ISBN: 0470640006

 
Author: Cheryl Burke

The inside story of the life of Cheryl Burke, professional dancer, choreographer, and two-time champion on the top-rated TV hit series Dancing with the Stars

Cheryl Burke has been dancing since the age of four and competing since she was thirteen years old. Over several exciting seasons, she has captivated audiences of Dancing with the Stars with her incredible dance performances, Emmy-nominated choreography, high energy, and bright smile. In Dancing Lessons, she takes you from her childhood years into the world of competitive ballroom dancing and on to Dancing with the Stars.

In each chapter, you will discover a depth of passion in Cheryl’s life that perfectly matches the commitment she displays on the dance floor. Cheryl’s accounts of being a powerful woman putting her talent to work will inspire everyone to pursue their own dreams.

• Includes behind-the-scenes stories and photos from the life of the first two-time champion of Dancing with the Stars
• Shares lessons Cheryl has learned from each of her celebrity partners on Dancing with the Stars, from Drew Lachey to Chad Ochocinco
• Includes never-before-discussed revelations concerning Cheryl’s childhood, weight issues, and the media

Read Dancing Lessons and let Cheryl Burke whisk you away to a world full of dancing, entertainment, and life.

Q&A with Author Cheryl Burke

What drew you to the world of dance?
As a young child, my mom got me involved in the typical ballet classes that a lot of girls take. When I was a little older, I went with my parents to a ballroom class they were taking and instantly fell in love with the costumes and the music. And I loved that it was partner dancing.

What inspired you to write Dancing Lessons?
Since being on Dancing with the Stars I’ve encountered a lot of people who’ve asked me about my dance background, my training and my childhood. I thought that if I could write a book that inspires people to take up dance or to find their passion and they can learn from it like I have, then it would be worth it to write a book.

What do you think people can learn about life through dance?
Compromise. Sharing. Teamwork. You can learn to express yourself with your body. Sometimes words fail to really convey emotion, and dance teaches you body language and interpretation.

What is your favorite part of being on Dancing with the Stars?
The best part of being involved in Dancing with the Stars is inspiring people of all ages to get up and dance. When people approach me and say that I’ve motivated them to get off the couch and be more active; to enroll in dance class; or when young kids want to take dance lessons, that’s my inspiration to be part of the show.

If you could offer one piece of advice to your fans, what would you tell them?
Find your passion. Once you do, nothing can stop you.

Pages: 272	Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Wiley	Year: 2011

ISBN: 0061997811

 
Author: Brian Sibley

Product Description
Immerse yourself in the world of the spectacular Harry Potter film series. Learn why Yule Ball ice sculptures never melt, where Galleons, Sickles, and Knuts are really “minted,” how to get a Hippogriff to work with actors, the inspiration behind Hogwarts castle, and why Dementors move the way they do. Written and designed in collaboration with the cast and crew that brought J. K. Rowling’s celebrated novels to the silver screen, Harry Potter: Film Wizardry delivers an enchanting interactive experience, transporting readers to the wizarding world by sharing filmmaking secrets, unpublished photography and artwork, and exclusive stories from the stars. Full of removable facsimile reproductions of props and paper ephemera from the movies, this collectible volume offers a privileged look at the Harry Potter films and the talented group of Muggles that has made true movie magic.

A Look Inside Harry Potter: Film Wizardry
(Click on Images to Enlarge)

The Burrow	The Yule Ball
Alan Rickman as Severus Snape	The Cave

I’ve been having a long Twitter discussion with Will Wilkinson about the economics of the book industry. Will wanted to know how authors could make money without “digital rights management” technology, and I replied by saying that writing a book has always been less about making money than it is about promoting the book’s author, and I suggested that the activity is going to become a lot less lucrative in the future.

To think clearly about the future of the book industry, it’s essential to understand its present. In particular, to make an educated guess about what the price of a book will be in the future, we need to understand why books cost what they cost today. I think there are two key insights that largely explain the structure of the book market. First, publishers are really bad at predicting whether any given book will be a success. And second, there is an almost unlimited supply of aspiring authors, some non-trivial fraction of whom would, if given the opportunity, produce a best-selling book. Call these the ignorance and competition assumptions, respectively.

Now, today’s book prices have two distinct and puzzling characteristics. First, book prices don’t vary much and don’t seem to be correlated with popularity or quality. Most categories of hardcover books cost around $25.00. Publishers do not seem to charge extra for books by famous people. They don’t jack up the price if a book is well-reviewed, or offer discounts they’re panned in the New York Review of Books. As Paul Graham has observed, publishers seem to price their books in rough proportion to the cost of the raw materials: longer books are somewhat more expensive, but what’s actually printed on the page has relatively little effect on a book’s price.

This can be explained by ignorance (on the part of customers) and competition (among publishers). A customer generally don’t get to read a book before you buy it, and other indicators of quality, such as reviews, are only weakly correlated with a given customer’s enjoyment of a book. Moreover, there are lots and lots of books to choose from. These factors, together, make the book-buying public strongly price-sensitive. A publisher selling a $40 book in a market where the norm was $25 would lose a lot of customers. Because book-buying is always a hit-or-miss affair, few would want that specific book enough to pay an extra $15 for it, while most would have plenty of other books of similar perceived quality and dramatically lower price.

The second puzzling characteristic is that books are dramatically more expensive than their cost of raw materials. Printing and distributing a book costs around $5. This means that every book sold for $25 represents a huge profit to be divided among the bookseller, publisher, and author. This too is explained by ignorance, this time on the part of publishers. The print process is characterized by high fixed costs and economies of scale. This means you have to sell several thousand copies of a book to recoup the costs of printing it. Most books do not hit this target and so lose their publishers money. Hence, when you buy a book for $25, you’re not only covering the $5 it cost to print and distribute that book, but you’re also helping to defray the costs of several other books that wound up in the remainder bin.
With this background, it should be easy to see how authors’ compensation is determined. To simplify the math a bit, let’s assume there are only two outcomes for a book: hit or not-hit. Then the value of a manuscript is the profit from a hit, times the probability of a hit, minus the losses from a non-hit times the probability of a non-hit. Our ignorance assumption means that the probability of a hit is low, which means that the expected value of printing a book—and hence the value of a manuscript from a first time author—is very low. And this is what we see in the marketplace. When a publisher takes a chance on a non-famous, first-time author, the advance tends to be relatively small……………. Click here to read the complete article

Article written by Timothy B. Lee

Courtsey – Timothy B. Lee