Category Archives: Quantipulation

Why Those Holiday Spending Forecasts Are Total BS

Consider the following claims and forecasts regarding 2012 holiday retail spending:

  • The NRF forecasts that “American shoppers will spend just under $750 on average on their holiday purchases this year, up slightly from the nearly $741 spent last year.”
  • Nielsen forecasts 2012 holiday spending to hit $98.3 billion.
  • Comscore expects 2012 online holiday spending to come in at $43.4 billon.
  • A survey from the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) revealed that “50% of consumers intend to spend less on holiday purchases this year than last, while 37% plan to spend nothing at all. ”

My take: Something doesn’t add up here.

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The first challenge is provided by the NRF forecast. When it says “American shopper” does that mean individual or household? If individual, what age range are we talking about? Just adults, or does it include teens?

If it’s households, then the NRF forecast comes out to about $86 billion, a bit lower than the Nielsen forecast, but in the same ballpark.

If we’re talking individuals (and just adults), then at $750/person for the 221 million adults, the NRF forecast comes to roughly $166 billion, 69% higher than the Nielsen forecast.

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So I guess we’re talking about households.

But hold on.

Comscore’s forecast of online holiday spending — $43 billion — represents half of the NRF forecast. I know a lot of people of buying online these days, but is the online channel really going to account for 50% of holiday sales? Seems a bit too high for me.

So maybe the NRF “shopper” estimate is for individuals, and Nielsen has its head in the sand.

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That could make sense looking at the input from NFCC.

It says 37% of “consumers” won’t spend anything at all.

Damn. Is “consumers” households or people?

If it’s individuals, total spending would be $104 billion, a little higher — but in line — with the Nielsen forecast. If it’s households, though, then at $750/shopper (or consumer), total spending will only reach $54 billion. Which is nowhere close to anybody’s forecast except for Comscore’s, which only includes online purchases. 

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The NRF says that the $750 that the “average” shopper will spend this year is up slightly from the $741 they spent last year.

But the NFCC found that 50% plan to cut back on spending, 11% will stay the same, and just 3% said they would spend more.

That would mean that those 3% are planning to spend a HELLUVA lot more for the $741 number to rise to $750.

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So how much are Americans going to spend during the holiday season this year?

Don’t ask me.

Maybe Nate Silver’s got a forecast.

Quantipulation: Fat People Are The Cause Of Inefficient Fuel Use

A major insurance company (whom I won’t mention by name in a feeble attempt to stay out of trouble, but which you can easily identify with a Google search or two) has concluded (as quoted by the Chicago Tribune, which clearly had nothing better to report on):

“Obese Americans are hurting the fuel efficiency of vehicles, contributing to more than 1 billion gallons of fuel wasted each year.”

According to the infographic on the insurer’s blog (gotta have an infographic if you’re going to disseminate statistics!), 39 million gallons of fuel are used per year for every pound added on in average passenger weight.

My take: The study is an example of quantipulation at its finest. 

While obesity is a real, and serious, issue, tying fuel consumption to increasing obesity rates conveniently leaves out a significant contributing factor: Demographic trends. 

The baby boom between 1946 and 1964 produced a generation of roughly 77 million people. 

So what happened was this: People born between 1950 and 1960 increased in age from newborns to 10 years old to 10 to 20 years old in the 1960 to 1970 period (the first ten years of the study), and so on for each of the next three decades of the study. 

Not surprisingly, as people go from childhood to adulthood (and sadly, through adulthood), their weight naturally increases. 

In addition to individual people’s weight gains, with more kids in the car, the overall passenger weight in the car increased.

Bottom line: The increase in passenger weight is attributable to not just obesity, but to the natural weight gains of people as they age, and to the increase in the number of passengers in the vehicle which increased throughout the study. 

But please don’t let this stop you from blaming fat people for higher gas prices, and for ruining the environment. 

The Snarketing Perspective On Bank Branch Closings

If you haven’t figured it out already, I have an issue with some of the bloggers on Forbes.com. It boggles my mind that Forbes lets some of them publish under the Forbes banner. The quality of some posts is nowhere near Forbes’ (usually) high standards.

