Paperback, 60pp
ISBN 978-1-9160373-0-4

Overview

A collection of 60 pieces of paperwork for readers to fill in themselves. Billed as “The nation’s favourite paperwork”, the book is a weird piece of novelty publishing.

Background

Forms is the realisation of a long-held dream - to publish a book that the readers write themselves. I had the idea quite a few years ago when I was focused on writing commercial gift books. My publisher at the time passed and I had the distinct impression that another publisher nearly published it, because they held on to the manuscript for 14 months before I got a full-page handwritten rejection letter from the editor. (That might not sound like much of a big deal, but publishing rejection letters – when you even get them – tend to be terse and automatically generated).

Although it hadn’t found a home in commercial publishing, I was always fond of the idea and a few years later dusted off the files, rewrote some stuff and made the layout more consistent. This was mostly catalysed by learning that IngramSpark could publish books with perforated pages. As soon as I set up the title with them, they stopped offering it. Monsters.

Anyway, it’s here. I still quite like it. It’s fun to fill in and I honestly do recommend you do that, rather than just read it in a pristine state. Filling out the stupid questions may provide you with some interesting answers.