A Vaguely Momentous Idea
Before I go on with the main event.
Please remember to register your interest in doing the The Colossus Quiz by emailing thecolossusquiz@gmail.com
See here for the further details if you have been away and taking holidays on such locations as the Moon.
Plans
Someone accidentally purchased The Sunday Times for me the other day, and despite vowing that I would stop reading it on account of it eating up all of my Sunday (it's bad enough getting stuck into The Observer for three-and-a-half hours as I always do) I acquiesced to my natural, raging news/information curiosity.
I was going through the News Review when an article by Martin Wroe on the bottom of page two caught my eye. It was headlined (rather badly in retrospect) "Publish and get instant gratification with the iTunes of literature" and thought, publishing and internet stuff - MUST READ.
Now I have heard of Lulu.com. They basically publish any books anyone submits for printing and paper costs, but in essence predicate their website's raison d'etre on the really radical idea is that because it is done via computer and printed on demand, i.e. a copy of the book is only printed (somewhere in Spain if you are a UK resident) when someone buys it. This makes it so much cheaper, quicker and easier to publish the book you always thought you had in you. Granted you don't have the crushing marketing power of a publisher and the expert skills of an editor, but you do get your book out there, which is better than having it gathering dust and turning yellow in some desk drawer.
Therefore the book market is truly democratised and the books that the publishers rejected and spat on as they sent them flying into the rubbish bin, but which deserve an audience will find a way thanks to the website, word-of-mouth and all those internetty things that has served bands popularised by MySpace.com so well. Of course, a lot of complete crap will be published too, but that is a given. It is all about finding the diamonds in the rough.
And it got me thinking. I wasn't pondering whether Lulu could sate my straightforward literary ambitions, you know the big pipe dreams to do with novels and non-fiction books (um, one of which I have already written and am being really lazy about). Nope, I want an advance and the chance to do irritating interviews with disinterested local radio DJs all over the country.
But what about a quiz book? That really hard quiz book I've always wanted to write and disseminate in a possibly unwilling world. In fact I was shocked it had never occurred to me before. And as the idea grew on me I realised that Lulu would be the perfect vehicle to do it, offering me the chance to write and publish the truly challenging questions I wanted - without any compromise whatsoever - and designing it in order to eliminate all those irritating quirks in normal quiz books. Plus, I could publish it in super-swift time and also be able to correct mistakes as soon as I realised they had been made. Yes, it would be perfect. I would write the hardest quiz book in the history of the world. Part 1.
So over the next two months I will write it and hopefully by the end of the third month it will be available to order in printed form or to download from the site. Sadly, I haven't allowed myself the time to organised my purported month-long pub quiz odyssey, and will now probably do it sometime next year, so this project will do very nicely for the moment (I need my projects or I would probably just stare at the ceiling and turn into a giant mound of fat).
It is provisionally titled The Quiz Book, however, I have other bombastic and insane ones up my sleeve. I believe I will end up canvassing opinion here in the form of a poll. I'm also thinking about a cover image. Question marks are a bit cack, but have been thinking about piles of reference books and quiz books being piled together, and being burned in a giant bonfire. But then that would cost a lot of money. And would also be a bit pointless. I have also been thinking about the picture of a dartboard with famed quiz show, your Bamber's and your Trebek's faces on it, being severely darted. Or I could just have someone headbutting a wall.
As for the inside, I think I am going for the q-book norm of 2000. Possibly 40 quizzes of fifty questions, alternating between general knowledge and specialist subjects: e.g. priapic and insane kings, particle physics, elephant polo, competitive sandcastle construction tournaments. A quarter of them will be my favourites culled from the BH quizzes (or the ones I am desperately trying to memorise but for the life of me can never recall), while the rest will be original ones. The hardest of the hard but beautiful in a way.
Anyway, that's about it. I'm looking forward to writing it. Er, I think.
Please remember to register your interest in doing the The Colossus Quiz by emailing thecolossusquiz@gmail.com
See here for the further details if you have been away and taking holidays on such locations as the Moon.
Plans
Someone accidentally purchased The Sunday Times for me the other day, and despite vowing that I would stop reading it on account of it eating up all of my Sunday (it's bad enough getting stuck into The Observer for three-and-a-half hours as I always do) I acquiesced to my natural, raging news/information curiosity.
I was going through the News Review when an article by Martin Wroe on the bottom of page two caught my eye. It was headlined (rather badly in retrospect) "Publish and get instant gratification with the iTunes of literature" and thought, publishing and internet stuff - MUST READ.
Now I have heard of Lulu.com. They basically publish any books anyone submits for printing and paper costs, but in essence predicate their website's raison d'etre on the really radical idea is that because it is done via computer and printed on demand, i.e. a copy of the book is only printed (somewhere in Spain if you are a UK resident) when someone buys it. This makes it so much cheaper, quicker and easier to publish the book you always thought you had in you. Granted you don't have the crushing marketing power of a publisher and the expert skills of an editor, but you do get your book out there, which is better than having it gathering dust and turning yellow in some desk drawer.
Therefore the book market is truly democratised and the books that the publishers rejected and spat on as they sent them flying into the rubbish bin, but which deserve an audience will find a way thanks to the website, word-of-mouth and all those internetty things that has served bands popularised by MySpace.com so well. Of course, a lot of complete crap will be published too, but that is a given. It is all about finding the diamonds in the rough.
And it got me thinking. I wasn't pondering whether Lulu could sate my straightforward literary ambitions, you know the big pipe dreams to do with novels and non-fiction books (um, one of which I have already written and am being really lazy about). Nope, I want an advance and the chance to do irritating interviews with disinterested local radio DJs all over the country.
But what about a quiz book? That really hard quiz book I've always wanted to write and disseminate in a possibly unwilling world. In fact I was shocked it had never occurred to me before. And as the idea grew on me I realised that Lulu would be the perfect vehicle to do it, offering me the chance to write and publish the truly challenging questions I wanted - without any compromise whatsoever - and designing it in order to eliminate all those irritating quirks in normal quiz books. Plus, I could publish it in super-swift time and also be able to correct mistakes as soon as I realised they had been made. Yes, it would be perfect. I would write the hardest quiz book in the history of the world. Part 1.
So over the next two months I will write it and hopefully by the end of the third month it will be available to order in printed form or to download from the site. Sadly, I haven't allowed myself the time to organised my purported month-long pub quiz odyssey, and will now probably do it sometime next year, so this project will do very nicely for the moment (I need my projects or I would probably just stare at the ceiling and turn into a giant mound of fat).
It is provisionally titled The Quiz Book, however, I have other bombastic and insane ones up my sleeve. I believe I will end up canvassing opinion here in the form of a poll. I'm also thinking about a cover image. Question marks are a bit cack, but have been thinking about piles of reference books and quiz books being piled together, and being burned in a giant bonfire. But then that would cost a lot of money. And would also be a bit pointless. I have also been thinking about the picture of a dartboard with famed quiz show, your Bamber's and your Trebek's faces on it, being severely darted. Or I could just have someone headbutting a wall.
As for the inside, I think I am going for the q-book norm of 2000. Possibly 40 quizzes of fifty questions, alternating between general knowledge and specialist subjects: e.g. priapic and insane kings, particle physics, elephant polo, competitive sandcastle construction tournaments. A quarter of them will be my favourites culled from the BH quizzes (or the ones I am desperately trying to memorise but for the life of me can never recall), while the rest will be original ones. The hardest of the hard but beautiful in a way.
Anyway, that's about it. I'm looking forward to writing it. Er, I think.
posted by That Quiz Guy at 7:47 PM
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