Fans of Kinky Friedman the colorful country recording artist and equally colorful crime novelist have long wondered why he hasn't mixed the two sides of his incredibly colorful career into the audio book format. Now, with a new series of audio books coming out via Vandam Press, he has.
But the audio books are just part of a veritable Friedman publishing explosion at Vandam, which is named after the street in Lower Manhattan where the author lived during the 1970s and '80s.
Friedman lived there after his initial burst of notoriety as a country artist, thanks to his band the Texas Jewboys and immortal songs like “They Ain’t Makin’ Jews Like Jesus Anymore” and “Ride ‘Em Jewboy.” He's now back on his family's ranch near Kerrville, Texas, but his 21 mystery novels, which began coming out quickly after the first (Greenwich Killing Time) was published in 1986, are mostly set in the vicinity of that Vandam Street loft (two do take place in Texas).
Vandam Press originally reissued the first five books (Greenwich Killing Time, A Case Of Lone Star, When The Cat's Away, Frequent Flyer and Musical Chairs) as paperbacks in 2000.
"Everybody was desperate to get them because they were out-of-print--and they sold like mad," says Vandam consultant Steven Rambam, the renowned private investigator who is one of the major recurring characters in the Friedman novels, as well as their "technical advisor."
"So Kinky wrote a hilarious hardcover for Vandam in 2004, Curse Of The Missing Puppet Head, which was half murder mystery and half really bizarre love story," Rambam relates.
Since then, of course, the bottom fell out of both the music and book businesses.
"The problem now with economically selling actual physical books is getting them to the reader--and then getting paid by the retailer," says Rambam. "The bottom line is that for the past 500 years the writer has been at the mercy of the publisher, and the publisher has been at the mercy of the distribution chain. And for the 99 percent of writers not being published by a friend who owns a publishing house, the financial end result can be horrendous: A book may sell for $29.95, but the average writer sees only a few dollars of that--and typically gets a pitiful advance and has to fight for payment of royalties. Economically, with the old model of publishing, today almost everybody loses. And so great books often die and disappear, and great talents never get published."
Enter the new model of publishing--ebooks--as practiced at Vandam.
"Today a writer who crafts something really worthwhile has the ability to publish a book and instantly make it available to 500 million people in every corner of the globe," Rambam notes, "and instead of receiving three or five or at most 10 percent of sales, can get up to 50 to 70 percent of sales revenue."
Rambam credits Friedman's publisher Simon & Schuster for assisting Vandam in getting seven of Friedman's mysteries back into print.
"They saw what we were trying to do--and that a big chunk of our revenues are going to the Utopia Animal Rescue Ranch in Medina, Texas, that Kinky founded," he says. "They were absolute gentlemen, and now Kinky's fans can read a good book and do a good deed simultaneously: The Rescue Ranch has, so far, saved 2,000 dogs and other abandoned or abused animals, and plans on doing much more."
The initial five Friedman titles, along with Curse of The Missing Puppet Head, are already out in ebook form and available at amazon.com, Barnes & Noble's Nook Reader and Apple's i-Bookstore. Armadillos And Old Lace, Blast From The Past, Elvis, Jesus and Coca Cola, God Bless John Wayne, Love Song of J. Edgar Hoover, Roadkill and Steppin' On A Rainbow are going straight to ebook via Vandam, and should be available to Friedman fans within the next three weeks--all with new introductions by the author.
Additionally, Vandam is taking to ebook two recent nonfiction Friedman books, Drinker With A Writing Problem: The Texas Monthly Columns and Heroes of A Texas Childhood. Rambam says that by the end of the year, two completely new "straight to ebook" Friedman books should also be out: The Hummingbird Man ("a unique book for children of all ages") and a new murder mystery.
As exciting for Friedman fans as the news of his forthcoming new Friedman mystery is the release by Vandam of his audio books.
"We set up digital recording equipment in his ranch house annex and he recorded books that are unique in the sense that he's reading not as a professional audio book reader, but as Kinky Friedman having a good time," says Rambam. "It's like you're there in the room with him: You hear him puffing away on his cigar, sipping coffee and Jameson. At the end of one of the books we left in the sound of his dogs barking in the background. The books, of course, are terrific mystery novels, but having them read to you by Kinky makes them even better. There was a moment when Kinky was reading Curse Of The Missing Puppet Head that I was laughing so hard I thought they'd have to carry me out of the studio on a stretcher."
Some of the audio books will also include snippets of Friedman music, adds Rambam, who notes that Heroes of A Texas Childhood, Curse of the Missing Puppet Head and Roadkill will be available by the end of the month, with the rest due by the end of the summer.
"Reading the books again was very strange--but fortunately I couldn't remember how they ended!" says Friedman, who's preparing for his Springtime For Kinky Tour, to include readings and signings of his latest books What Would Kinky Do? and Heroes Of A Texas Childhood. "They still hold up, in other words, and that David-and-Goliath thing with me and Rambam doing them as opposed to big publishers and publicists and bookstore chains, is fun."
In his inimitable way, Friedman adds: "It's great for them to be discovered again by a new generation, and be made available again to an old one that had the original books--but the cats pissed on them."
[The Examiner wrote the liner notes to the 30th anniversary edition of Friedman's classic Sold American album, and appears as a character in his mystery novel Armadillos & Old Lace.]
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