The Book I Didn’t Publish
Plans ruined by red tape and men in black
A Spark of an Idea
In 2012, unemployed and frustrated by the lack of jobs that were available, I hatched an idea to produce a self-published book. This would be my fourth such publication, and the first that was not football related. One of my books became a regional best-seller, so with that and the experience of the other two ventures, I was good to go.
The title of the book was You Don’t Know You’re Born, and its concept was simple. On the left side (verso) of the eight-by-eight centimetre pages there was a speech bubble that contained a gripe that might be voiced by a young person about some aspect of modern living. The page on the right (recto), under the heading You Don’t Know You’re Born, offered an insight into how lucky that young person is not to be facing a similar problem from an age when things weren’t quite so advanced.
For example, one speech bubble said “I can’t find the TV remote,” while the text opposite waxed lyrical about the good old days before remote controlled television, when the viewer had to rise from his or her seat and walk across to the TV set every single time they wanted to switch channels or adjust the volume, as that’s where the controls were. Every time. The text on each page ended in an italicised ‘closing…
