BilmBlog500

So over the past several weeks I've been spending more money week in and week out at the comic book store than I've done in a long time, mostly on account of the DC Retroactive series of comic books. This send off for the old DC Universe ahead of the New 52 that launched today with Flashpoint #5 and Justice League #1 was one of the more delightful ideas to come around. There were 18 issues, six each for the '70s, '80s and '90s, which paired a "new" story from the era in question with a classic reprint. The first few I tried were enjoyable enough that I decided I'd stop leafing through to decide which I should buy, and instead just went for all of them, $4.99 a pop, three a week, several weeks running. Not all of them were entirely successful, some had a good reprint but a so-so new story, others had a good new story paired with a so-so reprint, but the overall was just a lot of fun. Favorites might have been the Green Lantern story with the Jon St...

So on the tennis-related front, the #6 seed Robin Soderling withdrew from the US Open with an undisclosed illness, and his spot in the draw was taken as a "lucky loser" by Rogerio Dutra Da Silva. This would appear to be good news for Soderling's opponent, qualifer Louk Sorensen from Ireland, who goes from playing a top 10 player in his first round match to playing essentially another qualifying round match. However, Sorensen lost the first set 6-0 and has just taken a game to start the 2nd set, he couldn't be doing any worse against Soderling. Sorensen looked pleasant enough in the qualifying, but Da Silva is clearly the better player of these two. That said, I would expect the match will tighten up a little. It's a great opportunity for either player since the second round match will be winnable at least. The 3rd round match with Isner or Baghdatis less so, but one of these players has a good shot to be in the 3rd round of the Open. And Vasek Pospisil is j...

Click here for a post from the NY Times Straight Sets blog about Ukrainian qualifier Sergei Bubka, who defeated the Austrian Adrian Haider-Maurer in their first round main draw match on Tuesday. I correctly predicted Bubka could win this. I also said the Rochus/Lisnard match could go either way, and indeed the qualifier Lisnard did emerge at the winning end of this first round match. Ir's easy enough to predict every qualifier to lose, you'd be right most of the time, I'm quite pleased so far to be pretty good this year in choosing the ones that will win. Vasek Pospisil has his first round match at 11AM Wednesday on Court 10. This is rather annoying to me, because this court doesn't have TV coverage (Ashe, Armstrong, Grandstand, 11, 13, 17 do) so I won't even be able to watch on ESPN3.com on my computer at work. I guess I'll have to set up the thing that live tracks the score, I am really curious and eager to see if Pospisil can beat Lukas Rosol. There are...

So I think I did OK in judging the chances of the US Open qualifiers to play on Day One. Jaziri won his first round match, which I'd suggested could happen if didn't outright say would. All the other qualifiers to play on Day One lost, most in straight sets, none huge surprises. I did give De Veigy a chance of beating Tommy Hass, he didn't but he took a set and it was a competitive match. Alas for Jaziri, his next round opponent will be Mardy Fish, the highest ranked American player who has been on fire this summer. So Jaziri had best be prepared for enjoying the moment of playing on Arthur Ashe Stadium, because that's likely to be the best part of the day. The NY Times tells me I watched history being made when I saw Louk Sorensen qualify. The two Irish qualifiers this year may be the first ever players from Ireland to play in the main draw of the US Open.

So the qualifying has concluded, and the draw has been filled out. Let's look selectively at what the qualifiers face in the days ahead... The "top half" of the draw, the one with main #1 seed Novak Djokovic, got 10 qualifiers into it. Romain Jouan and Augustin Gensse have both drawn seeded top 32 main draw players and are not likely to advance to the second round. American qualifier Michael Yani has a first round match against a young Australian, Bernard Tomic, who made a strong run at the Australian Open this year and is considered to be a real up-and-comer. However, he's often a bit up-and-down, and plays a game that's based as much on taking his opponents out of their rhythm as on having a great rhythm of his own. Michael Yani doesn't have a particular rhythm, he's just happy to be in the main draw of a grand slam. Tomic should win, but it's not unthinkable that Yani will. Jonathan Dasnieres de Veigy has drawn Tommy Haas. Haas was a top 10 p...

