CHAPTER SIX
– IF AT FIRST YOU DON’T SUCCEED –
Dear Mr Nurk, The editors would like to thank you for your suggestion to publish the highly acclaimed literary work of …on toilet paper. We regret that your proposal would not be in keeping with our current editorial policies. However, we do commend you for your inventiveness no matter how absurd many might consider it to be.
Dear Sir, Thank you for writing to us about your plan to open a “unique new channel of revenue” for our esteemed author clients. Unfortunately we do not consider public conveniences the appropriate channel and therefore decline your offer.
Dear Mr Nurk. No thanks.
Dear Mr Nurk, Are you serious?
Dear Mr Nurk, I’ve been a literary agent for nineteen years and as you may be aware more than a few of my clients are highly successful household names both in Europe and in the Americas. Over that time I’ve received thousands upon thousands of submissions along with quite a few recommendations from budding authors as to how I could raise the profile of my clients and earn them and myself increased remunerations. Some of the letters I have received have been serious attempts at offering constructive advice. Some have failed to demonstrate the level of professional knowledge that is required in my business. However, I can state with absolute certainty that your proposal is unique. Unique in its absurdity. I find myself in a difficult situation. I can either write a thousand words explaining why it is foolishness of the highest order, or I can illustrate the same in a few short words. Go away Mr Nurk. And seek help.
Dear Sir, Thank you for your letter. Your proposal is interesting on a number of levels. Alas, none of which are of a literary level.
To say that Fred was unamused by such strident rejection would be an understatement. It really got up his nose and he stormed around the flat for hours until a new light bulb lit up in his brain.
Hunched over the keyboard at his computer he hit the Google Chrome shortcut icon on the desktop. From there he went to the Amazon website. Not the co.uk site but the .com site. In the left hand column he found what he wanted and once more hit the return key. There in front of him, clearly on the screen, were a million opportunities. It was a potential gold mine.
Back in the Seventies a man by the name of Michael S. Hart was at the University of Illinois in the United States when he came up with an idea. He created the first electronic book. It was in fact the American Declaration of Independence that he typed into the computer. What followed was something called Project Gutenberg which was designed to create electronic copies of more books.
This was followed in the early Nineties by Sony launching the Data Discman, an electronic book reader that could read e-books stored on CDs. What was born was a The Library of the Future.
Not for Fred it wasn’t. Not now at least. Now the e-book was the Library of HIS Future. He had never been to university or learned how to master such intricacies of technology but in his mind he was already saying Move over Michael S.Hart, Fred Nurk is going that one step further.
On his monitor were hundreds of thousands of e-books, some by well known authors but a host of others by first-time writers, many of them beginners who could not get their books published in conventional hard paper so had resorted to self publication. Hence the massive success of the joint e-book and Amazon.
All Fred had to do was click on the book title, then on the author’s name and a hyperlink took him to a brief biography. At that point a little more time consuming searching was required. The best way he found was to simply Google the author’s name. Very often this led to further useful information about the author which very often pointed out Twitter addresses. Others were on Facebook.
So he set about contacting as many e-book authors as possible, concentrating as far as he could on those first time writers who had no other titles to their names. Fred figured that those with no history of having had any books published would be more likely to agree to becoming an integral part of his proposal. Especially as it would not cost them anything.
His explanation was that he would be quite happy to give them the exposure it would generate free of charge because his intention was not to take money from the authors but rather from customers who bought the toilet rolls. So for the authors and him it was a win win situation.
The response he received was little short of astounding.
Within two weeks he had been contacted by reply e-mail by no fewer than twenty-five first time writers. When he had approached them he had not passed on his telephone number or his postal address because he wanted to control everything electronically at the outset until he knew what sort of reaction he could expect. To get more than two dozen authors agreeing to his proposal in such a short time pointed to further ongoing success. To his way of thinking, if that was what happened in a fortnight in a few months he could have scores of book titles to publish. And with that secured the next hurdle of arranging for his tissues to be sold on to the public should be a doddle.
Fred’s research at the beginning of his quest indicated that the costs for a packet of four toilet tissue rolls ranged between just under two pounds to almost two and a half pounds. Packages of nine rolls were priced at three pounds at the bottom end up to almost five pounds at the top end. His plan was to offer his printed product in the mid range. It was not that he did not want to appear greedy, but instead that by pricing his tissues in the mid range he could expect to sell more. In other words, higher volume meant a higher return.
“It’s basic mathematics and marketing,” he told his girlfriend.
“Well, I still think we should go to Japan and see for ourselves the company that’s going to handle the printing of the tissues,” she said.
“For the last time,” said Fred and actually raised his arm and jabbed a finger at her, “I am not going to pay for you to fly to Tokyo just so you can go shopping.”
“You’re miserable.”
“You’re greedy.”
“You’re pig headed.”
“You’re pig ignorant.”
It was that comment along with the finger pointing that led to his girlfriend storming out of the flat and the next day packing three suitcases and moving out altogether. She would be back in a day or two she threatened to collect other belongings.
“Bastard,” she shot back as a parting word.
When it came down to it, Fred did not feel all that bad about the break-up. They had had their disagreements in the past and the more they had the less it affected him. So when the split finally came he was not that surprised to find it left him cool rather than saddened. And after all there was an up side to that as well. All the profits he made from his project he could keep.
All in all then things were heading in exactly the right direction.