I have been researching this, and related subjects for almost twenty-five years and it is an eye opener even for me. I would also recommend Cracking the Code, 3rd Edition from BBCOA. Visit them at their website ... (I am not on their payroll.)

Not for the faint of heart or the typical "government school mis-educated" person. If you are not able or willing to think for yourself you should leave this book where you find it.

And he says agents don't want anyone who is not already published. Next to no chance of getting one unless your cover says something like "I invented the submarine and have written a book . . . " So--you can get a loan if you have money in the bank. And you can get a literary agent if you've been published. The same old story. It sounds very certainly impossible.

From what Curtis, an agent of 20 or 30 years says, there're tons of manuscripts that can't even get read and it has no relation whatever to what is good and what isn't. I'm ready to quit the entire idea and I'm only 1/3 of the way thru the book.

According to Curtis, it takes an agent. Period. And if you have no way of finding one of those without the same blind mailings you'd send to publishing houses, you may as well put the "grand novel" away and hope in 4 or 5 or 10 years, by some luck, you run into someone who is connected.

So I'm left wondering, why does anyone bother to write at all, much less buy Mr. Curtis' depressing book? There must be SOME way to get through, right? He offers precious little hope, I'm afraid.

I don't know if this writer-editor-agent meant to be so discouraging, but wow! Completely! Avoid this book if you want to keep writing.

Take it from me, a multiply-published author (three major books) with two of the best houses in New York: Curtis knows what he is talking about. The title of this book is ironic; he clearly believes that writers benefit greatly from agents. This book will teach you what you need to know before you hire one. Excellent work, and timeless advice.

In order to elaborate this thesis, he spells out just what he means by "simple," proposes a handful of simple rules himself in various areas of law (property, contracts, torts), and shows how they play out in action (in, e.g., labor contracting, employment discrimination, and products liability). In each case he argues, with much success, that it just wouldn't be efficient to try to improve on the results provided by the "simple" rules.

I especially recommend this book, and Epstein's work generally, to law students. Epstein's knowledge of the law is thorough and deep; One-Ls will find it useful to keep it handy for the whole year.

So why only four stars? Partly because I think cost-benefit analysis is neither an adequate defense of liberty against the regulatory State nor an adequate foundation for law; and partly because Epstein's reliance on such analysis leads him toward (though he stops short of actually arriving at) positions I regard as non- or anti-libertarian.

This review isn't the place to critique consequentialism; for a more or less standard and (I think) decisive critique, the reader is referred to W.D. Ross's _Foundations of Ethics_, which, after sixty-odd years, is still one of the most judicious works on ethics ever written. Suffice it to say that I think we can increase efficiency by pursuing justice, but not vice versa; consequentialism and its subspecies utilitarianism seem to me to be not so much ways of answering moral questions as of never raising them. The "maximization" of happiness is one ground of moral obligation, but not the only one. (And in general, I simply fail to understand recent libertarian interest in an ethical school founded by a man who regarded natural rights as "nonsense" and imprescriptible natural rights as "nonsense upon stilts.")

More serious, from a libertarian point of view, is that Epstein comes within inches of allowing a positive role for antitrust law. Now, mind you, he doesn't _quite_ do so. Indeed he calls for the repeal of the Sherman Act and related legislation, and he opposes the use of government power to distinguish between "corporate combinations that increase market competition" (p. 125) from those that do otherwise. (Note that his understanding of "competition" is thoroughly Chicago-school, a point for which Austrian theorists have quite properly taken him to task.)

Yet his only ground for this latter opposition is merely that government agencies can't _tell_ which are which. Some corporate mergers, he says, may actually increase efficiency. Well, what about those that don't? Is he opposed in principle to such "inefficient" mergers? Would it be okay if the government stepped in to kill a merger that _was_ clearly "inefficient" by Epstein's standards? Or does he think there would be something morally wrong with outlawing certain uses of people's justly acquired property merely because somebody can think of a more "efficient" use?

Unfortunately Epstein's consequentialist approach prevents him from giving the standard libertarian answer. It seems that, for him, the rights of property and trade are dependent not merely on their promotion of "happiness" but, more specifically, on their service to the aggregate good -- where, most significantly, this "good" is apparently defined quite independently of justice.

So I have to knock off one star for inadequate moral foundations. But don't let that stop you from reading the book: Epstein's cost-benefit approach is solid as far as it goes. It just doesn't go far enough.

The book does NOT talk about business ideas or marketing. It approaches the small business from a legal standpoint. For example, how do you talk to venture capitalists? How do you give employees stock options (incredible info in the book!)? How do you deal with employee discontent? How to protect your business legally? How to write a contract? And so on.

If you need to know how to get a small biz idea or how to sell your products/services, this book is not for you. But, once you get your idea off the ground, you ABSOLUTELY NEED this book to survive -- unless you've got lots of cash to afford a good attorney. This book is no substtitute for a lawyer in many situations, but I have been able to use the forms in the book and on the accompanying CD-ROM to save my company thousands of dollars. I think this is a must-have reference for every small business owner.

I wish IDG would put out an updated edition soon.

Chaosium, the fine purveyors of Call of Cthulhu (for many many years) and the oft relaunched RPG versions of the Elric of Melnibone have thrown their hat in the d20 ring with this first offering.

DLoM is Elric d20... it's that simple. And the folks at Chaosium have not let us down. The package is tight, conscice and filled to the brim with vital info for running a d20 Young Kingdoms campaign.

All the main players atre faithfully presented, details for adapting Melnibonean and Pan-Tangean magic to the d20 formula and the surprising detail of summonings and pacts that were so vital to the Elric storyline all contibute to an amazing package.

If you love Elric, then this is the game for you... now... when do we get Hawkmoon and Corum?

It has proven to be very useful. I find the book's organization to be very intuitive. Each section (patents, copyrights, trademarks, etc.) has alphabetical definitions of the related terms. There are even examples of official correspondence.

Although my main goal was to learn more about trademarks, I have learned a lot more about patent terms by reading the book. This book finally helped me understand continuations and divisionals.

My only complaint is that the book tends to focus on U.S. filings and doesn't include a lot of foreign information. I know this would probably make the book longer, heavier, and more dense -- but I tend to have more foreign maintenance fee questions come up in my day-to-day job.

Still, I'm very happy with the book and find it very useful and well-written.

I would recommend this book, esp. to a non-lawyer. But as for what I was expecting it just needed more depth.