TLW's Great Track of Time Project - Agent and Publisher Wanted


Last update: Jan. 3, 2012

Is there a smart literary agent and/or major publisher out there?  Here's your big chance.
Get in on the ground floor of the Historyscoping Revolution!

(Note to investors: go to my main site historyscoper.com)

Everybody is born not knowing history, and unfortunately everybody dies still not knowing history, because the materials are a hopeless swamp that are virtually impossible to navigate, causing everyone to bog down and give up.  Imagine a new world history course by the world's best history teacher that lets anybody master all 6,000 years systematically by reading just 6 million words, written at an 8th-9th grade reading level, to a depth that gives a working knowledge of history's map points, structure, and flow, and can be deepened at will for the rest of one's life?

Let me introduce my little ole new property to you.   In simplest terms, it's the most interesting course in the world, the magnet for the goal of total literacy, the entire history of man put in your reach for the first time. Despite the reading level, it's the most powerful, profound, shockingly cool series of history books ever written, the opus maximus of T.L. Winslow (TLW), the mysterious reclusive World's Greatest Genius (tm), the Sponge (tm), glammed and glowing in his eagle's eyrie.  The megabook they thought couldn't be written, that every writer wishes they could write, every reader wishes they could read and master, everybody wishes they could own, written by TLW after herculean labor. The whole world's history revealed in a single continuous surefooted word map with every major detail marked out for closer examination.  The march of time laid bare, no-holds-barred, written in such a clear concentrated patented precision-calibrated fashion with such astounding nearly omniscient reach that there is no way to learn more history in your lifetime, totally remaking your mind into a historyscoper, an old old and wise person.

A revolution in history teaching, taking it out of the confines of academia direct to the masses.  The new Bible the history-challenged masses are desperately looking for to help them grow and grow up with, and which they will never outgrow.  And not just "people" - you!  The most timely course you can read, so powerful it can't be denied.  A course that is not optional: either get it or be left behind.   A lifetime learning textbook for the Internet age.

Who wants a course like that, you are probably asking. Think about it, and the answer is everybody! The U.S. government has massively funded history education for years, producing zilch in results, and graduating legions of history ignoramuses. In the half-past-February post-9/11 era, when the Web confronts them with a myriad of history sites and free encyclopedias, but no master guide,  they usually resort to watered-down and misleading novels and movies. Well, I've got what they're looking for, pure concentrated clear waters, a crystal ball, a powerful, systematic guide to grok the past with a single, albeit long, but non-optional read that's no harder than a novel, a total immersion awareness trip through time, call it a high school and college course in a box, a total solution, TLW's gift to enlighten and entertain millions. 

Think of it as 600 "historyscopes", one for each decade in history for the last 6,000 years, containing a total of 200K map points (historical events)  in time order, wrapped in a continuous "grand tour" narrative explaining each map point in my trademark cool language, with an average of 30 words per map point, each of which is set off with underlining, just like a Web page hyperlink, which is what it really is.

It's not just a bunch of events in a list like others have tried, but a historyscope, my own patented invention, a mental crystal ball of Time based on pre-scoping the landscape and identifying all important features to lay out a mental map, a Web page which can be read like a novel but which is like the Guardian of Forever in Stark Trek, an immersion experience that builds a global awareness of the flow of history unequalled by any other type of history work.  Think of it as the common master grand tour of the past for all historyscopers, the top quality precision-calibrated tour that misses little or nothing, with a totally self-contained narrative all the way, but which invites the reader to stop and Google down or consult reference works at any time if they feel the need before resuming the grand tour.

This is not just another one days' news or one hit wonder  but a serious contribution to history teaching based on a supreme mental effort, and cannot be appreciated without actually studying it in detail.  Other history timelines are like horses and buggies, mine is like a jetliner.  It's like Arnold Schwarzenegger, it has been built up on steroids for so many years that it has muscles on its muscles and is ready to win the Mister Olympia title for the next seven years straight. 

Timelines are a bad way to study history?  Wrong, they used to be until I arrived and used the Internet to pump them up into historyscopes, but now it's the best way, the only way, the historyscoping highway.  Standard history books only cover a handful of map points, in tedious and often lame and buggy detail, without an awareness of the existence of others, and only my property can claim to cover them all, and with enough detail for comprehension.  I'm the only author even claiming to be peddling a comprehensive map of world history.