And to close... The second set of the Pospisil match was anything but routine. It was one of the longest sets of tennis I've ever seen, 68 minutes for a 12 game set, vs. 41 minutes for the13 game tiebreak set Pospisil had with Guccione two days before. There was an epic game early on with Brezak struggling hard to hold serve. Pospisil, whose serve can be so strong, was having games go to 0-40 or 0-30 against and then struggling to fight back into it. Finally, at the very tail end, Pospisil managed to get a break and win the match. It was good tennis! And as long as our 2nd set is, the Meffert/Farah match on the next court just keeps dragging on and on and on, but you get the sense that's a match that's interesting solely because it endures, not because either play is especially interesting. If neither player has the weapons and tools to really end a point, the points can go on. And on. Next stop was over to Court 11 to find Dennis Kudla playing Romain Jouan, both of ...

To Finish Well, what a delightful final full match of the day. Donskoy won the first set 6-1, blink of an eye, thought we were headed for a rout. But somehow midway thru the second set Dennis Kudla finds another gear, and it's like the ball coming at him is as big as a pumpkin. He breaks Donskoy, rather to my surprise. Then Kudla starts grunting, as if that will find him another gear still. Grunting or not, he wins the second set 6-3. The third set sees each player break once and goes into a tiebreak, Kudla goes down a mini-break, comes back, takes the tie-break 7-5 and the match. This was very high quality tennis. There weren't many winners, the match statistics say there were only 11 of them between the two players. But there weren't a lot of errors, either, I'm not even sure I can trust the count which is only 1 of them for the whole match, except that it's hard to think of too many. There were balls that missed, but it does seem that almost all of them...

To Close Michon loses to Ram in a tight first set and a not so tight second. Not many weapons. Piña colada ice, Thai dinner. 8:50 Michon is sinister! I mean, a lefty!! Playing a lot to Ram's backhand and trying to construct points. On serve 4-3 in first set. 7:30 PM Settling in for last full match of day. Could have watched Ricardo Hocevar and Carsten Ball on Court 6, but just didn't find either player all that exciting. So Court 13 has whenever seats, and I know nothing about the French player Axel Michon, who contends against American Rajeev Ram. So the match might be awful, but will have thrill of the new. Did watch a couple games of the Ashleigh Bart match whole waiting for this one to start. 6:50 PM Shocker! Guccione is up 40-0 serving for a tiebreak at 5-6. And he loses. Five straight points to Pospisil. One is a winning lob off of a net cord, the kind of thing you can't teach that's about instinct and reaction and quick hands. The final point of the match is a ...

& to close... Romboli lost the second set 6-1 as well. Odd thing is, I think the match was closer than the score line in this case. It's just that Romboli was making a lot of errors, some inexplicable and some because Jaziri was hitting a very low ball a lot of times that wasn't easy to pick up and get back over net going the other way, but fewer errors it at least would have been a much tighter match. After that, I watched another American who, Blake Strode, playing against a Serb, Nikola Ciric, in the last act of the second set. I chose this match over another men's match that was midway through because Court 13 has elevated endzone seating that gives a great view of the match, and I'd gone through the day without seeing anything on one of those three courts. Strode won, 6-3 and then in a tiebreak. I'm not surprised Stode is still struggling through the qualies in his mid-20s, however. Looking at the far court, he seemed awfully spindly for a tennis play...

So it's possible you've heard from different places, a blog somewhere or your editor trying to explain why your new offer is so low, that Barnes & Noble has cut back their orders. Boy, are they! B&N has long had a fixture called the New Mass Market Tower. It's the square thing that usually sits in the central aisle of the stores that's around six feet tall, four rows across and maybe eight or so down, with new mass market books. A publisher pays to put your new mass market on the new mass market tower, of course B&N also has to agree they'd like it there because there are only so many books that can go on it over the course of the month and way more to choose from than that. But your publisher has to want it there. And for all those years, it used to be that being on this fixture meant that pretty much every Barnes & Noble was going to get 8 copies of your new sf/fantasy book, other than for the really most awful stores for sf/fantasy where they wo...

There was a bit of controversy in June because Harlequin was sending out letters to "increase" their e-book royalty rates, but to levels that were in some instances less than what had become the industry standard. They've now sent out a second round response to some of the complaints that had been received, which I thought I'd comment upon. The Harlequin offer is that they will pay the current industry standard of 25% of net receipts for books in their "single title" program. These are books that come out under Mira or Luna or other imprints that are under the branding of an imprint just like a Del Rey book from Random House or an Obsidian book from Penguin, but not under a broad 4-in-a-month numbered series umbrella like Harlequin Nocturne or Harlequin American. For in-series books, their offer is a scaled royalty of 15-20% of net receipts with escalations based on total digital revenue for the books. They explain this lower royalty by saying, essential...