NORMAN GILLER helps to celebrate the 80th birthday of the Godfather of football writers, Brian Glanville, and discovers (again) that online enthusiasm does not convert into book sales…
My 90th book runs off the presses next week, which surely warrants environmentalists reporting me for waste of wood. Never in the field of human publishing has one man done so much to enlighten so few.
The latest book is called Tottenham, The Managing Game, and as self-publisher, I am billing it as “the book you can play as well as read”.
The book was born on the internet and given the kick of life by an angry argument as to who have been the greatest managers of Spurs. The book grew from a defence I was making on Facebook and Twitter of my old mate Harry Redknapp, who was taking terrible (and unwarranted) stick following the turmoil of the last weeks of Tottenham’s 2010-11 season.
From managers, the debate took a new twist with the subject switching to Tottenham’s greatest players. That was when I decided to offer a book for the arguments so that opinions could find a permanent page in print rather than disappear into the oblivion of cyberspace.
It is a book of two halves, the first my history of Spurs managers, with biogs on every one of the 26 bosses who have filled the White Hart Lane hot seat. The second half is given over to dream teams selected by Spurs fans on Facebook and Twitter.
Readers playing The Managing Game can read the opinions of scores of supporters and then fill in the names of their team in the selection panel at the back. The one rule is that they can only pick players from when they started supporting the club, otherwise everybody would almost certainly select Pat Jennings, Alf Ramsey, Danny Blanchflower, Dave Mackay and Jimmy Greaves.
I started promoting the book online last week, and the early indications are that my losses will run to several hundred pounds.
All those of you out there who think that Facebook and Twitter connections are a certain path to prosperity need to think again. I have more than 2,000 Facebook friends and approaching 1,600 Twitter followers, but the vast majority have ignored my early approaches. Perhaps I am being too Delboyish with my salesmanship? This time next year Rodney, I’ll be bankrupt.
So far, orders for the book from the Twitterati can be counted on the fingers of a one-armed bandit. This despite daily posted pleas along the lines of, in less than 140 characters: Tottenham The Managing Game book that many of you helped write can now be ordered at www.normangillerbooks.com.
The response from my Facebook friends is much more encouraging, but not in sufficient numbers to make me confident my latest project will get into profit.
The perils of self-publishing have been well chronicled by me in previous columns, and if you are considering following me down the publish-and-be-doomed road, make sure you do your homework first.
For example, I did the unprofessional thing of taking it for granted that two of my banker outlets – the Tottenham Hotspur club store and the Maher shop in Welwyn Garden City – would take several hundred books between them. Wrong!
Tottenham have just informed me that in future they will stock books only from a new “partner” publisher.
Then, just after I had placed my print order, I heard that the Maher shop – run by the fiercely independent and creative Tony Maher – has gone into liquidation. Tony, who once had six independent shops taking on the might of Amazon and the supermarkets, is now regrouping here on line at Stimulating Ideas.
In the meantime, to keep my head above the stormy publishing waters, I have been given the privilege of writing the official biography of the late, much-mourned Sir Henry Cooper, whom I knew and loved – yes, loved – for more than 50 years. His sons Henry Marco and John Pietro are trusting me to capture their Dad for posterity rather than prosperity in a book titled Sir Henry Cooper, A Hero for All Time.
I am going down the conventional publishing road with this one, in the safe and caring hands of the vastly experienced Jeremy Robson, now running The Robson Press as a subsidiary of Iain Dale’s flourishing Biteback Publishing Company.
But while writing my affectionate memoir on the man who was Britain’s most popular sportsman, I will be keeping one eye on the sales of Tottenham, The Managing Game. Will it turn me off self-publishing as I chase my silly target of having 100 books published before I kick the proverbial?
I wonder what the environmentalists will think of that?
PUBLISHED AS EVER WITH THE EXPRESS PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR SO NO NEED FOR THE SJA TO DIAL 999
