THE NIGHT AND THE MUSIC—some FAQs
How do I order the $2.99 eBook?
Here are some links that will get you there:
What about Apple? Will I be able to get The Night and the Music in the iTunes store?
Eventually, but not quite yet. Of course you can download a free Kindle app for iPhone, iPad, and indeed almost anything but a pop-up toaster, and access Kindle content that way. (I understand Jeff Bezos has somebody working on that toaster.)
Far as I’m concerned, it’s not a real book unless a tree dies. How do I get The Night and the Music in real book form?
There’ll be print-on-demand trade paperbacks on sale at online booksellers, or through your local brick-and-mortar store, in two weeks or so. The price is $14.95.
You don’t understand. I want a signed copy.
No problem. At last count, there are thirteen top mystery booksellers who will be carrying signed copies. You can drop by one of their stores, phone up, or order online. The full list is on Matthew Scudder’s Page.
Or you can order from our own website operation, LB’s Bookstore. Our price is $15 plus shipping.
You only ship to the U.S. I live in Canada/Scotland/Tierra del Fuego. Don’t you care about your overseas readers? How can I get a signed copy?
I cherish my overseas readers, but stopped shipping out of the country because postal rigamarole makes it way too much trouble for an operation our size. The booksellers on Matthew Scudder’s Page are not thus constrained, and most if not all of them will be delighted to fill your order.
And, of course, the eBook is accessible just about anywhere. International prices may vary among online retailers, so you may want to shop around, but you’ll find it.
Will there be a hard cover edition?
Otto Penzler of Mysterious Bookshop has an upscale leatherbound signed-and-numbered edition of 100 copies that should be ready sometime in November. It’ll be gorgeous—and, at $150, it ought to be. (It’ll also sell out, so if you want one, better call: (800) 352-2840.)
It’s possible there’ll be a hardcover trade edition as well, sometime in the future, but at this stage I’d say chances of that are fairly slim.
What about an audiobook? What about foreign editions? Some of us like to read with our ears, and some of us prefer our native tongue. What are we, gehackte Leber?
I should have audiobook news soon. And my agent, the estimable Danny Baror (danny@barorint.com), will be representing the book at Frankfurt Book Fair. The Matthew Scudder books have been translated into a couple dozen languages, and I have every expectation that The Night and the Music will join them.
LB
LB's BLOG 
Excellent! Just bought the Kindle version seconds ago. I hope it’s a huge hit for you!
Thanks, Joe. Hope you enjoy it!
These are NOT in Enough Rope, correct? (There’s $2.99 in it for you if the answer is “no”).
Hopefully you didn’t mention this here on or Amazon. My eyes are end-of-the-week tired.
Finally finished up A Drop of the Hard Stuff and am now working through Afterthoughts. Both definitely worth the money. Seems that Afterthoughts could be a very good marketing tool for your other books. I’ve always been more Bernie and Scudder, but I’m looking outside them now, and even outside your series.
Kosmo, the bulk of these are indeed in Enough Rope. Two are new stories, otherwise unpublished: “Mick Ballou Looks at the Blank Screen” and “One Last Night at Grogan’s”. Brian Koppelman’s mostalgic ssay, “Growing Up With Matt Scudder,” is also new, as is my afterword. Whether it’s worth $2.99 to you thus is your call.
(shrug) Why not? OK, I contributed to your retirement fund once again.
Kudos for going indie. I wouldn’t be surprised if you joined the Kindle Million Club this time next year
From your lips to God’s ear! (But I’m not counting on it…)
No sweat, the Kindle Million Club, easy peasy. Addictive stories. Sad stories. Redemptive stories.
Love having more Scudder pieces.But — my Kindle edition doesn’t have the Merciful Angel of Death story — it’s listed, but the copy is Batman’s Helpers (run twice in other words). It’s OK — the other stories make up for it, but what did I miss?
Oops! I can confirm what Maria says: my Kindle version of the book (bought from Amazon) includes the story BATMAN’S HELPERS twice in a row, and does not include THE MERCIFUL ANGEL OF DEATH at all. (The second instance of the BATMAN story bears the title THE MERCIFUL ANGEL OF DEATH, but it’s actually the BATMAN story again. Not a big deal, bur if a corrected version gets uploaded, please let us know so we can re-download. 🙂
Joe, a corrected version has indeed been uploaded. One reader contacted Amazon and had the new version sent to replace the flawed one; presumably this will happen automatically when people connect via wireless, but I don’t know how smoothly this has been happening. Please let me know the outcome. If there’s a particular process one has to go through, I’ll post it here as soon as I know about it. Sorry for the aggro!
No worries! These things happen.
The version I have is still the “flawed” edition. I’m not sure if I need to do something to manually update it or not. I did run a WhisperSync just to be sure, and no updates were found. I also used the archive feature to remove The Night & The Music from my active books, and then tried to re-download it, but it still appears to be the other version.
I wonder if it would be easier just to delete it altogether, and then re-purchase it. Silly computers.
I’ll look into it a bit more after work. Have a good day!
-j.
Update: I spent about half an hour tonight trying to get the Kindle app (for iPhone/iPod Touch) to re-sync with Amazon and download the fixed version of the book, to no avail. Even logging back into my Amazon account and trying to force a manual re-sync from that end yielded no joy.
I eventually solved the problem in a novel way: by deleting the Amazon-purchased copy from the unit altogether, then re-buying the book at Smashwords. It’s working fine now. 🙂
Granted, buying the book twice isn’t ideal, but hell, it’s still a tremendous value, and I’m very happy to support Mr. B’s venture into self-publishing.
And it makes me feel a little less guilty about getting “Small Town” via my local library, rather than buying a copy of my own. Heh.
Joe, I’m really sorry you had to do this. If there’s anything you want at LB’s Bookstore, just order it and we’ll give you $5 off on it. No expiration date on this, least we can do.
We’re trying to find out how to get the corrected version without buying the book twice. (It only applies to about 25-30 copies; that’s all that were purchased before the glitch was caught and corrected.) One person reported that he called Amazon, that they responded immediately and made the fix at once. So I suspect that works—or at least it did once…
Joe – did you try removing it from the Kindle and then re-downloading it from Amazon from your Kindle’s page? (If you don’t know what I mean, I can find the exact URL).
I’ve done this a few times with my own books when I’ve made updates. I think deleting it first is the key – Amazon won’t replace a copy that’s on your device with a newer one (I think).
Eh, upon closer reading of your comments, I see that you did do this. Must be an odd situation. When I’ve made minor tweaks to my books, I’ve been able to just remove them and re-download without a problem, and I always get the new version.
Maria here — just went on Amazon Kindle site and scrolled down through various subjects and got live chat for my Kindle. They immediately put through the new edition. Now I can settle down with the Merciful Angel and enjoy. The computer gremlins lost this one!
Excellent! Latest word I had from Amazon is that they’ll contact the couple dozen people who got the impaired version to get their okay to send them the new one. If anybody who reads this finds that “The Merciful Angel of Death” has had its text replaced by a repeat of “Batman’s Helpers,” you can do as Maria did, or just wait for Amazon to get in touch.
Hi LB,
This happened to me too, no contact from Amazon. Who cares, I’ll just do what Maria did and hopefully it’ll work.
Funny thing is, if this were a paper copy, no doubt the flawed ones would be worth a million as collectors’ copies
No, Amazon doesn’t seem to have contacted anyone. But if you get in touch with them, by phone or by Kindle talk, they do in fact replace your version with the corrected one right away. And yes, paper copies with this glitch would be collectible. Funny how it works…