The latest offender is an article titled ATMs Not The Only Things Disappearing At Bank Of America, It’s Closed The Most Branches Too. In it, the author writes:

“Over the last year BofA has shut down 163 branches. That’s the greatest number of closings for any U.S. bank. It’s opened just six in the same period for a net of 157 branches closed. BofA’s ATM and bank branch closures shouldn’t come as big surprise as its CEO Brian Moynihan looks for ways to cut expenses. Last year the he announced Project New BAC which he said would slash 30,000 jobs and cut costs by $5 billion by the end of 2012. Still, even with the greatest number of branch closures BofA is still #2 in the country with 5,858 branches nationwide in front of JPMorgan Chase‘s 5,442.”

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OK, first the nit-picky stuff.

The word “it’s” is a contraction for “it is.” So, in the title of the article, saying “it’s closed the most branches” is incorrect. It should be “it has closed the most branches.” Same mistake as in the third sentence in the quote.

Second, when discussing numbers, you say “that’s the largest number…” not “that’s the greatest number…” Great is an inappropriate word to use in that context.

Third, the lack of proof-reading on Forbes’ blog posts kills me.. “Last year the he announced…”? Oh wait, is “the he” the new way of referring to Mr. Moynihan? (Did I ever tell you about the time I met him? Maybe in a future blog post). I might point out that it should be “shouldn’t come as a big surprise…” but I’m afraid someone will accuse me of going overboard here.

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Now for the more substantive comments.

When you’re the biggest or largest (but not necessarily the “greatest”, right?) player in a space, having the most [fill-in-the-blanks] is never a surprise. What’s news is not absolute numbers, but percentages.

But, of course — here comes the Snarketing slam — when your objective is to simply write a puff piece jumping on the BofA bashing bandwagon, you ignore that, and try to make news out of the absolute number.

The real story in the SNL data isn’t Bank of America. Even if you’re a bank basher.

Despite closing the largest number of branches, BofA only closed 3% of its branches (betcha the Forbes blogger would have written that as “it’s”).

Five other banks, however, closed 10% or more of their branches, including International Bancshares, which closed one in four of its branches, and Old National, which closed one in five in the past 12 months.

Granted, these five banks aren’t as high profile as BofA. But combined, the five of them closed 173 of the 1,093 branches they started off with at the beginning of Q3 2011.  That’s 16%, or more than five times larger than the percentage of branches that BofA closed (163 divided by 5,858 = 3% in case the Forbes blogger’s math is as bad as her grammar).

Here’s something else more newsworthy coming out of the SNL report: JP Morgan Chase opened 243 new branches in the past year. In other words, of the 1,234 new branches opened in the past 12 months, one bank (JP Morgan Chase, for those of you having trouble following this) accounted for 20% of the openings.

I hear you saying, “You’re violating your own rule, Snarketing boy. It’s not how many branches Chase opened, but what percentage of its branches are new!” How quickly you learn, grasshoppers!

Yes, just 4% of Chase’s branches are newly opened in the past year. But of the banks on SNL’s list, only two have a higher percentage: Huntington with 8% of its branches opened in the past 12 months. and First Community, where one in five branches have been opened in the past year. And I have no idea who or what First Community is, so they don’t count. So sit back down, junior statisticians, the Chase number is still meaningful.

That concludes today’s Quantipulation lesson.

Oh, and if you think I’m being too tough on the Forbes blogger’s grammar, read I Won’t Hire People Who Use Poor Grammar. Here’s Why.

How To Quantipulate Using Graphics

To refresh your memory, quantipulation is:

The art and act of using unverifiable math and statistics to convince people of what you believe to be true.

Examples of quantipulation abound in marketing and politics. Today, I’ll show you how to quantipulate with graphics, using a real-life example pulled from a very reputable firm’s blog.

In a post titled What Social Networking Websites Do Consumers Access Within the Course of a Typical Month? the Raddon Group enclosed a Powerpoint deck that reported the results of a recent survey the firm conducted. The graphic below was pulled from the deck, and was altered to hide the numbers on the vertical axis. The chart shows the adoption of PFM (personal financial management) tools from Fall 2010 through Spring 2012.

Based on the chart, what would you guess the growth in PFM adoption has been? From about 30% to 90%+? Sounds reasonable to me. But here’s the chart with the numbers, as displayed in the presentation deck.

Although the two bars representing Fall ’11 and Spring ’12 are twice the size of the Fall ’10 bar, the difference between the bars is just 2%, or 20% of the original bar’s total. 

Call me silly, but if one bar is twice the size of another bar, how can that bar be only 20% greater than the other one?

