Ambitious Brew! Revised!

In 2006, I published a book title Ambitious Brew: The Story of American Beer. Doing so changed my life. In more ways than I care to enumerate (or you care to read, I’m guessing).

This week (late September 2019), I released a revised edition. I didn’t update it. I revised it: Cleared the fluff, reorganized two chapters. Made the notes actual endnotes.

And in the e-book, the notes are CLICKABLE! It’s so COOL! Tap the note and it OPENS! Tap again and it CLOSES! It’s the coolest thing in the world and yes I’m that excited that someone, somewhere, finally made it possible to read non-fiction ebooks.

The title is slightly different: Ambitious Brew: A History of American Beer (I didn’t write the original subtitle). In every way, in my opinion, the revision is better than the original. Not least the cover, which is spectacular.

As of this writing, paperback and e-book editions are available at Amazon.whereeverintheworld and the ebook is available at KOBO. As soon as Apple and B&N.com do the paperwork, I’ll publish it there, too.

And, yes: I published this revised edition. I edited it. I published it. It belongs to ME. No agent, no publishing house. Why? Because if no one’s gonna make money on my books, I’d rather it be me.

Self-publishing has been incredibly liberating. Yeah, it’s a massive amount of work—but 100% worth it: No one to fuck me around, create ugly titles, not market the book, not answer my emails. I won’t even try to describe how great that feels.

I’m incredibly grateful to the people at Vellum. I couldn’t have done this, I wouldn’t even have considering doing this, without the tools Vellum provides. I can’t say enough good about them.

I’m also truly, sincerely, and eternally grateful to all the people who’ve supported my work during the 13 years since Ambitious Brew first appeared.

As always: Thanks for reading, and for making books and reading part of your life.