This is the tool needed by every school and college student and teacher, and every college-educated adult, make that every literate person in the world in this new Internet Age, and it's begging for a top publisher to put it in their hands now.  This isn't just another nonfiction book hoping to sell 2,000 copies, it's a revolution in the making, and you can think in terms of millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, how big can you count?

Too bad, in an era when the consolidated publishing industry puts up too many barriers for a hot new work from an author without a proven audience in his pocket, I'm still looking for a good agent and publisher  for my new opus maximus, the real Clifford Irving's Book of the Century (fanfare please), TLW's Great Track of Time AKA The Historyscope, currently still in development and running 6 million words and containing over 30K images (175K map points).

No, it won't break a publisher to publish it, because it is meant to be released initially as a series of paperback volumes, CD-ROMs or DVDs similar to the "For Dummies" series of Wiley, TLW's Historyscope Series, one volume for each decade in the 20th, 19th, and 18th centuries (30 volumes total), followed by volumes for each century from the 17th down to the 11th, followed by two more for the first millennium (1st through 10th centuries),  plus a couple more for ancient history (B.C.E.).  The total series is thus publishable in around 40 normal size (<500K word) volumes (although I consider it one big book, and developed it that way, while making each volume as complete and self-contained as possible), each capable of becoming a bestseller, a revolution in history teaching, turning millions of history ignoramuses into historyscopers, and it has a unity that causes it to become nearly impossible to be satisfied with just a part of it for long, grin.

The publisher doesn't have to risk too much at first, since they can test the waters by publishing the three hottest volumes first:

o TLW's Historyscope of the 1960s, AKA the Sixtiesmaniac's Bible
o TLW's Historyscope of the 1970s, AKA the Seventiesmaniac's Bible
o TLW's Historyscope of the 1980s, AKA the Eightiesmaniac's Bible

Each runs about 400K words, and contains around 15K map points and 3K images.

All three I believe are sure winners since everybody wants to know what happened in those decades in which they, their parents or grandparents probably lived unless they came out of a test tube, the most interesting in the 20th century, and I've literally got everything that happened worth knowing, purified like a solid gold brick thanks to my own mature technique, which ought to shock and awe readers and establish my rep.  They literally turn each decade into their own subject of study, the state of the art, total immersion, wallow all you can swallow, and click on all the news articles, videos, and other links till you can't click any more.   It takes everybody a  week, a month, a year, five years for the shock and awe of TLW's great power to sink in, after which they get hooked forever, it's like the day when JFK was killed, you  remember it always.

To follow this I'm preparing the 1990s Historyscope for 2012. Actually, all the volumes have been publishable since early 2009 when I reached the 4 million word point, but until I reach the the end of my "super-polishing phase", they won't all be as polished as the  model volumes, although they could be published now and a 2nd ed. later released if a publisher can't wait.

And I have a second parallel product line. Along with my huge master historyscope, I've been developing a number of specialized historyscopes that make use of my master database and can go on to become a bestselling series on their own. I've already developed historyscopes of Islam, Jerusalem and the Jews, Scotland, Mexico, the U.S., Barack Obama, Arnold Schwarzenegger, George Soros, JFK, Horseracing, European artists, Classical Music, and Rock & Roll, and have a large list planned, including Britain, France, Germany and Poland, Russia, Spain, Scandinavia, China, Japan and Korea, the Roman and Byzantine Empires, the Vatican, Catholic Church and Christianity, the Bible, novels, film, science & technology, major U.S. presidents Lincoln, FDR, LBJ, Nixon, Reagan, all the major sports, et al.  Indeed, I am in a unique position of being able to create the best specialized historyscopes on any topic I desire, since I have the master historyscope that is currently my private database. I'm game to publishing some of them before or after the above three decade historyscopes after rearranging my priorities.  See my historyscoper.com site where I've been offering some of them free to Web surfers but can take them off when/if, and add more material as desired for a paying edition.   And yes, I'm considering withholding the master historyscope and just publishing the specialized historyscopes to keep from creating my own competition. Speaking of paying, I can only use a major publisher with vast resources now, so if you're an agent without good connections with such maybe you better find something else, sorry.

