hackoff.com at 800ceoread
Many of you know 800ceoread as a great place to get business books. Founder and CEO Jack Covert writes about his selections. There’s a business book blog associated with the site. And now you can preorder hackoff.com: an historic murder mystery set in the Internet bubble and rubble there as well.
“Huh?” you ask. “Isn’t hackoff.com fiction? What’s it doing at 800ceoread?”
The disclaimer for the book says:
“This is a work of fiction. All characters other than historical characters and all events other than historical events are fictional and any resemblance to actual characters and events is coincidental.”
And the disclaimer is true; the book IS fiction. I hope people’ll read it because they like a good mystery and they enjoy the characters and their interaction, even their occasional sex.
Although the plot and the people are purely fictional, the backdrop of the story is constructed from my experience as a CEO of a bubble-era company. Those times did happen and they were very strange. There’s sure to be another bubble some day – perhaps we’re in the beginning stages of bubble 2.0 right now. But each bubble from the tulip mania on is different.
I considered writing a non-fiction book about “my” bubble. I do blog about it on Fractals of Change. But some stories are best told as fiction. I can tell you better what it was like to make a pitch to a manager of billion dollar mutual fund if I invent the manager and the fund and even the CEO and CFO doing the pitch. Same thing with making or missing earning forecasts and doing an online analysts call to explain the numbers you made or didn’t make.
Board meetings; negotiation with VCs; staff meetings; people obsessed with a soaring or swooning stock price; even hostile takeover attempts and the World Economic Forum in Davos – these could all be pretty dull if analyzed as non-fiction. So I wrote a novel.
But it’s a business book, too. That’s why I’m glad to have it at 800ceoread as well as Amazon and other places that people buy books.
Down to business, then: if you order hackoff.com BEFORE it’s publication date of March 15, I’ll sign your copy. Got to be some reason for you to order early.
You can also read hackoff.com free at www.hackoff.com and now you can listen to the podcast free there or on iTunes as well. You can read or listen online to see whether you want to buy the book. You can read or listen online INSTEAD of paying for the book. Up to you.
Some endnotes dividing truth from fiction in my account of 9/11 are here. Other endnotes are here.