The Germans haaate the Malice Box

Did I mention my husband has written a book?

They've sold the rights to more than a dozen languages - though so far it's only in print in Polish, Czech, Italian, Dutch, (British,) and German. And while sales are still doing well in the UK, and iffy in the U.S., it's apparently selling quite well in Germany. But the reviews on the German Amazon are hilarious. They hate hate hate it. Passionately. But they're buying it. Maybe they hate it so much they go buy extra copies to hate it some more?

So far there are 14 reviews of "The Malice Box" on Amazon.de. Martin translated a few choice bits for me:

"one star is too many"
"an entirely new dimension of awfulness"
"threw it into the trashcan"

The best review, three stars, says it's "not so bad."

I of course think it's great, and since it's meeting with some success elsewhere, it's easy to laugh at the crazy German thing. Especially since it's selling well there.

So a few other "Malice Box" things of note:

The husband just days ago hit the send key on the first complete draft of the sequel to the Malice Box. Very exciting. It's slated for Penguin distribution in the UK/Commonwealth-types in 2009.

The Malice Box in paperback should hit the shelves, at least in England, at the very end of February.

There is now an audio version of the book, read by a British actor named John Oliver, a guy who actually had a small part in "Star Wars," which Martin loves. Though I'd of course like to see an alternate reading by John Oliver of "The Daily Show" for fun. ... The audio version they sent us a copy of is only in cassette so far, and extremely expensive (like $150 I think) because they market them to libraries. Hoping it comes out in CD later, as the "Star Wars" John Oliver does an excellent job.

Robert's blog -- which oddly never got that much traffic -- is now available in Dutch. (In the book, one of the characters is told to create a blog to prove that he's actually going to certain places. Martin created a real Blogspot account for him, and posted all the pictures referenced in the book.)

MaliceBoxQuest, the online contest Penguin created to tout the book's UK launch, is still online (though the contest is long over) but I think it may go offline at some point. It's worth checking out if you like complicated little puzzles.

Back in October, Martin spoke at a lunchtime Cambridge in America event about his book and a bit about his journalism career. It's on video and they've posted it online.

Cambridge in America also invited him to speak In San Francisco. It was held in the rather posh yacht club in the Marina, the St. Francis. Here's my man:


When we were out for that trip, he also did a reading at Book Passage in Corte Madera, an excellent independent book store. After we got back to Brooklyn, they sent him a box of personalized stationery as a thank you. (You can buy your own from them at that link. It's good stuff.)

Though for that California trip, it was the appearance at the Barnes & Noble in Bakersfield that really moved some inventory. Many thanks to everyone who showed up for that reading, especially my mom, who rallied the troops.


And also thanks to Allison Collins, my sister-in-law, who is doing freelance book publicity. She helped set up the California book tour for us. She's got very reasonable rates -- even if she's not married to your brother.

Here's part of Bakersfield's SRO crowd:



A LiveJournaler gave the book a nice new review, ( "... turned out to be quite dope.")

And lastly, another plug for Good Reads, sort of a Facebook just about the books you've read. The site's founder is a 30-year-old guy named Otis Chandler in L.A., though best as I can tell, he's not related to the Otis Chandler, last, great hope for the L.A. Times before the Tribune Co. "synergized" it into goopiness.

Labels: bakersfield, books, malice box, pictures

- posted by Amy @ 1/20/2008 10:04:00 AM