was well-written technically, and I'm very happy to see Tucker move on and find happiness in his life. As he himself noted, being drunk and debaucherous is great in your 20s, but at some point, it loses its appeal. Fun like that rarely lasts forever. However, good language aside, the article was mediocre. I don't mind the author injecting himself as a character in the piece, and I appreciate his honesty about being an envious loser. (Although I note he is infinitely kinder in his self-appraisal than he is in judging Tucker) However, the lengths to which he goes in slamming Tucker and his lifestyle, and his constant passive-aggressive, douchey comments (born of the same alpha male envy he claims to "be almost over") are just annoying. There's too much "I'm a whiney, pathetic dude suffering from typical white male liberal guilt". No, the fact that Tucker doesn't understand how his stories "hurt" random people who read his words doesn't mean he lacks self-awareness in that area. It just means he's not yet a PC-brainwashed tool racked with guilt. Thank fuck for that. I would also note that the Pick-Up Artist community, which the author was a part of, (shelling out $15k for the privilege) is vastly more misogynistic than anything I've read by Tucker. My Experience with Tucker and the Site- I first stumbled upon tuckermax.com through a link on Maddox in late 2003, a few months before I turned 17. I thought it was hilarious. I turned 25 recently, and while I'm a radically different human being, and have a very different interpretation of many of Tucker's stories, I still find them every bit as funny. There's just a real sense of fun and adventure to them, like a low-brow, salacious version of Richard Feynmann's tales. The RMMB was awesome, and I even got to moderate the MMA section, which was fun, too. I loved the ruthless mockery and verbal smackdowns of idiots, an element sadly lacking from this board. My favorite topic was probably the Cloud Starchaser debacle, although the whole mess with TeenBarbie was also wonderful to read through. I talked to Tucker through PMs and e-mails occasionally, but never met the guy, even when I lived in LA County and trained jits. I generally liked him through our interactions. Thoughts on Tucker's Works- I consider "I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell" his weakest effort, although still quite good and funny. Too many of the stories I had already read on the site, and the few new ones disappointed, with the notable exception of "Midlands, Texas", which is one of my favorite Tucker stories ever. I bought "Assholes Finish First" and thought it was a notable improvement. It was much better written in terms of language, had a more clever presentation of the punchlines, and was better paced. It also had more consistently funny stories. AFF was a really funny, very good book. One of the best humor works I've ever read, in fact. I will buy "Hilarity Ensues" soon and am almost finished with "Sloppy Seconds" (started it last night), I think it's also quite good, although not on the level of AFF. As for the movie? It was good and had a few really funny moments. It wasn't anything special or an all-time great comedy, but I did rank it very slightly higher than "The Hangover" (also quite good). I also don't think a lot of people on this board realize how insanely rare it is for a small indie movie to even make back its budget through theatrical release, or even through that plus ancillary rights. The fact that it even made $1.5 million at the domestic box office is incredible. There are a lot of indie movies with big name stars like Woody Harrelson, Paul Giamatti, or Steve Buscemi that gross well under a million. I wish Tucker the very best, and am nothing but thankful for all the entertainment he has brought me through the years. I will definitely check out whatever project he is involved in next.