Back to the master historyscope. After sales success with the initial 6K-year series, the following combined volumes can be published as a growth path:

o Mass-market single volume Condensed Great Track of Time Historyscope.

o The K-12 Great Track of Time (actually, grades 7-12, with a K-6 version left for future work), censored to accepted standards (down to maybe 1 million words) and sold to school boards to give to every student.  This will require experts on the standards to be hired by the publisher as consultants.

o Professional Great Track of Time, amplified for serious professionals.  This I can't do alone unless I make enough money to hire a staff, else the publisher can hire others to do it and we'll make a financial arrangement.  It can be priced very high like an online college degree curriculum.

o Small print dictionary style Great Track of Time.  For those who still want a good old fashioned dictionary with miniscule print and Bible paper, this will be the veritable Dictionary of Time.

After publication, we can talk about:

o Great Track of Time Web Site, complete with GTT-Powered 4-D Virtual Earth, creating an interactive total immersion historyscope - TLW's great dream.  Such a project would ultimately require thousands of workers, and probably require teaming with other companies, but could one day hopefully be adopted by school systems worldwide as the basis of a one world cradle-to-grave school system, my ultimate goal.

My Historyscoper Web site historyscoper.com provides samples to get the idea and see the style and how the map points slash hyperlinks and embedding text work together. But it doesn't begin to explain how wonderful this property is, since you'd have to all 600 master historyscopes, and how they all work together as one.  The total package is just too good to describe, not just a mere course but a product line, a literary work and a powerful history data base combined, more like a major software package with home, office, school and professional editions, with paper-based spinoffs.   But way more than a software package, since they are built by squads of faceless programmers, while my property is a solo production, with a uniform quality throughout that makes its own rules, in other words, a literary work, sorry, history will never be reduced to equations.  A historyscope being a totally new type of product on the market, with a readership of not just traditional history buffs, students, or bored Baby Boomers, but virtually everybody who is literate and wants to be well-educated, it will be a monopoly for some time, even if something happens to me.

What about the educational establishment that wasted all those big government bucks on a mountain of useless history teaching crap?  Too bad, they will have to retool and get on my bandwagon, kaching kaching.  Meanwhile, I'm a nonentity to those same government funding sources, who would probably eagerly fund lame clones while not giving me a dime because I'm outside academia, isn't that typical?

Why don't I just self-publish?  Size, and images. First, I'd have to charge too much because of the economics of print on demand.  Second, I don't have the resources to obtain official permissions for the tens of thousands of images I've selected, while a major publisher with a large printing plant not only can do a volume run to lower the unit costs, but if they've already published encyclopedias they've probably already got permissions on file for most of the images, and can even substitute equivalent ones as necessary painlessly.  It's a great marketing advantage for a publisher to pack as many images as possible to illuminate the incredibly rich story line, and that's why I prefer holding out until I get one.

If I did self-publish, I'd probably just do it on my Historyscope Web site and sell clicks, but I'm leery unless I find an investor to help me hire programmers and Web managers, since I need to remain a Historyscoper and don't have the time for another job.  With a Web site we can also just try linking to images on other sites without having to obtain permissions first, not that we can't set up an online system for copyright owners to give permission in return for a free link.  I'm currently searching for an investor or investors to finance the site, and I can work with an agent/publisher before or after.  Most people don't want to read books on a computer screen, only do spot research while curling up with a book, true, but I'm making ever-more progress in making the online historyscoping experience more attractive, and commercial ebook readers (Kindle) are getting better, so that avenue is opening up also, although my ideal publisher would simultaneously publish it as an ebook, like Penguin does for instance, creating three cash streams.

