When I started making A Speccy Man Has a Breakdown I was worried that nobody would want it / everyone would hate it.
(Great expectations!)
What’s happened is that 125 people have bought a copy – half the print run – and the feedback has exceeded my hopes for what this book could do.
Every current and future buyer of this first edition is listed on my website and in every subsequent edition of the book. These early backers have made the whole book possible – and supported what has become a collectors’ edition.
So the price of the first edition is rising. On Sunday 12 July at 23.59 UK, it goes from £45 to £80. There are 125 copies left.
To be transparent about what comes next: I’ll publish a second edition. Same book, same stitch-binding, still signed, still with the art print, but not numbered, and without a first-edition slot for a buyer’s name. There will also be a paperback version, priced to be accessible.
I’m telling you all of this because I don’t want the price rise to feel sudden or aggressive. It’s a shift in the sequence, not a squeeze. If you want to be in the first edition – the collectors’ edition, with your name in every printing to come – please buy before this weekend’s price rise.
Three of the messages that changed my mind about what this book is:
Oliver Burkeman: “I found this book moving, funny, and honest in a way that has the power to liberate others.”
Julie Myerson: “It’s wonderful. Funny, truthful, heartbreaking and deadly serious all at the same time and the drawings are just delicious. Deserves a wide audience.”
Milly Jenkins: “Your beautifully written, drawn and produced book is a real pleasure. Even the erratum note is elegant. I am very pleased, too, with my limited edition print, which I will frame and put on my wall.”
More things people say
JPF
PS. A note for the 125 who already have a copy: thank you. Your name is in this edition and in every one that follows. If someone comes to mind who might want their own copy of the first edition before Sunday, feel free to forward this.