Support my Book: The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg

Although I'm working on 3 other book projects at the moment, I've just started another.  It's called 'The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds' . The book will be witty but with a serious purpose. I will travel to a number of places to investigate experts and champions in small fields in small countries. As the title of the book suggests, I will start with a chapter on water skiing in Luxembourg. After which I aim to investigate:

• The Icelandic special forces
• The top bassoonist in Finland
• The most popular heavy metal band in Botswana
• The most powerful politician on St Helena
• The greatest living Surinamese novelist
•  Malta’s favourite soft drink
•  The greatest living expert on Cornish

The book is going to be funded through a new crowd-funding publishing platform called Unbound. 

What this means is that writers take their book pitches directly to readers. If readers like the pitch they pledge to support the project and if enough people do so the book gets written. The link to my pitch and video is here.

 'The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg' will initially be funded chapter by chapter. This means that the basic level of support is only £3 (those outside the UK can also support books). There are also other levels of support on offer with some unusual incentives - T-shirts, postcards and if you pledge enough you can even come with me!

If you're interested and like the idea, I would be extremely grateful if you could perhaps forward the link to anyone who would be interested, or perhaps to facebook/tweet/blog it.

Finally, I will be pitching my book in person at Unbound's first ever live event at 12 September at The Tabernacle, Notting Hill. 

 

Comments

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I will support your book; i believe in talent at first before it become big!

[Jerome]

Bar Mitzvah a the Jerusalem Kotel Song ! everyone's dream

Watch this new Piamenta clip and pass it on to
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cPytshm4ZC0

Mazal Tov

[W]

See the problem with this book is that you are approaching (judging by this video and your other writings) this project with a "smarter-than-you" attitude, that is neither original nor funny. Nobody needs a second-rate Louis Theroux mocking people and faking interest in people's lives. Would you not be the ivory tower academic (repacking ideology as science) that you seem to be, you would know for example that there is a serious literary scene in Suriname. But then again, you have no serious or genuine interest in any of the subjects you suggest. To me, this kind of attitude just comes across as arrogant.

You are making freaks, curiosities and oddities out of normal people. What's so special about the Icelandic special forces? Nothing, basically. However, in the way you frame the subject, you make it look like a curiosity and an oddity. There is nothing "obscure" about waters skiers in Luxembourg. You can just google them, and they are normal people.

The title for the books is also way too long. Second-hand book stores are full of novelty books, and I cannot really see why your hodgepodge of anecdotes merits publication.
Why would anyone finance your holidays? ... so that you can ridicule ("ironically comment") people, their interests, habits and passions? Also from an environmental point of view, I think it's totally irresponsible to travel that much for a book that merely serves as an excuse for self-gratification and adds nothing new (let alone relevant).

I cannot imagine that anyone would be interested in reading this. I don't want to put you down, but I think that this is just a silly, pointless project. Everyone gets carried away by enthusiasm every now and then -it happened to me countless times-, but may be you should thoroughly rethink this gimmicky project. Dont't be discouraged. You are obviously not a dumb guy. So use your brains on something more useful. You can do better than this, much better. Good luck!

[Keith Kahn-Harris]

I understand your views and I agree that this could be a risk of my project. But I am absolutely on the level here. The twist is that there is no twist. I am trying to hook people in with a gimmicky title and then make a quite serious point.

The point is precisely that obscurity is a relative concept. In the book I am taking small worlds about which I know nothing and then seriously investigating them. I didn't know that there is a thriving Surinam lit scene, but that is precisely the point: I can choose a topic almost at random and find something interesting.

So it's more than anecdotes and novelty: its a serious attempt to demonstrate that the world is full of interesting stuff and that we need to push ourselves to find it.

[jams o donnell]

Now that is a book I would pay good money for. The best HM band in Botswana? I am sure that must be Wrust. What I've heard by Crackdust sounds good too