Why couldn't a publisher steal my idea and hire a bunch of their pet authors with bigger names to produce a clone?  Because it won't be easy, even if they are historians, to develop a competitive historyscope, since 1) It's not an idea it's a conglomeration of ideas, and only I know what they are,  2) The historyscoping process can't be automated per se, the Googling process merely making it possible for a smart enough historyscoper to begin work, it's about millions of elementary mental discriminations, 3) Too many cooks spoil the broth, making it unreadable, 4) Where will they find a supergeneralist editor-in-chief like moi who by definition couldn't have a job in academia since they only hire super specialists, 5) It would take many years, which they don't have, since I'm ready to go to market now, plus who could afford them or get them to give up their lives and work harder than ever before in their lives just to find out that 6) I'm the world's greatest genius, and nobody can hope to surpass me, sorry, my shocking power can't be equalled, I came to collect, and they all have to go back to my school now, I'm sorry about the pink ruffles but you do wear them well.   Plus I have secret veapons (sic), including my own mnemonic "history operating system" that makes the text come alive in your mind with mental "Velcro hooks" to make it easier to remember, and they can't just steal that without risking a lawsuit, can they?  Obviously, if academia could have done it for the publishers, they already would have, and I'd be using it myself, and so would everybody, in other words, a big business, somebody get a radar gun.  What about copyright violations?  My property doesn't violate anybody's copyright, modulo a relatively tiny number of fair use quotes, and rather it's what will be widely plagiarized on the micro scale, which need not concern us, flattery is nice.  On the macro scale, we will have no problems winning any copyright infringement suit against a massive plagiarism since this property is totally unique and the result of a supreme mental effort in my man cave.

Existing competition?  For years there was the Timetables of History, which sold millions of copies, and recently the Encyclopedia of World History, but they were created before the Internet Age and are hopelessly obsolete compared to what I have, plus they suck as one-stop shopping guides for the general reader, having been authored by squads of narrow specialists, and are more useful as adjuncts to specific history courses and hence limited as to market potential.  Wikipedia has a free world history timeline, which at least is partially hyperlinked into the rest of Wiki and the Web, but it's not what they do,  hence is way behind what I have, and their own rules and regulations would make it pretty hard  for them to compete with me if they wanted to, since they produce encyclopedias and I invert encyclopedias, and have to keep personal opinions out, while I'm free, and most important, there's nobody in charge, nobody to take responsibility for quality, and the product would end up another swamp, while I stay on top and keep the waters from muddying with a single unique literary style that makes study ultimately much easier.  Answers.com combines the Wiki chronology with the People's Chronology by the Gale Group, and the Sci & Tech Chronology and U.S. Literature Chronology of Houghton Mifflin, but it's still based in the paper era, and only contains a fraction of the material I have, and lacks the expertly-selected images, literary unity, readability and style.  Really, people get what they pay for, and I'm all alone with the only going true commercial quality historyscopes.  Google "historyscoper" and I'm the only name that comes up, and yes, I have reserved the url historyscoper.com.  Of course the open source zillion-faceless-contributo Wiki approach could conceivably generate a poor sister clone several  years down the road after I teach them how to do it with my series, and will probably generate several, with the problems mentioned above, but by then I will be into the next generation of my Internet-powered product line, and who will want to miss going farther with me by then, it's all about branding, you're a poker player and you're trash darling, trash.

My market isn't well defined, despite my enthusiasm?  That's because it's not like other works that must fit into some existing genre to make sales.  It's a revolutionary work that literally everybody will end up buying or having bought for them one day, because it changes people into historyscopers, something they don't even know exists yet.  It's a foundational tool, and there is no alternative, either go with it or be left behind.  Let the people discover that they want to join the Historyscoping Revolution.  At the start it has the same market as a hit nonfiction book, then it will tap the fiction market as people discover that it can be read like a novel, and with way more enjoyment  (did I say Dan Brown on steroids yet?), becoming a unique NYT double bestseller. Then we can release volume after volume, building momentum, and never having to worry about competive clones of individual  volumes because they can't be written one decade at a time, but have to be cut out of a 6,000 year combined historyscope that has all the forward and backward awareness and self-references in place first.  It boils down to a strong initial marketing launch for the three model Historyscopes, which is best funded by a major publisher who sees the potential for their own bottom line, which is where you come in, if you're duh, smart enough, busted.

But the bad economy makes this a bad time?   Actually, if the economy gets worse it will help me since people will tend to get into the mode of wanting to live in the past, and make parents put pressure on their children to study their mistakes  :)  That doesn't mean the publishers are any more eager to take on a new author without an agent, ergo cogito with me and get your sum.  Actually, if they would use this series to experiment with 99 cent ebooks, they might save themselves as well as make me, I wonder.

