I’m going to publish A Speccy Man Has A Breakdown. Limited edition, 25 copies(?), numbered and signed. I’ll sell it directly from my website, and I’ll pay 15% of my profits to my agent Jaime – because he supports me as an author, not just on individual books, and I want him to care about this one as much as any other.
The book could be assembled in two days. It comprises 50 to 150 pictures, with an overarching story about my 2017/18 breakdown, my time in psychiatric hospital, and my subsequent recovery. Some parts are very raw – I made many of the pictures while I was actually in hospital – but it also contains real humour. People are touched by the openness when I’ve shared it. Format: A5, pictures in sequence, handwritten-style text in the gaps, the way I tell the story when I deliver the picture-led talks. Send to printer. Hardback. Done.
So why isn’t it done already?
Two reasons, both of them circular traps.
- I keep telling myself I need to be like Maira Kalman, whom I deeply admire. When she puts out a new picture-led book she sends one email newsletter – a few words, a few spreads – and that’s it. None of the marketing apparatus I imagine I’ll need. But Maira Kalman has a large, devoted audience built over decades. I’m not trying to be her; I’m trying to borrow her instinct, which is: trust the work. That instinct I can use right now. And for a signed edition of 25 copies, I don’t need her audience. I probably already know enough people.
- Cover quotes. A book like this might work better with endorsements from notable figures, and I don’t have those lined up, so I stop. But cover quotes are for books that need credibility borrowed from elsewhere. My credibility is already there – seven books, sixteen languages, and I lived this story. The rawness is the authority.
Both traps are the same trap in different clothes. Both say: this isn’t enough yet. Both are wrong.
There’s also a third thing, which is sillier. I have a second Speccy Man book sitting there – The Speccy Man’s History of Art, 82 pictures of me inserted into classic artworks. It’s funny, and perhaps therefore easier to think about than the breakdown, which was after all a painful episode even if I did make a good recovery. My mind keeps drifting toward it as an alternative.
And my inner gremlin insists I’m not allowed to publish books in quick succession.
Hahaha. Who made that rule?
Two books feed each other. Someone finds the funny art history one and discovers the breakdown book. Or the other way around. And I just become someone who makes things prolifically, which is its own kind of magnetism. Two books by summer is not a mad idea. It’s exactly what I want.
So: book in hands by end of March. Designer briefed. Printer ready.
First task, this afternoon: go through the 300 pictures and choose the ones that make the sequence.
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