Bottom line: While it’s tempting to manipulate graphics to make changes look more pronounced than they really are, it’s not a good management or presentation practice. Axes should start at zero (unless the numbers reported go into the negative range). And the size of bars should be proportional to the space allotted for them. 

In other words, if your chart takes up 5 inches of space, a bar representing 20% should be about 1 inch long (or high, depending on the orientation). 

Oh, and one more thing: If you do try to quantipulate, I will find it and call you out on it. 

Quantipulation: Financial Advisors’ Use Of LinkedIn

LinkedIn recently published an infographic depicting financial advisors’ use of social media. Advisors’ use of LI exceeded their use of other networks like Facebook and Twitter. As Gomer Pyle would say, “Soo-prise, soo-prise!”

But seriously, LI’s findings on advisors’ prefered networks are consistent with my research. What caught my eye, though, was the following stat:

Advisors who prospected on LinkedIn achieved a 62% success rate.

My take: Quantipulation at its finest.

To refresh your memory, quantipulation is:

The art and act of using unverifiable math and statistics to convince people of what you believe to be true.

What exactly does 62% success rate mean?  Succeeded at what? Is it implying that 62% of the time that advisors used LinkedIn they “succeeded”? Does it mean that 62% of the prospects they found on LI became clients?

My guess is that it means that 62% of advisors said that they had success with LinkedIn, not that they had a 62% success rate.

If that’s the case, it’s hardly a remarkable finding. Advisors — and all marketers — generally find some success with every marketing channel they use.

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The infographic also says that, of the advisors who had success with LI,  32% gained $1m in new assets.

Oh really? Was that $1m in assets from just the LI prospects, or $1m in new assets overall? How much in new assets did the other 68% generate? It’s entirely possible that those 68% grew their book of business more from other sources that the LI-successful group.

Here’s my contention: Advisors who are good at marketing use lots of different channels to prospect, and are more aggressive in prospecting than advisors who aren’t as good at marketing.

The channel doesn’t make the marketer, the marketer makes the channel.

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Another interesting data point states that 52% of investors would interact with advisors on LI, but that just 4% do.

Hey, LinkedIn: If you want advisors to be successful using your network, you have to answer these questions:

  • Why the gap?
  • Why don’t more investors interact with advisors on LI?
  • What’s the secret to engagement on LI??

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Bottom line: You can’t take statistics at face value. But you knew that already, right? RIGHT?

Why CFOs Hate CMOs

To get to the top of large companies, you have to be more than just good at what you do — you have to be good at organizational politics. And part of those politics is developing relationships across functional lines, and being tactful when functional conflicts arise.

Now that you know why I have never been, and could never be, a senior executive in a large organization, let’s move on to the more important point here: A senior exec in one function is usually loathe to admit publicly that a senior exec from anther function is a bozo.

So you won’t hear this publicly, but CFOs think CMOs are bozos.

Now, if you think that I don’t know that this is a generalization, and that it’s not true in every case, go back to reading your social media moron blogs. You don’t belong on this site.

There are probably a million reasons why CFOs think CMOs are bozos, but I can only come up with two (without exerting mental energy):

  1. It’s true.
  2. They have different sets of values.

CFOs are quantitative by nature, and they value quantitative precision. In the world of finance and accounting, things have to add up correctly. If you tell the world you did $1 million in sales this quarter, the transactions in your accounting system better add up to $1 million.

Quantitative precision is a foreign concept — or perhaps, an optional concept — for many CMOs, apparently.

At least that’s what I’m left to conclude based on a study reported in MarketingVox:

“A February 2012 survey of 329 marketing executives revealed that the majority had seen positive bottom line results from social media. Those executives whose companies had established an extensive social media presence reported a ROI nearly twice that reported by companies with a lesser engagement, of 7.7% vs. 3.9%.

The benefits were particularly strong in:

  • Improved marketing/sales effectiveness
  • Increased market share
  • Improved product/service quality
  • Improved brand/stock value

Almost 70% reported a spike in sales, from customers using social media to talk up the brands. This somewhat passive “brand advocate” approach fosters trust and credibility with prospective customers and consumers. Suppliers too act as brand advocates, and 67% of respondents agree that adds value to a brand. Finally, 54% believe that allowing employees to speak out attracts talent to the companies (consider the highly-visible Google and Microsoft blogs).

