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What book is everyone writing right now?

Rolfe said:
The question mark is essential. I am not, not, NOT, NOT declaring that this monumental foul-up can be adequately explained by stupidity. That is precisely the point.

Rolfe.
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:confused: If you intended it, why remove it?

Without knowing more about the issues, just going by the title, then neither works for me, with or without the "?". I know there are dozens of CTs about the incident. I know they had a guy in jail and it would seem let him out after making some kind of deal which was covered up with a claim of it being an humanitarian release.

Beyond that, until I read your book, I don't know where the "stupidity" comes in.

I suggest taking a step back from the declaration you want to make in the title and just focus on drawing the reader in. Just my opinion.
 
I didn't remove the question mark. It was accidentally dropped by the cover designer. It will be replaced.

There are indeed a lot of conspiracy theories about the case. In an almost completely unrelated fact, the man they jailed for the crime was innocent. The politics surrounding the compassionate release were complex, and widely misunderstood, especially outwith Scotland.

The theme of the book is that the way in which the investigation contrived to frame an innocent man has little or nothing to do with the conspiracy theories, and arguably might have been the result of tunnel vision and confirmation bias rather than being an organised cover-up. Or then again, maybe that's just too big a stretch, given the sheer magnitude of the foul-up.

Now it is probably not possible to convey all that information in a book title. More can and will be conveyed on the back cover blurb. Nevertheless the title and front cover should not contradict that overview.

Rolfe.
 
I know you don't really want opinions, but since you asked; I don't like the title. Sorry. I know it's not going to change, and I have no desire to try convince you to change it, but there you go.

Otherwise I think the cover design's great. I'd agree with the publisher about having the whole plane on the cover, it looks a bit more balance to me (if you're going to crop it on one side you really want to crop it equally on the other side, which obviously wouldn't work).

It must be pretty exciting to be in the final stages before publication. Well done.
 
That's what the publisher said - balance. You don't have to like the title - it's not compulsory. Apart from a few people on JREF, everyone else thinks it's fine. The publisher is pretty keen on it. So I guess it will do. Which is just as well, really.

I haven't seen any proofs yet. That will be the moment of truth, I guess.

But it turns out that someone I know quite well is in a senior position in a big Edinburgh bookshop and she is talking about organising a book launch event for me. I hope that comes off!

Rolfe.
 
I like the title. It's got that "Man Bites Dog" quality too it that makes you want to find out more. You can't really look at the title and not wonder what stupidity the author is talking about.
 
I like the title better without the question mark :boxedin:

Although I understand the reason for the ?
 
You've already got a spirited discussion over the title, Rolfe. That's success!

Beanbag
 
When one of the people who has read the book saw the draft cover, he said, what the hell happened, the question mark is essential.

I think most people know that Lockerbie is absolutely festooned with conspiracy theories. There are far more actual CTs than exist for 9/11, and there is far more genuine and widespread doubt that what the authorities said happened was what actually happened. The hope is that anyone who is aware of that background will pick up two things from the title - first that something did go wrong that has to be "explained", and second that the explanation may not in fact be a conspiracy.

However, I'm in no way declaring that there was no conspiracy. The evidence that was overlooked is so bloody obvious that I find it really, really difficult to sustain the notion that it was all a simple foul-up. On the other hand, nobody ever lost money underestimating the intelligence of the average human being, and some of these guys were very far from being the sharpest knives in the drawer. So the question mark is kind of the point of the book.

Don't judge a book by it's cover? In a way, that's quite a stupid aphorism. Book covers are carefully designed to attract and inform the reader. The assumption is that to a significant extent the book will be judged by its cover. So, the cover has to be attractive, but it also has to be truthful about the contents as far as it goes. The question mark epitomises the theme of the book, and it simply can't be left out because someone thinks it "looks better".

Rolfe.
 
Rolfe said:
But it turns out that someone I know quite well is in a senior position in a big Edinburgh bookshop and she is talking about organising a book launch event for me. I hope that comes off!
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If not, you could try Skeptics in the Pub, perhaps. Or even if the bookshop launch does come off, the SitP meetings would probably be interested in a talk about it.
 
Oops, this was a cross-posting, Mojo! I forgot I'd already mentioned it.

By the way, I have high hopes of being able to organise an actual full-dress book launch event. I have a friend who works for a big Edinburgh bookshop, in management, and she's very open to the idea of the shop putting on such an event. She's putting me in touch with the person in charge of events to see what we can organise.

