"I'm Trying To Sell More Books Than Herman Cain" and other Reasons To Cop "99 Nights with the 99 Percent"

Published Feb 26 2012, 10:32 AM by Chris Faraone

As some Phoenix readers might know by now, my first book, 99 Nights with the 99 Percent (Write To Power, $14.99), drops softly around New England this week. Subtitled “Dispatches from the First Three Months of the Occupy Revolution,” at its core the project is a time capsule from the center of last year's biggest news story, written and presented with an irreverent stank on it. Since the work is self-published, I've had to become quite the salesman to get it noticed. The manager of one book store nearly puked in her mouth when I uttered the foulest three words known to literati: “Print On Demand.” With that said, the Phoenix audience deserves some explanation as to why they need 99 Nights, since more than half of it already appeared in their favorite paper.

Here are the sexiest nine reasons to cop it:

(Currently available in the Boston Area at Brookline Booksmith, Trident Booksellers (Back Bay), Tres Gatos (JP), Lorem Ipsum Books (Inman Square), UGHH Retail Store (Symphony), and Harvard Book Store. Online shoppers can grab it HERE on Amazon. Collectors can get signed copies with some bonus stuff through UGHH or Strange Famous.)

1 – Each chapter opens with a badass spread of exclusive pics shot all across the country.

2 – If I see you reading my book in public, I'll get you stoned.

3 – In addition to a previously unpublished 3000-word intro, there are two never-seen-before full-length Occupy travel features, as well as a retrospective through-narrative that weaves together all 24 chapters.

4 – Some of the other Occupy books in print are damn good, but they're group efforts, whereas I wrote 99 Nights by my damn self on trains, planes, and buses between a dozen cities. Mine also uses words like “fuck” and “shitsucker” the most.

5 – I'm neck-and-neck with would-be pizza mogul president Herman Cain in the Amazon rankings – we're both in the 100,000-500,000 range, far behind Guy Fiere's Cookin' It, Livin' It, Lovin' It – and your help could really help push the 99 percent over the 9-9-9.

6 – Short of kicking them in their little dicks, reading 99 Nights is the best way to keep Barstool Sports groupies away from you on public transportation. The thing's like meathead kryptonite.

7 – The book includes a timeline of haikus about Occupy – “Occupaikus” – that bring readers through the first 100 days of the movement. For example, the entry for October 11, 2011: “Big raid in Boston / Can’t expand from Dewey Square / Vets trampled on camera.”