It's near impossible for customers to cut through the "innovative solutions" and "passion for customer service," and find out who can actually give them what they need.For the business owner who's willing to do something different, though, it represents a major - and inexpensive - competitive advantage.May I Have Your Attention, Please? lays out 12 simple principles that allow business owners - even those with no writing experience - to attract and enchant their dream customers. With clear and concise explanations of what works and why, and examples of the best and worst text out there, you'll have all the tools you need to turn readers into buyers into raving fans. Give your writing skills an instant upgradeIn this short book, you'll learn: Simple techniques to turn your dull-as-dishwater business marketing into "can't resist" copy - even if you don't think of yourself as a "good writer." How to make price irrelevant and be the only choice for your ideal customer - by changing nothing except your copywriting. The business writing "rules" you should revel in breaking. Why copying your competitors is a dangerous waste of time... and what to do instead (without spending hours searching for ideas). The easily avoidable mistakes that are turning your customers off - even if they don't know it. A simple framework to help you blast through writer's block and know exactly what to say in any piece of writing. How to "read your customers' minds," and get them looking for reasons to buy from you. Who is this book for? Business owners looking to breathe more life into their website, content marketing or sales materials. Employees who want to gain a new skill and have more impact in their work. Anyone who has something great to offer - but is struggling to get the message across.

    Wimpy Lassiter, the gentleman hustler, started playing at age seven, and for the rest of his life lived for therush of victory and high stakes. Violent and determined, Jersey Red made and lost a fortune at the table. With a passion for the game evident on every page, R. A. Dyer takes us through the smoky bars and late nights where a win was just as dangerous as a loss. He captures the game's popularity in the thirties, its dark days in the fifties, and its renaissance and apex in the sixties, fueled by the smashing success of Paul Newman and Jackie Gleason going toe-to-toe in The Hustler. It was an era that culminated in the legendary nationally televised tournaments in Little Egypt, Illinois, where Jersey Red and Wimpy Lassiter went at it for hours. And it was anera that ended in perhaps the most dramatic scene in all of pool. Just as Jersey Red beat Wimpy Lassiter in 1969, after a decade of bitter rivalry, the police shut down the tournament. Cameras in tow, they arrested eighty hustlers--including the new champion! From Fats's first showdown--in Brooklyn, with a Texas-style gunslinger in cowboy boots and revolvers--to world championship clashes, Hustler Days is a rollicking portrait of one of our national treasures.

    Big ol' softie Aaron Cometbus is back to tell us a tale about a group of crusty, grumpy and loveable New York City booksellers.

    Cohen's wisdom and witticisms have now been collected in The Good, the Bad & the Difference, a collection of his columns as wise and funny as a combination of "Dear Abby," Plato, and Mel Brooks. The columns are supplemented with second thoughts on (and sometimes complete reversals of) his original replies, follow-up notes on how his advice affected the actions of various letter writers, reactions from readers both pro and con, and observations from such "guest ethicists" as David Eggers and the author's mom. Each chapter also features an "Ethics Pop Quiz," and readers will be invited to post their answers on the book's Web site. The best of them will appear in a future paperback edition of the book.The Good, the Bad & the Difference is divided into seven sections: -Civic Life (what we do in public)-Family Life (what we do at home)-Social Life (what we do in other people's homes)-Commercial Life (what we do in situations where money is a factor)-Medical Life (the rights and obligations of patients and caregivers)-Work Life (ethics for the professional sphere)-School Life (moral questions from and about kids)Each section provides a window into how we live today, shedding light on the ways in which a more ethical approach to the decisions we make, and to our daily behavior, can make a big difference in how we feel about ourselves tomorrow.

    Just as you cherish receiving personal mail, you can take pleasure in crafting correspondence. Love, gratitude, condolences, congratulations--for every emotion and occasion, a snippet of heartfelt prose is included, sure to loosen the most stymied letter writer.

    Next Level Magic is a comprehensive course on realizing your goals in playing Magic the Gathering.

    Written with passion, humor, and wisdom, Reading Like a Writer will inspire readers to return to literature with a fresh eye and an eager heart - to take pleasure in the long and magnificent sentences of Philip Roth and the breathtaking paragraphs of Isaac Babel; she is deeply moved by the brilliant characterization in George Eliot's Middlemarch. She looks to John Le Carré for a lesson in how to advance plot through dialogue and to Flannery O'Connor for the cunning use of the telling detail. And, most important, Prose cautions readers to slow down and pay attention to words, the raw material out of which all literature is crafted.