If it comes off, I hope to be able to get someone who has a "name" to present the launch. If all else fails, Prof. Robert Black will probably do it. I'm thinking of an introduction, then I read some passages from the book - ten to fifteen minutes worth. Then the "name" interviews me about some of the issues, then we take questions from the large audience which we will have drummed up to attend, hopefully including a journalist or three.

Then they all buy copies of the book for me to sign. Well that's the theory anyway. Might even work.

I'd certainly be very happy to give talks about it to anyone who wants to listen. But I thought all "skeptics" scorn such conspiracy theories and cling firmly to the rational view that the court verdict is always correct?

Rolfe.
 
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Rolfe said:
Thanks for that, Catsmate. I've had a draft cover back from the publisher - they seem to want to use the whole plane. It looks quite nice, except they've lost the question mark in the title. Easily fixed, I imagine.

http://vetpath.co.uk/jref/matador1.jpg

What do y'all think?

Rolfe.
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I like it. Except for the font, but that's probably just me. I dislike serif fonts and associate them with unpleasantness (long story involving proofreading as a teenager).

Rolfe said:
But it turns out that someone I know quite well is in a senior position in a big Edinburgh bookshop and she is talking about organising a book launch event for me. I hope that comes off!

Rolfe.
Click to expand...
I have some good contacts in Dublin's bookshops, if you like I'll ask them about something here. It can't be worse than that g*d-awful Tuskar Rock/UFOs book.
 
I always assumed it would be a serif font, for some reason. I quite like his choice and certainly didn't have anything I preferred in mind.

Thanks for the offer, but I don't think it's worth trailing to Ireland to promote the book. It's mainly going to sell in Scotland I imagine, as that is where Lockerbie is a hot topic. Mainly because the way the Crown Office in Scotland is handling it, which is frankly scary. If you happen to be a Scottish citizen, anyway. Or even if you aren't, seeing as they got Megrahi and he'd never set foot in Scotland.

Funnily enough, if it hadn't been for the very high wind on the night of the disaster, there's a pretty good chance the plane would actually have crashed on Dublin. It was only routed north to avoid the weather over Ireland at the time, and avoid flying head-first into a 95 mph gale. Dublin is about the same distance from Heathrow as Lockerbie.

But it didn't. It went north, and the bomb detonated just minutes after crossing the border into Scotland. So, the D&G McPlods failing to join the dots and a bunch of doddery old men in Camp Zeist going along with the narrative presented by their own side. Anyone think Gaddafi would have set a bomb that was likely to take out Dublin, given that he was arming the IRA at the time? Just a passing remark.

Anyway, here's the final cover.

matador2.jpg


Rolfe.
 
I would like to read it. Will it be available in the U.S., do you think?
 
Not as such. Obviously anyone can order from the web site, but you'd have to pay for postage and packing. That's why I went with the e-book option. I presume people can buy the e-book no matter where they are and avoid shipping costs.

There is an option to add print-on-demand availability in the USA and Canada, but I'm not really thinking about doing that. The prevailing view in the USA is that the cops got the right man for Lockerbie, to the point that is almost seems to be a matter of national pride. I'm not sure there's much of a market there for a book proving that assumption to be wrong.

ETA: I dunno. I'd have to put up £100 to have the book made available in the USA/Canada. I'm not sure how many I'd have to sell to break even on that. Any JREF thoughts?

Rolfe.
 
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Assuming you can buy an e-book from a UK web site, which I assume you can, then yes, it'll be available. I'm a bit unconvinced that there's a significant market for a PoD version in the USA or Canada.

Rolfe.
 
Thanks. Matador put it together from different things I wrote, mostly late one night just before I was off on holiday.

I'm getting impatient to get on with it all, but these things take time. I don't know how big a job the proof-reading will turn out to be.

I've been asked to take part in a TV documentary which seems to be covering wider issues of who was actually responsible for the bombing. I don't know if their thesis is right or not, but they too believe the bomb went on at Heathrow because a suspect has been followed up and found to have been in London that day. Interesting. They want me to summarise my reasons for believing (read, "knowing") that the Bedford suitcase was the bomb, and I can refer to/push the book while I'm at it.

Rolfe.
 
That sounds like a great opportunity not only to let people know about the book, but also to spread cred as a knowledgable author.
 
I'm not sure how many people will see it, because I'm not sure who's making the documentary. Could be Aljazeera, they've done some good Lockerbie stuff in the past, but it's usually only watched by people who seek it out. Someone else was supposed to be making something for Channel 4, but that fell through.

My problem is trying to think up a quick-and-dirty way to explain the suitcase jigsaw. This is not easy - that's why I wrote an entire book about it.

Rolfe.
 
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