No. 213: A NOTE TO THE REGULARS / Recent developments, not so random thoughts, quirky asides & such. Friday housekeeping.

This I'll share with you, my loyal crew, but not for circulation. If we can keep this entry nous.

FIRST of all, thank you for your interest and support. It means the world to me that there are people out there reading my remembrances and opinions—long on the former and kinda wishy-washy on the latter.

Just to loop you in, I have an offer from a Canadian publisher for a sportswriting memoir of sorts. You’ll note here that I didn’t say that I have a publisher who’s looking at throwing How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying) into print. If the text of the Audible Original ever lands in print, it will almost certainly be a self-publishing proposition.

(There is a version on Kindle, not exactly the same as the Audible text. In fact, it’s somewhat of an improvement on the original, with a couple of choice added chapters.)

How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying) was the catalyst for the conversation with the publisher, however. I sent along the manuscript and an editor at the publishing house expressed a strong interest—that is, until the editor investigated various grant rules and tax considerations. As it turns out, a lot of breaks for publishers ride on the outfits producing original work rather than re-publishing existing titles. It was the editor who determined that the Audible audiobook was in fact an act of publishing and thus disqualifies the title from such government support. The economics of publishing are fragile enough, but this made it wholly unviable.

Dead end? Well, no, not quite.

The alternate cover from Audible might be okay if we were going with Portrait of the Artist as a Young Scribe.

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The editor told me that there was still strong interest in a memoir along the lines of How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying), but had a not insignificant ask:

“Is there any way of writing a version that recycles and repurposes no more than ten percent of the Audible Original?” (To be eligible for the cultural grant money, ten percent isthe maximum threshold for republishing material from a previous work.)

Another way to reframe it: Can you do a sportswriting memoir that is 90 percent material you left out of How to Succeed in Sportswriting (without Really Trying)?

Of course I said yes. I just had to figure out how I’d be able to put it together.

I think I have come up with a solution. I wouldn’t say it’s inspired, but neither would I say it’s contrived, or at least overly so.

When I was writing the text for the audiobook, I kept in mind two conspicuous issues: