TRIBE's First Book Review from a Respected Washington Journalist

Veteran Washington, DC-based journalist and news commentator Darrell Delamaide has written a first book review on TRIBE. . .

Darrell Delamaide's Review of TRIBE

I am humbled.

Let's Make Me a Three-time Bestseller by Buying & Promoting My Latest Political Thriller

This week, the print edition of my latest political thriller, TRIBE, was released through Ingram Books, the largest book distributor in North America. TRIBE is now available for purchase in ebook as well as print editions through all major book vendors. I'm banking on it joining PERMANENT INTERESTS and CHASM on the Amazon Kindle bestseller lists and maybe other lists. This is where you, dear friends, can help. . .

How I Became a Bestselling Novelist
The first two thrillers have been on as many as three Amazon Kindle bestseller lists for nine months running. I hadn't done any promotion for them for a couple of years. In fact, I actually discovered they were bestsellers by accident. I was checking my bank account when I noticed an electronic funds transfer into the account by Amazon. I then checked my Amazon account, to find that PERMANENT INTERESTS had climbed three bestseller charts unbeknownst to me.  CHASM soon followed. I was stunned. The welcome Amazon money infusions got bigger by the month (though I've yet to put in an order for that Porsche I've had my eye on). What happened?

I'm still not sure. Apparently, word-of-mouth and online reader recommendations were responsible for the rising sales. Whatever happened, I'm not complaining. It's almost like winning the lottery. As a hardworking, dedicated author, I am humbled - especially after receiving endorsements and nice reviews/blurbs from two New York Times bestselling authors, followed by a bunch of overwhelmingly positive reviews from Amazon customers who had bought and read my books.

In January of this year, another bolt of lightning struck. As I was sipping my morning tea, reading the online news headlines, my niece called to say that I was featured on NBC's Today Show with Matt Lauer. Lo and behold! There was my face on national TV with Matt and a senior Simon & Schuster editor discussing whether I was the author of "O: A Presidential Novel," written anonymously and at that time a bestseller. The speculation over my alleged authorship continued in the Washington Post, Christian Science Monitor, Huffington Post and a host of other media. Not bad exposure for a little known writer. (Oh, BTW, I did not write "O" - and my books rather quickly surpassed "O"'s ebook sales.)

For every 100 print books sold today, 115 ebooks are sold. And this ratio in favor of ebooks is increasing steadily as more and more people switch to ereaders. Approximately 60,000 ereaders are sold every day. We are witnessing a revolution in publishing and reading. Old Publishing doesn't fully grasp the change and risks going the way of buggy whip makers. A decade from now, the Big 6 publishing houses of today will look like carcasses in a mastodon boneyard.  Like some other struggling writers, I've benefited from this trend to ereaders. As Border's folded and Barnes & Nobles struggles, the reduced physical retail book shelves have been more than made up by the expansion of digital retail shelves.

Here's Why It Makes Sense to Help Me Sell More Books
So, you ask yourself: Why should I help Bruno sell more books? What's he done for me? Good question and here are the reasons it's in your interest to help me:

• Almost no other writer of political thrillers lends the authenticity based on experience that I do in my thrillers. Each of my books undergoes a rigorous security review by the federal government due to my having worked for a quarter century in the twilight world of U.S. government secrets. Uncle Sam has redacted text and forced other changes in my books, thus, attesting to their genuineness. By making me a consistent bestseller, you heighten the quality of genre literature, give my competition incentive to also maintain high standards, and you acquire insider knowledge of how our national security establishment really functions.
• I truly write good stuff. As one of my reviewers noted, "Bruno writes in the same vein as thriller authors Ludlum, Forsythe and Silva; his writing is simultaneously polished and gripping. What sets him apart, however, is his nuts and bolts portrayal of how government offices and agents really do things, from the locks on the doors to the classified cables to the bureaucratic backstabbing." Let's reward quality!
• TRIBE is about how spies connive and operate against each other in places like Afghanistan, Pakistan,Yemen and that snake bed, Washington, DC. It's also about how string-pullers manipulate government policy for their self-aggrandizement. It includes al-Qaeda, the Taliban, spooks, Predator drones, memorable characters, sultry females, classified documents and SEX too! What more do you need for a good yarn?
• Finally, I owe it to Russian spy Anna Kuschenko Chapman with whom I've been having a one-sided conversation in this blog (see my two blog entries on Anna, a much misunderstood intelligence professional whose compounded tradecraft blunders and reckless party girl behavior in New York landed her briefly in the hoosegow and permanent banishment from the West). I'm trying to draw Anna out of her shell and get her to endorse my latest thriller. In return, I'll promise to base my next female character on her and to tone down my sarcasm about her.

I Need Reviews
Authors live and die by reviews of their books. The more reviews, the better. Fortunately, people like my books, given their positive reviews and the books' bestselling status. If you read TRIBE, please, please, please write a customer review on Amazon. I seek honest reviews (though, if you viscerally detest my writing, I'd much prefer that you let me know by private email).

Where to Buy My Books
My books are available in both print and ebook format online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Powell's, Alibris and other retailers. You can also order them through almost any brick and mortar store. TRIBE is priced competitively. Proceeds go to end world hunger, war, crime and evil. Actually, most goes to pay my mortgage, yet another reason to buy my books.

Letter from France

The French have a saying:  On ne change pas un équipe qui gagne.  Literally, it translates to "One does not change a winning team."  The English equivalent would be:  "If it ain't broke, don't try to fix it."  When I left the United States for Europe three weeks ago, the headlines in the publishing news centered on Border's bookstores going bankrupt and closing all remaining outlets.  The nation's biggest chain bookstore, Barnes & Noble, moreover, continues to struggle with its bottom line.  The irony, of course, is that big box stores, which drove independent bookstores to near extinction, are themselves now on the ropes, victims of burgeoning online retailing.  This kind of often wrenching business transformation is what the economist Joseph Schumpeter termed "creative destruction." 

In contrast with the U.S., it seems there is an independent bookstore on virtually every block in Paris.  A used book dealer opposite our hotel in Montparnasse was doing a brisk business selling books from stacks piled to the ceiling, a French literary version of the 1970's U.S. TV show about junk dealers, Sanford & Sons.  A customer would ask the aged Parisian shopowner for, say, an original edition of Breton's Entretiens.  He'd squint his eyes in concentration, then dive into a stack and pull it out.  Other indies in the French capital are spiffy literary boutiques.  All appeared successful, thriving small businesses.  This goes for the towns as well.  The French love to read.  For some reason, they prefer mostly to buy their books from shops.  At least so far.  But the indies here compete alongside big chains such as Gibert Joseph.  Nobody seems to be going under.

This gets to the question of quality of life.  In contrast with the U.S., one doesn't see much big box suburban sprawl here and most cities and towns don't look drained of commercial life.  The French centreville is a vibrant economy of shops and boutiques where the shopper can pick up everything from foies gras to band-aids without schlepping out to the burbs.  And the quality is top-notch.  Arch-conservative curmudgeons back home rail against "European socialism," how it stymies economic growth and puts Big Brother government into citizens' lives.  Well, France has the world's fifth largest and wealthiest economy, the second largest economy in Europe (behind Germany).  The French economy took a smaller hit in the 2008-2009 recession and bounced back more quickly.  GDP growth has been stronger than expected, at one percent, one of the best performances in Europe.  The French are the wealthiest Europeans, accounting for more than a quarter of richest European households.  Globally, France ranks as the fourth wealthiest nation, being proportionally the wealthiest as well as one of the least debt-laden.  Take that, Mitch McConnell.

Certainly, the French struggle with all manner of problems, political, economic and social.  But they, and their European neighbors, offer lessons in quality of life from which Americans can learn.  So, as the grand guignol of politics continues to play out like a trainwreck in Washington, let's not be so arrogant as to think we Americans have all the answers and that our European friends have nothing to offer us.  It's time for the American people to contemplate changing its leadership team.  The system indeed is broke and requires fixing.  Meanwhile, I'm off to pick up a baguette and cafe au lait, and maybe an original edition of Breton.