Still, the value is highly subjective and difficult to measure. Nearly half of those surveyed agree that an impediment to social media campaigns is the lack of standardized metrics for ROI. Facebook “likes” can be measured for quantity, but measuring brand lift from those likes is still elusive.”

My take: The lunacy of this is of epic proportions.

On one side of their mouths, bozo CMOs said that their organizations achieved 7.7% ROI from social media, and out of the other side of their mouths, admitted that “value is highly subjective and difficult to measure.”

Plain and simple, there’s no way that the ROI numbers reported here are accurate:

  • Did the survey define time frames for the ROI calculation?
  • Did the survey provide definitions for what costs to include and exclude for making the ROI calculation?
  • How, exactly, did the survey define “marketing effectiveness”?
  • How did the respondents define market share? Dollars? Volume? How was “market” defined?
  • What CMOs actually measure product/service quality?

Plain and simple, the CMOs who responded to the survey made shit up.

And that’s why CFOs hate CMOs. CFOs get fired — and can even go to jail — when they make shit up. CFOs resent that CMOs not only make shit up, but that they then get asked to present their bullshit at conferences in Las Vegas and DisneyWorld.

The Quantipulation Of Bank Transfer Day

An article on GOOD News suggests that “with 5.6 million people and counting, the Move Your Money campaign worked.” According to an analyst quoted in the article:

“if we assume that the average American family has $3,800 in the bank, and we assume that only 300,000 of the 5.6 million people who moved had even that much, that’s more than a billion dollars divested from big banks. In the end, it won’t stop them from chugging along, but it proves that a concerted effort to change the status quo can be worth a lot, literally and figuratively.”

My take: There are a few statements here that might not stand up to scrutiny.

1.To say that the number of people that have switched account is 5.6 million and counting, suggests the “movement” is still active. It’s certainly true that people switch banks everyday, but there’s no evidence that the rate of switching is anywhere near the rate it was in the month leading up to BTD.

2. I’m having a little trouble with the claim that it was the Move Your Money campaign that worked. My understanding is that the MYM was started long before Q3 2011. Attributing the success of the late 2011 switches to this campaign seems disingenuous to me.

3. The comment that a billion dollars divested from big banks is “worth a lot, literally and figuratively” doesn’t hold water. As of the end of September 2011, the 5 largest U.S banks — or what the article despicably calls the “predatory” banks — had a little more than $4 trillion in deposits. A billion dollars is 0.03% of that. Let me put that in perspective for you: As a percentage of my annual salary, I spend more than 0.02% when I take my family out for dinner.  Even if $10 billion came out of the top 5 banks, we’re still not even talking a quarter of one percent of the deposits they have.

Why is this important?

Because credit unions are deluding themselves, and missing the more important picture.

While they obsess over painting large banks as Doofenshmirtz Evil Incorporated, the $1 billion leaving the big banks pales in comparison to the $30-40 billion leaving the system.

In an Aite Group report that I’ll be publishing next week, I’ll define a segment of consumers I call the Debanked: Mainstream consumers who willingly opt out of the traditional banking system, taking their $30-40 billion with them to alternative financial services providers.

These people aren’t just leaving big banks, they’re leaving all banks and credit unions behind. And these are not disadvantaged, uneducated consumers. They’re highly educated, employed, make decent money, and they’re young.

I don’t have the data to prove it,but I’m betting many of the Debanked aren’t aware of credit unions and the alternative they provide.

CU professionals can go on patting themselves on their backs for a supposed “job well done” regarding Bank Transfer Day (even though most credit unions didn’t actually do anything), but it’s all quantipulation as far as I’m concerned.

Quantipulation: The Impact Of Website Errors

According to an eConsultancy blog post:

Website errors seriously undermine the user experience, erode trust and confidence, and impact return on marketing spend. When asked what these errors were likely to include, respondents cited a range of issues, including inconsistent branding, spelling mistakes, poor usability and accessibility compliance errors. The group of website owners polled estimated that, on average, errors of this kind put 18% of their company’s revenue at risk, a figure that’s hard to ignore, especially in today’s economic climate.

My take: Quantipulation at its finest.  To refresh your memory, quantipulation is the “art and act of using unverifiable math and statistics to convince people of what you believe to be true.”

You really want to tell me that Walmart is in danger of losing $73 billion in revenue because of spelling mistakes on their website or because of “poor usability”?

