A few weeks ago I was sitting in the front room of a friend’s house drinking some very local beer with a musician; not just any musician, but one who has almost legendary status in Nashville both as a singer and a songwriter, and is a very nice person too. She said to me: “I hear you’re getting a book published – that’s great, I could never do that.”

Which made me rather happy: I hadn’t realised getting a book published was such a big deal. Nor did I realise how nervous I would feel when, one day seeing if my publisher (“My publisher!”) had put any feelers out to market the book, I found the book for sale on Amazon. Ok, it’s only in the UK at the moment, but apparently it’s going to go global.

When I completed A Matter Of Scale, I always hoped that I might find a sympathetic publisher who would do me a favour, but I didn’t hold out much hope, particularly as every agent I contacted basically said it wasn’t commercial enough and they wouldn’t touch it. With that in mind, I put the book online so that even if it didn’t get published, people would be able to read it (just to be careful, I didn’t make it downloadable at the time). To cut a long story short, I found a publisher who not only wanted to print the book, but was also happy for me to keep A Matter Of Scale online (even to download) – one reason was they wanted to change the title to make it more commercial (fine by me, if more people read it); another reason was they understood that most people don’t actually like reading things online, so the web site might generate a few extra sales.

For my part, I never planned to make any money out of the book that is now called “Time’s Up!” so I really didn’t (and don’t) care whether people paid for it or not – so long as they read it. I get rather upset, if I’m being honest, at the number of authors who purport to have a “solution” to the Earth’s problems, then insist that you have to pay for the instruction manual (oh, and in almost every case, except for the few I list on the web site, once you have paid for the “solution” it’s nothing of the sort!) You might not agree with what I have written, but at least I haven’t taken any money out of your pocket: it’s nice to be nice.

So, anyway, the book’s being published in March 2009, in a slighty altered form from the one you can read on the website for free, so if you really do want something you can hold in your hands, and which will give you what you need to help you survive the impending environmental crash, then watch out for “Time’s Up!” next year.

Many thanks

Keith