Back in November, I self-published a book, “The Revolution Was Televised: The Cops, Crooks, Slingers and Slayers Who Changed TV Drama Forever.” It was a look back at some of the best and/or most influential dramas of the last 15 years – “The Sopranos,” “Oz,” “The Wire,” “Deadwood,” “The Shield,” “Lost,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Battlestar Galactica,” “24,” “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” – told through both my critical eye and the voices of the men and women responsible for making them.
Reaction to the book was so favorable (the New York Times’ Michiko Kakutani named it one of her favorite books of 2012) that I was able to sell the rights to a publisher, Touchstone, which will make the physical version of the book much more widely available once it’s re-released tomorrow.
The new version of the book has only a few minor changes – a new cover, a few typos cleaned up, a few minor facts updated based on later events (like ABC canceling Shawn Ryan’s “Last Resort”) – from the one published before Thanksgiving. (If you bought the ebook version that has the new, light blue cover, you already have all the new stuff, such as it is.) But if you didn’t buy it before now, or were looking for a good Father’s Day present or gift for the TV fan in your life, it’s easy to order now, and in many more places than before. (Here’s the American Amazon link, but it’s now on sale in many, many countries, and should be available to be ordered through your favorite indie, college or other brick-and-mortar store if that’s how you prefer to shop.)
And to celebrate the re-release, HitFix is running a contest with a chance to win a signed copy of the book, with a personalized message for you or the person of your choice. Entry’s pretty simple: fill out the form below, and if you share the contest with friends on Facebook and Twitter and they sign up, too, you get bonus points for their entries. There will be 5 winners. The deadline for entry is June 3rd at 8 p.m. Eastern. One caveat: though the book will now be available in many countries, for legal reasons the contest is only open to people who can provide a U.S. address for us to ship the book to. Sorry, but it can’t be helped.
I’ll be doing a Reddit AMA on Thursday at 2 Eastern to take questions about the book and other things (and if you happen to be in the Chicago area on June 8, I’ll be discussing the book at the Printers Row Lit Fest), but if you have specific book questions now – that aren’t already answered in the FAQ on my book site, which also has links to reviews of the book and interviews I did, plus a convenient set of links to all the writing I’ve done on the 12 shows in the book – you can put them here and I’ll do my best to answer today or tomorrow.
UPDATE: The contest is over, and we have our winners: John Palmucci Jr., Schyler Martin, Ryan Couch, Jacob Mille, Aaron Etshokin. Congratulations, everybody! You should be contacted soon about the prize.