Subtitle

Titles are easy to come by, unless you have a publisher that insists they know better – and in the case of “Time’s Up!” actually did know better. Subtitles are a different matter entirely, because they are – in effect – the description of the book.

Have you noticed recently how book subtitles have turned into straplines – so while previously a book may have been called “Thin” and subtitled “Losing Weight Really Quickly”, it will probably now be subtitled “How to lose weight very quickly, with a minimum of fuss and not die in the process.” Admittedly it’s more descriptive, but is also submitting to the belief that people are incapable of reading any of the actual pages to see whether they want to commit to the book; rather they buy books based entirely on whether a marketing executive understands reader psychology well enough.

That’s just manipulation.

That’s the kind of thing that needs undermining.

Anyhow, yesterday this blog had the subtitle “Taking Our Lives Back”, which sounds far too ethereal. The subtitle – which incidentally, I rediscovered in an outline document – that I am now using is “A Practical Guide for Radical Change“, which will no doubt get me into trouble with all sorts of people, including potential publishers, but is far closer to the spirit of the book.

Underminers – What Is This All About?

Ok, here’s the plan. I have a book to write, and I am very keen to get it written – but it’s going to be a hard slog. I have a title: “Underminers” and a rough outline which I’ll be revealing in due course; but it’s the execution that matters, and when you are being pulled in all sorts of directions – domestically, socially, community-y(?) and all sorts of other writing (writingy?) ways – then sometimes you can only get as far as the title and rough outline.

Anyone who reads my blog “The Unsuitablog” will already have a fair idea of what an Underminer is; and anyone who has read my book “Time’s Up!” will know why Undermining (or Sabotage, as I called it in “A Matter of Scale”) is so critical to the survival of humanity. For a crash course in Undermining then there are two articles on The Earth Blog that I recommend you read:

1) Sabotage Is Not An Option, It Is A Necessity

2) 100 Ways To Undermine The Industrial Machine

I will go into a lot more detail about the genesis of the book that is to come in later blogs, but in a nutshell there is only so much that can be said in an article, such as the Monthly Undermining Tasks on The Unsuitablog, and published books still get far more serious coverage than websites in the wider world. That’s all for now.

This blog will be a public, and often very frank, record of everything related to the book “Underminers”, including the process of planning and researching; the writing itself; building a website for hosting the online version; getting published; publicising the book and the website; and finally being hoisted up by my own petard / neck for daring to write something so troublesome in the first place.

I will only post a blog when I have actually done something, but if I don’t post something at least once a week then you are welcome to harangue me.

Here goes…