Bonjour mes amis!
As you’re reading this, I’m back in the loving warmth and relentlessly freezing, driving rain of Scotland. Two weeks of punishing relaxing and blissful drinking await, and while not having a particularly difficult life, I feel I deserve it. That was the plan anyway. You can’t always get what you want.
I’m not here to tell you about my holiday plans though. No, rather, I’m very happy to say that as of now, my book, ‘Around Serie A in 20 Days’, is available to download as an iBook!
Why are you still reading this? Why haven’t you clicked over to buy it immediately?! DO IT!! CLICK HERE!!!
Thanks for just having bought my book. It’s really very kind. I know that you’re keen to get on with reading it, but like a pint of Guinness or estranged heirs of millionaires and their inheritance, good things come to those who wait.
But, yeah, so I wrote a book. A book about Italian football, sure, but a book nonetheless. Despite it being my child, and so I would say this, wouldn’t I, I’m really rather proud of it and think it’s maybe the most beautiful book of all time about the 2013/14 Serie A season, and is clearly better than its peers. While they’re figuratively picking their noses like two-year olds, mine is angrily daubing bedsheets with paint ready to hold up at the next match at a teenage-level. Get in! Or ‘Out!’, depending on the message on said bed sheet.
I digress. I’m very happy to have finished everything, and while it’s only available on iBooks just now, pretty soon I’ll be able to hold it in my arms, like a proud father. That is to say, as of the middle of January you’ll also be able to order the physical copy from here. Think of it as a second Christmas, if you will.
First up though, there’s the e-version. A couple of people asked if they’d be able to get it on their Kindle. The answer now, as then, is both yes and no. I’m afraid that the way that Amazon do business (paying minimal tax, treating employees poorly, and generally leading to the closure of many traditional ‘physical’ shops) doesn’t sit very well with me. I appreciate that having said that my book is available on iBooks, and therefore Apple, is a little contradictory here. However, I heard on Pete Holmes’ podcast, who was in turn citing someone else’s idea, that people should have at most, three ethical principles (extra to and beyond general ethical behaviour, of course - resisting the urge for murder shouldn’t be classed as one of these Three Things). Three aren’t theoretically too difficult to manage in life, but more than this and we can start to tie ourselves in knots.
My three things are taken, and Amazon is one of those. I try not to think about what my iPhone entails for the people who make them in China, but like smoking, eating meat or going to Gregg’s, I choose the path of deliberate self-delusion. I should point out that I don’t go to Gregg’s or eat meat (not mutually exclusive, I’m afraid) - but the point stands - if we thought rationally about how that steak arrived at your plate, what cigarettes did to us, or what went into sausage rolls, most people wouldn’t touch them. And rightly so. But we switch off the rational part of our brains so as to enjoy the moment. The electromagnetic radiation that my iPhone emits may have fried the part of my brain that deals with rationality, which would be convenient, as then it wouldn’t really be my fault. But then again, that’d only work if I used my iPhone as an actual phone - how quaintly archaic that’d be! That’s a bit of a cop out, though. I know what I’m doing - I just choose not to think about it.
Anyway. Amazon. My book will not be available to buy from Amazon, either as an ebook, or as a physical copy. It will, however, (once I reformat it) be available in a format that is readable on Kindles. I’m having a bit of my cake and eating it, I know, but my way of thinking is that:
- I like cake, and
- No-one in their right mind is going to buy a Kindle with the sole intention of reading my book on it. Therefore, I’m not contributing any money to Amazon.
This helps me sleep much easier at night, and all the more content if my belly is full of cake.