According to the US Census Bureau, as a percentage of all retail sales, the online channel accounts for 4 to 5%. So even if all of your company’s revenue were at risk from speling mistakes and inConSisTenT branding, then — on average — we’re nowhere close to 18%.

Now, I’m a big believer that the online channel influences offline sales. Positively influences, that is.

The “18% of revenue at risk” statement is one of those claims designed to support purveyors of site design and customer experience services who can’t tie their efforts to bottom line (i.e., ROI) impact. So they resort to quantipulation like this in order to…to what? Scare executives into hiring them to check the spelling on their websites lest they forego $75 billion in revenue?

Beyond the math, there are a couple of qualitative reasons why the claim doesn’t hold up:

  1. People often miss spelling mistakes. How do spelling mistakes on web sites come about in the first place? Somebody makes a mistake, and misses finding it when (or if) they proof-read the copy.  So, if they miss it, isn’t it quite likely that site visitors will miss it as well?
  2. People don’t care that much about it. Scenario: You’re shopping online for an Xbox (pepper spray in hand), you find the best price online at Walmart’s site, but there’s a typo on the product page. You really abort the purchase and go to another site to pay more just because there is no typos?

Did you stop reading this because of the grammatical error in the previous sentence?

Here’s the point: If “poor usability” prevents a site visitor from accomplishing their interaction, transaction, or goal, then yes — it might have a revenue impact. But when customer experience transformists use the term “poor usability” they’re referring to lots of things, including inconsistent color or navigation schemes — which may be a minor nuisance, but don’t necessarily prevent site visitors from accomplishing what they came to the site to do.

Bottom line: Spelling mistakes and typos on your website aren’t going to put 18% of your revenue at risk. Poor usability will have more of an impact if it prevents people from doing what they’re trying to do (or if it significantly adds to the time it takes them to do those things). But the reason for fixing that poor usability can’t be justified by “saved sales.”

I’m not trying to diminish the importance of the online customer experience or usability — just the quantification of it. Asking 20, 100, or even 1,000 execs to pull a number out of thin air (and then averaging that number) doesn’t legitimize that number or give it any credibility.

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For previous posts on Quantipulation, see:

Quantipulation in Action: Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing

Quantipulation in Action: More Likely To Purchase

Quantipulation: ROI Vs. Success

Quantipulation

 

 

 

Quantipulation In Action: Inbound Vs. Outbound Marketing

Mashable (that highly reputable source of marketing theory and research) recently published an article called Inbound Marketing Vs. Outbound Marketing, which claimed:

“Thanks to the Internet, marketing has evolved over the years. Consumers no longer rely on billboards and TV spots — a.k.a. outbound marketing — to learn about new products, because the web has empowered them. It’s given them alternative methods for finding, buying and researching brands and products. The new marketing communication — inbound marketing — has become a two-way dialogue, much of which is facilitated by social media.

Another reason why inbound marketing is winning is because it costs less than traditional marketing. Why try to buy your way in when consumers aren’t even paying attention? Here are some stats from the infographic below.

–44% of direct mail is never opened. 
–84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad.”
–The cost per lead in outbound marketing is more than for inbound marketing.”

My take: Total garbage. This attempt on the part of people looking to differentiate the “new” marketing from “old” marketing completely misses the boat. 

Let’s look at this point by point:

“Consumers no longer rely on billboards and TV spots — a.k.a. outbound marketing — to learn about new products.” Who said that consumers relied on billboards and TV spots to learn about new products? Marketers relied on billboards and TV spots to make consumers aware of their products, to increase recall of their products, and create positive affinity. As long as people continue to drive along the highway (how’s the commute in your city? Yeah, sucks in mine, too) and watch TV, marketers will find that billboards and TV spots to be at least somewhat effective at those objectives. 

The new marketing communication — inbound marketing — has become a two-way dialogue, much of which is facilitated by social media. Got news for all the inbound marketing alarmists out there: Marketing has always been a two-way dialogue. It just wasn’t as easy to execute as it is today. Marketers have relied on various mechanisms — postcards, focus groups, toll-free phone numbers — to encourage feedback from consumers. Claiming that the “old” marketing was “one-way” is false.

