Yep, folks, the audiobook version of Hardcore Zen is now available from the nice folks at CD Baby! Just follow the link below to get yours!
http://www.cdbaby.com/AlbumDetails.aspx?AlbumID=bradwarner
See what it did for Melissa? Here are a few more reasons to buy the audiobook:
• I have personally enhanced the audiobook! Now you don’t just have to imagine what “Drop the A-Bomb On Me!” sounds like. You can hear it for yourself in the context of the story! And that’s not all. There are plenty of other groovy enhancements as well!
• You may get an email directly from me! That’s because track #9 is kind of screwed up. Until the replacement goes live, I’ll be contacting everyone who buys the book and submits their email address to CD Baby to tell them where to get the fixed version. (The current version isn’t horrible. It just has one short segment in which you can hear two Brad Warners reading instead of only one.) If you got the audiobook but didn’t hear from me about the link, write me at spoozilla@gmail.com.
• I get way more percentage of the audiobook than I do from the plain old printed book! Wisdom Publications gives me something like 14%. So when you buy the book from Amazon or a similar discount site that nets me less than $1 per book after all the other mystery items are subtracted. But I get something like a 75% royalty from each $10 audiobook. Granted, this is more of a reason I want you to buy the audiobook than any real advantage of the audiobook itself…
• You get to hear me read the book in my own voice! Not only do I have a super sexy voice. But now you can find out what sort of tone I intended. I think a lot of people imagined I was screaming at them when they read that book. But I wasn’t. I swear.
And thanks to everyone who participated in filming the new commercial “Melissa’s Not a Loser Anymore!” (seen above) last night. These are the participants in my weekly Sunday night zazen thing at the Akron Shambhala Center in Cuyahoga Falls (every Sunday at 7pm!). They were awesome and very patient. Now I need to get myself a tripod and think of some more commercial ideas.
ONE!
Finally.
Number one ain't you, you ain't even number two
Hey guys, did you notice that in a talk gave that's on his podcast he says that he "returns to the breath" when he gets lost in thoughts? Does this mean brad practices mindfulnes of breathing?
Take care,
Mario
"It just has one short segment in which you can hear two Brad Warners reading instead of only one."
That makes it even more valuable,
especially if there's a reverb
effect.
The whole "returning to the breath" thing is very complicated to explain. Although it's easy in practice.
Any time you create an object of focus in Zen, you're not doing true shikantaza.
BUT we often find ourselves mentally spazzing out during zazen.
At these times, coming back to the breath is a good way to get back to the practice.
Just don't make the breath the object of your practice.
It's crazy how little authors get paid by the big publishers knowing how hard a writer has to work to produce a book. It's wise that you are self-publishing. You might want to make it available on iTunes and Amazon too.
I enjoy reading JA Konrath's blog, A Newbie's Guide to Publishing. He shares a lot of useful information.
http://jakonrath.blogspot.com/
I just bought my audio version of HCZ2. Now I can play it over and over and over again 24/7. I'm going to find all the back-masking reverse sentence stuff in it.
It was the picture of poor skinny Crumb that sucked me in.. Brad you bastard!
CAPTCHA : sueks iskater : I kid you not
Attention is the most basic form of love; through it we bless and are blessed.
Sex is the most basic form of love; through it we fuck and are fucked.
Now that you've learned that print books are for losers, publish yourself kindle book!
My eBook should be available withing this month.
withing this month
joins
purple question mary
in the alternate modes of reality…
If I had 10¢ for every type 'o' I've made…
I'ld be HERE
My eBook should be available withing this month
Do yourself & the world a favor and make it DRM free.
I am the author of purple question mary.
please pay up;
Amateurs.
May I suggest that you contact HyperInk for your ebook?
Give'em a try. For real.
Well, fuck. I didn't like that correctly.
http://www.hyperink.com/
This comment has been removed by the author.
May I suggest that you contact HyperInk for your ebook?
I don't have personal experience with any of the ebook publishers, but the big name in the field is Smashwords, who will convert your Word file into all the standard ebook formats.
Brad, How do you feel about sharing the audio file of HCZ?
I want to send it to a friend who would otherwise never be exposed to it. On the other hand you might miss out on potential sales if he sends it on to others so on and so forth ad infinitum. Do you have an objection to file sharing?
Anon, do you copy DVD's and CD's and pass them to your friend? Audiobook is the same thing. Come on! Tell your lazyass friend to buy his own copy. Support Brad's hard work, you fuckface! Fuck off with your stupid questions! Shitheads like you are poisoning the whole scene of artists! Fuck you, motherfucker!
"Come on!"
yeah, like you;ve never copied a cd or dvd. save your self-righteousness for your mom.
Why you.. I, I, I, I
See.. That's why I asked anon. It's a gray area. I'm sure Brad wants people to read his books just for the sake of reading his book as well as gaining fame and profit. My friend doesn't even know who Brad Warner is. Maybe if he read the book he might buy others. Some day he might become as enlightened as you are.
I'd obviously prefer people not copy my audiobook and give it away. I support myself and Crum the Cat through the sales of the audiobooks amongst other things.