    With wit and good humor, this handy little book not only saves us from sticky linguistic situations but also provides fascinating cocktail-party-ready anecdotes. Entries reveal how to pronounce boatswain like an old salt on the deck of a ship, trompe l'oeil like a bona fide art expert, and haricot vert like a foodie, while arming us with the knowledge of why certain words are correctly pronounced the "slangy" way (they came about before dictionaries), what stalks of grain have to do with pronunciation, and more. With bonus sidebars like "How to Sound like a Seasoned Traveler" and "How to Sound Cultured," readers will be able to speak about foreign foods and places, fashion, philosophy, and literature with authority.

    There, he fell in with a subculture of young musicians playing some of the most original and brutal music in the world. Turns out the chaos of Pearson’s bands — The Locust, Swing Kids, and Some Girls — is nothing compared to the madness of his life.An icon of the West Coast noise and punk scene, Pearson managed to arrive at adulthood by outsmarting skinheads and dodging equally threatening violence at home. Once there, the struggle continued, with Pearson getting beat up on Jerry Springer and, on more than one occasion, chased out of town by ferociously angry audiences.From the Graveyard of the Arousal Industry is the outrageously candid story of Pearson’s life. In loving, meticulous detail, Pearson gives readers the dirt behind each rivalry, riff, and lineup change.

    Indeed, most Academy Award- and Emmy Award-winning films have been adaptations of novels, plays, or true-life stories. Linda Seger, author of two acclaimed books on scriptwriting, now offers a comprehensive handbook for screenwriters, producers, and directors who want to successfully transform fictional or factual material into film. Seger tells how to analyze source material to understand why some of it resists adaptation. She then gives practical methods for translating story, characters, themes, and style into film. A final section details essential information on how to adapt material and how to protect oneself legally

    Original.

    Ron Hubbard—begins in Brooklyn's working-class Bensonhurst neighborhood, where she was introduced to the religion by her mom. More than three decades later, Leah summoned the courage to leave the church—something few celebrities at her level of fame have ever done before and almost none have ever talked about. This People Spotlight Story explores Leah Remini and her escape from Scientology.

    Often this kind of man is bound by an unhealthy attachment to his mother. This phenomenon is called "mother-son enmeshment." In When He's Married to Mom, clinical psychologist and renowned intimacy expert Dr. Kenneth M. Adams goes beyond the stereotypes of momma's boys and meddling mothers to explain how mother-son enmeshment affects everyone: the mother, the son, and the woman who loves him. In his twenty-five years of practice, Dr. Adams has successfully treated hundreds of enmeshed men and shares their stories in this informative guide. He provides proven methods to make things better, including: —Guidelines to help women create fulfilling relationships with mother-enmeshed men —Tools to help mother-enmeshed men have healthy and successful dating experiences leading to serious relationships and marriage —Strategies to help parents avoid enmeshing their children

    Punctuation reveals the writer: haphazard commas, for example, reveal haphazard thinking; clear, lucid breaks reveal clear, lucid thinking. Punctuation can be used to teach the writer how to think and how to write. This short, practical book shows authors the benefits that can be reaped from mastering punctuation: the art of style, sentence length, meaning, and economy of words. There are full-length chapters devoted to the period, the comma, the semicolon, the colon, quotation marks, the dash and parentheses, the paragraph and section break, and a cumulative chapter on integrating them all into "The Symphony of Punctuation." Filled with exercises and examples from literary masters (Why did Poe and Melville rely on the semicolon? Why did Hemingway embrace the period?), A Dash of Style is interactive, highly engaging, and a necessity for creative writers as well as for anyone looking to make punctuation their friend instead of their mysterious foe.

    The Hebrew version of Matthew survives in at least twenty-eight manuscripts copied by Jewish scribes in the Middle Ages. Among the most important manuscripts of Hebrew Matthew is the one preserved in the British Museum Library. A full-color photograph of this manuscript is now available for the first time in this book. The book looks at the naming of Jesus as told in Hebrew Matthew 1:18-25 and includes the original form of Jesus' Hebrew name: Yeshua. Learn about the unique features of Hebrew Matthew, about the traditions that guided the Jewish scribes who transmitted this ancient text, and how the name Yeshua became "Jesus".