Rob Manuel

Picture the scene: It’s 1996 and I’m playing on the interweb and I find to my astonishment a complete copy of the KLF’s How To Have A Number 1 The Easy Way. Being a huge fan of their music and their odd arty stunts, I print it off and read it at home.

It blows my tiny mind. Possibly the most inspirational book I’ve ever read. I immediately start screaming at friends, “Let’s make a number 1 record. I know how to do it.”

Fast forward 5 years and the author Bill Drummond republishes the book and it’s available to buy on Amazon.

I buy it. Why? I love it. I want to own it. And I want to re-read it in a form that’s easier to manage than 80 pages of A4.

Do I have a point? Yep. I reckon the main buyers of the sick joke book will be buying it as a present. “Uncle Bill likes foul jokes. This will work for Christmas.”

But how does Uncle Bill’s nephew know that this book is the one to buy? Well, maybe he’s already read it, for free, on the interweb.

Other examples of ‘free as advertising’:

* Oprah Winfrey gives away cars to every member of the studio audience. This was covered round-the-world in every newspaper you can imagine. The cost of placing advertisng in these publications would greatly outweigh the cost of the cars.

* Nizlopi gave away their JCB video for download on the website. After being emailed round the world, they get a UK top 10 hit.

* Arctic Monkeys. Ah bollocks. I’ve done them already. Er.. I vaugely remember Shaggy having a hit after the song being widely traded on the P2P networks.

Anyway. All this hinges on the premise that “what you are giving away is something that people want.”

It hinges on you believing and trusting in your product. And I believe in sick jokes. Rah.

I’ve been pacing about thinking “what do I do in a book shop?”

And I’ve come to the inescapable conclusion that I judge books by their cover - and sometimes even their spine.

In my local bookshop (Owl, Kentish Town), they sell approximately a million billion titles, and on visiting the shop my behaviour is always the same: stare about blankly looking for something to catch my eye. A sick joke book would catch my attention - I love foul humour.

Basically I’ve got one thought: stick the words ’sick jokes’ in the biggest possible letters on the cover - so even a short-sighted mole could read the title from the other side of the shop.

OK - that’s a pretty rough version of the idea, but it gets my point across, but there’s no question the only person for the job is the lovely and talented Denise Wilton.

Some other thoughts on the cover whilst I’m here:

* I’ve picked black on white for high contrast issues (and that I don’t have a colour printer), maybe sparkling pink and gold would be better?

* Sick Jokes. Big letters. BIG LETTERS. Not the B3ta bit - simply as although I like to think of B3ta being more internationally known brand than McDonalds, something is clueing me into the idea that the phrase ‘Sick Jokes’ is more likely to get random people to pick it up in a bookshop.

* When I pick up a book, I look at the cover and then read the blurb on the back. Fuck having blurb. Make it jokes. Why? Well, what’s the point of describing a joke when you can tell it? No ambiguity.

Talking to a friend last night he asked, “How many jokes does a joke book have?”

Me: 500 - that’s a nice round number.

Him: I read the 1001 joke book as a child. It didn’t have 1001 jokes. I know. I counted them.

Me: Were you that kid on Blue Peter who counted the perforations in a Tetley teabag?

Him: No. But I know him.

Me: Doesn’t matter how many jokes. It’s the fish that John West reject that make them the best.

Anyway, on that whimsey there’s the other “I don’t know” - as my email inbox has just pinged with a message from ‘Dave aka Evil Prof Pixel Masher’ who says, “You’ve asked for joke illustrations to be sent to you at 300dpi, but with no reference to *what size*?”

I tell him that I want the book “ordinary paperback sized” as I figure that’s a good size for taking to the toilet for a dump.

He does some spooky design-maths tells me that’s 1650px X 2550px. Which is pretty fucking huge.