44% of direct mail is never opened. First off, how do they know that? Think about how much direct mail you get. I challenge you to come up with even a reasonably accurate estimate of how much of it you open and how much you throw away before opening. Second, even if this were true, then I’d say: WOW! More than half of direct mail is opened. That’s pretty damn good in this marketing environment!

84% of 25 to 34 year olds have clicked out of a website because of an “irrelevant or intrusive ad.” What the hell is wrong with the other 16%?

The cost per lead in outbound is more than for inbound marketing. Stupidest claim I’ve heard all month. Just because there is no measurable media cost associated with this thing you call “inbound” marketing doesn’t mean there aren’t costs associated with the efforts. Somebody has to create and manage the social media site, right? Or, if the inbound marketing channel is the phone, do the costs of staffing the call center not count as part of inbound marketing efforts? And given the incredibly inexact science of attribution in the marketing world, how does anyone really determine that a generated “inbound’ lead wasn’t influenced by outbound marketing efforts?

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The infographic included in the Mashable goes on to claim that in the “old” way of marketing, marketers rarely sought to “entertain or educate.” Seriously? The ad industry has a RICH history of attempts at being funny and entertaining. Print ads have LONG been focused on education. 

The article also tries to differentiate “new” marketing from “old” marketing by claiming that in the new marketing, “customers come to you”, while in the old marketing, marketers sought out customers. 

Customers come to you? Really? And how do they find out about you? Simply by word-of-mouth? Good luck with that. Listen to what Groupon had t say:

“After a two-year holdout, we finally decided to run real television ads. In the past, we’ve depended mostly on word-of-mouth and limited our advertising to online search. This year, we realized that in spite of how much we’d grown, a ton of people still hadn’t heard of Groupon, so we decided to give in to our Napoleon complex and invade the rest of the world with a proper Super Bowl commercial.”

Bottom line: Trying to make inbound marketing sound like something superior and new is total BS. Marketing is a complex process. There are parts of the process that are inherently outbound and parts that are inherently inbound. There are new channels of communication that create new opportunities for both outbound and inbound communication.  Oh, and real marketers don’t take marketing advice from Mashable. 

Are You A Snarketer?

By my calculations, if I can sell 23.7 million copies of my new book, Snarketing 2.0, within the next two to three years, then I can retire.

That would require everyone who qualifies as a Snarketer to purchase 2,370 copies of the book, however. So it doesn’t looks like I’ll be quitting my day job any time soon.

This is the problem with trying to get rich writing business books: There’s a limited audience. There are only so many people who are even potentially interested in the topic.

I’ve got an even bigger problem: My audience is more narrow than the typical business audience. The target audience for my book is a group of business people known as Snarketers. Are you a Snarketer?

You are if you meet three qualifications: 1) You have an interest in marketing; 2) You have an unusually high degree of intelligence; and 3) You have a warped sense of humor.

For your friends who can’t process that intellectually, show them this picture to explain to them why they don’t qualify.

I’ve done the research, so I know that there are only 10,000 Snarketers in existence. If you’re in the club, you’re part of a dying breed. Our increasingly politically correct culture is stifling warped senses of humor. And thanks to our “everyone gets a gold star” educational system, there are fewer and fewer people who meet the intelligence hurdle. On the other hand, everyone and their mother thinks they’re good at marketing.

The challenge in trying to identify Snarketers is that it’s not visually obvious — it’s not like being tall, or having blond hair. So how do you, dear Snarketer, let the world know that you’re part of this elite and prestigious club?

You buy the book, moron.

And then read it on the train on your way to work, or when you’re on a plane, sitting in first class showing off how many frequent flyer miles you’ve run up because you don’t have a real life.

If you do buy it — and post a review online (I don’t care if it’s a positive or negative review) — then I will give you the next book for free (yes, there will be another book, the subject of which will be Quantipulation).

Here’s my game plan: Real Snarketers who post reviews might convince some Snarketer-wannabes to purchase the book. If you don’t think the “find a sucker” strategy works, just look at how many banks now charge customers a fee to use a debit card. 

Where do you get the book?

If you want the print copy (you show off), go here:

For an eBook version, you can get it from one of two sources: At Lulu.com, or click on the icon below for the Kindle version.

If you buy the book, thank you. If you buy and review the book, double thank you.

UPDATE: If you order from Lulu by October 20, you can get free shipping:

Update #2: Apparently, there’s a formatting problem with the Kindle version. I’ve pulled that “off the shelf” for now (and disabled the link above).