That being said, I'm aware that people do copy these things. I have copied CDs and DVDs myself. Though I very rarely do this and mostly only when there's no other way to get the item in question (I tend to like a lot of music and films that don't get widely distributed and/or soon go out of print). But I've done it and I'll do it again, I'm sure.
I'm aware that any work of art is a work of art. That means someone worked to create that piece of art, just like a person works to take away the trash or works to fix your car.
Good artists always do what they do first and foremost so that others can enjoy it. Profit is always secondary. But it's work. And they ought to be paid the same way the trash guy and the auto mechanic ought to get paid.
It took me a week of eight to ten hour days to record and edit that audiobook. It took another few hours of work to get it uploaded. As for writing it in the first place, jeez, maybe two years of four to six hours a day (though obviously not 365 days a year, but still).
If you want me to give you my blessing to copy it and give it away for free, I can't do that. It would be a very bad move on my part. Everyone reading this would then feel like they had my personal permission to do so.
That being said, I know that people are gonna do what they do. I just hope enough of them have a conscience.
Brad Warner said…
BUT we often find ourselves mentally spazzing out during zazen.
At these times, coming back to the breath is a good way to get back to the practice.
Just don't make the breath the object of your practice.
Sorry Brad but I'm not sure if I get it. Let's say I notice that I've spaced out either thinking about something hardly or just lost contact to what's going on in and around me.
So instead of returning to "shikantaza" I return to the breath. But when I did that you suggest to forget about it again right away and then do what? Sit with an open awareness, is that what you call "shikantaza"?
What I don't get is that if you can get lost in thoughts etc. as you said and to come back you come back to the breath then there must be something that is shikantaza and I wonder what it is for you?
Thank you,
Mario
Simply serialise it in a number of private readings to your friend via free skype calls.
Ta-da!
Regards,
H.
Harry, that's brilliant!
Tell your friend to inter-library loan the book if its not already on the shelf. Or request that his library buy the audio book.
Libraries have been buying books, cd's, dvds, etc etc. and then loaning them out well, since libraries became libraries…
Now you wait just one minute Mr. Warner. Are you saying that even though you feel free to copy other artist's work and you are even sure you will do it again, that my son should not copy yours? Well that is a very convenient stance now isn't it Mister? I think that's probably what Mr. Baker over there at Tagahartha thought having his way with all those young women. Rules should only apply to the unbalanced masses, the trolls, not to you, the Great Zen Masters.
They are still marketing Genpo as "Zen Master Genpo" and it seems Brad is happy to market this new audio book in a similar vein:
"Brad Warner, the young punk who grew up to be a Zen master,"
Speaking of marketing, here's a tip concerning future youtube ads:
Use Dave less, Melissa more.
Mae Chee Kaew
Awesome. A lot of my friends are way too busy to read books (tsk) but they love audiobooks. I'm recommending this to all of them, although I think reading a book becomes more of a personal experience than listening to someone's voice, in the same way as a filming of a book is (probably) less personal than reading the book itself.
I think that Will Ferrell is over rated but I think "Stranger Than Fiction" is amazing.
What's your microphone, Brad? I want to make an audio version of my book now, but my equipment sucks ass
Brad,
Since you're so "hardcore," can you please divulge whether you have ever considered, even for one second, having your penis pierced and tattooed.
Also, since we're on the topic, please describe as thoroughly as humanly possible, the smell of your penis after an entire day of it being trapped in your silk briefs.
Thank you so much.
The mic is called The Snowball and it is made by a company called Blue.
I do not understand this obsession with my penis.
My own obsession with my penis, I understand. Anyone else's, I do not.
Brad, I don't get that either.. That's gross.
brad, what if you would be a woman? then that perv would all the time ask the size and the smell of your cunt. yeah, gross, i know.
What is Brad's Enneagram and Myers Briggs type? I can't tell if he is an introvert or extravert. So either INTP or ENTP. Also either an Enneagram 5 or a 7.
Extravert? Is that the one vert more than required?
Google "extrovert or extravert spelling". With some research you might be suprised to learn that "extravert" is used more often in the MBTI community.
…"extravert" is used more often in the MBTI community
Does that mean that you're gay?
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
Brad Warner said…
"I do not understand this obsession with my penis.
My own obsession with my penis, I understand. Anyone else's, I do not."
Do you understand your obsession with vagina? It's the same thing with anon only different. He has BW penis on the brain day and night. When he sits zazen if he sits zazen, he is sitting thinking about BW penis and not about thinking about non-thinking or suicide girls or whatever. I'm not sure why he's fixated on you as a sexual object. Maybe you are a mother figure for him.
Brad Warner said…
BUT we often find ourselves mentally spazzing out during zazen.
At these times, coming back to the breath is a good way to get back to the practice.
Just don't make the breath the object of your practice.
Sorry Brad but I'm not sure if I get it. Let's say I notice that I've spaced out either thinking about something hardly or just lost contact to what's going on in and around me.
So instead of returning to "shikantaza" I return to the breath. But when I did that you suggest to forget about it again right away and then do what? Sit with an open awareness, is that what you call "shikantaza"?
What I don't get is that if you can get lost in thoughts etc. as you said and to come back you come back to the breath then there must be something that is shikantaza and I wonder what it is for you?
Thank you,
Mario
at least nobody called him a rat