So you're a literary agent. Let me ask, Who are you really?  You are the right agent for me if you

o Are SMART and SERIOUS, and can grasp the potential and WORK to develop the channels and opening doors while protecting my rights in all the media and international markets.

o Like to make lots of money and friends and hobnob with the cream. 

o You are not the right agent if your usual fare is romance novels and other intellectually lightweight properties, even if you listed history books as one of your interests, although I'll give you a sporting chance if you beg and produce some quick results.  What I most need is someone who can explain it well enough to stand up for me to publishers at the cafe level, although it's not necessary to master the material yourself first, since that would take too long.  Instead, a strong interest in historyscoping should be shown, perhaps by pointing out a bug in my sample to impress me, along with an ongoing effort at trying to absorb as much as you can while doing your agenting duties.  Don't try to snow me, I won't suffer phonies.  Luckily, it's not hard to fake it in the initial round when you're negotiating for just the initial recent era Historyscopes, ha ha.

It would also be nice if you have prior connections with the big names in publishing, and experience with ebooks, international, translation and Internet rights, promotion especially on the Internet via Amazon, Google, YouTube, Facebook and MySpace, Twitter et al., plus a good legal department to develop a mutually beneficial contract relationship with the publisher.  Can I trust you to not sell me out for a quick buck because you know I have even grander things coming down the pipe?

What kind of a deal?  I must demand an advance of at least $20M, along with an agreement to market it with some fanfare as a major publishing event and not just another title in the catalog, and not rush me to publish half-baked editions or make me sign away too many rights.  It it had been published on 9/11/2011, it could have been promoted as a series spawned by 9/11 and 10 years in the making, and it would fit in nicely with all the hoopla of people predicting the end of the world in 2012 with their flash-in-the-pan bestsellers, as in, you think time is limited, so here's your catch-up course, get started quick. Yes, if we get through the hoops then I suppose you'll have to expand your literary agency as my properties take more and more of your time, sigh, what a nice problem.  When I get the front money, I'll hire a staff to support me and ramp up my properties to keep ahead of any and all possible competition, saving money is nice, great service is nicer, it's not just how you're covered, it's how you're treated.

I've had this Web page up since 2007, and queried hundreds of agents, and don't think much of those who pretended to have evaluated me and officially rejected me without even requesting to see the work, so please email me only to request my mailing address so you can write me and do so, else don't embarrass us both, I keep lists.  I know the publishing industry has contracted and is a near monopoly, so you're just puppets anyway, and if they're listening maybe they could give one of you a boot in the ass.  I can only send you the three model Historyscopes initially, although I'd like you to appreciate the awesomeness of the property eventually. Either way, I have to send you a giant image package covering all the historyscopes (30K+ images), which is is zipped up since it has so many files. So far no major publisher has seriously looked at my property yet and accepted or rejected it, I brought sexy back, you can't handle the truth, it's a fight we could lose not, so with Equifax you know right where you stand and it's still open casting for the lucky smart agent out there, it's 1-88-FLOOD-DA-WORLD.

To respond with interest, email  historyscoper  daht  gmail  daht com, with the message title "LITERARY AGENT QUERY".

          -    Ciao, TLW

The Great Track of Time

AKA The Dictionary of Time

AKA The Master Map, Road Atlas, Flow Chart, Crystal Ball and Magic Mirror of History

AKA The Historyscope, Polychronicon Pansophicum and Novum Organum Scientarum Historicum

AKA The Most Erudite Eximious Greatrackium Contra Millennium Feverium of TLW

An Amalgamated Sequential Didactic Pansophist Guide to World History

Complete Universal World History Textbook and Reference

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By T.L. Winslow (TLW) (b. 1953)

The Historyscoper™

The Iron Chef of World History™

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"I wish I had several lives for all I want to do, but I only have one life so I'd rather live it as a blonde"

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© Copyright by T.L. Winslow. All Rights Reserved.

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Samples:

See my Historyscoper site for samples:

Click Here



Email: historyscoper ratatat gmail dot com.

TLW as a baby.

Denver, Colo., 1953.  If I could turn back time?  Gerber missed my photo opp?