Here’s a fun fact: I didn’t think anyone would read my book.

Can you imagine a more disingenuous statement from an egotist like me? That I didn’t think anyone would buy and read my brilliant, hilarious, insightful book? Please.

But it’s true. While I was writing The Book, my brain didn’t engage with the fact that at some point anyone would read it. And it certainly didn’t register with me that many of the people who did read it would be people I’ve never met.

All of which explains the fucking immense weirdness that I now experience almost every day when someone either Twitters, emails or - worst of all - confronts me at an event - to tell me “I’ve read your book”.

Take Friday - I went to the offices of a PR agency for a really interesting meeting (more on that soon enough) and the first thing I noticed as I walked through the door was a small pile of my books on the corner of a desk. Maybe four or five copies, all neatly stacked up. I must have cringed visibly when I saw them because the head of the agency immediately apologised - “sorry, I meant to hide those before you arrived. I’ve bought a copy for everyone in the company to get them up to speed with your story. Those are the spares.”

And so she had - I probably met half a dozen of the agency’s employees and every single one of them had reached a different part of the story. “You’ve just left The Friday Project”, “you’re hanging out at Adam Street”, “you’ve just split up with...”. And every time I mentioned a friend by first name - Robert, Zoe, Michael - they knew exactly who I meant. The guy with the flat in Soho, the outed sex-blogger, the tousled-haired puzzle cunt.

Just imagine for a second how that feels - meeting a group of people for the first time who know everything about you including your friends, your arrest record and the bizarre circumstances with which you split up with your ex-girlfriends. Flattering, in a way, but also fucking terrifying.

And yet, as I was writing the book, it honestly didn’t occur to me that it would be like this.

You see, when I write, I tend to do so with one person in mind; either an actual person or a fictitious reader. It probably makes for pretty arrogant prose (my fictitious person always gets my jokes, no matter how ‘in’) but it’s the only way I can avoid being crippled by uncertainty about what to include and what to leave out. The problem with that approach is that it makes it really fucking weird when someone who isn’t that reader corners me and tells me that they’ve read the book. It wasn’t meant for them. It was meant to be a private conversation, between me and my fictitious reader. 

But here’s the even weirder thing. That weirdness feels perfectly normal now. Those daily surprises. The idea that my life - failures, fuckups and all - is an open book. It’s all something that I’ve got used to being surprised by.

(I’ve also got used to people I’ve never met feeling qualified to psychoanalyse me. Nearly. The next time someone tells me that - actually - I’m wrong in describing the book as a business book when “actually it’s a love story”, I’ll fucking scream. No shit. Life’s either a love story or it’s a waste of time. Help yourself to a Love Heart. 

For what it’s worth, it didn’t start out that way. Events dear boy, events - as Harold MacMillan would have it said.)

Why am I mentioning all this? Because I feel bad. I feel bad about how I react when people - like the cool people in the PR agency, or the nice girl at the Last.fm roof party the other night, or the crazy girl at Geektails - tell me they’ve read the book and enjoyed it. Rather than simply saying thank you, I tend to respond in a way so self-deprecating that it comes across as rude or ungrateful. “I’m sorry to hear that” or just “Ah.”

In reality I don’t know what to say. I really am grateful that they’ve read it, I really am pleased if they’ve enjoyed it and I really am sorry if they haven’t. It’s just that, because I didn’t really write the book in the expectation that it would be read, I don’t know the correct response to the fact that it has been.

So that’s why I’m writing this blog post. I thought the best way to deal with the situation would be to retreat back behind my keyboard and to bash out a post explaining the weirdness in the hope that a few of the offended parties might stumble across it and feel less offended.

I also figured it might also be the right place to answer the eight follow-up questions that I am most regularly asked when people tell me they’ve read the book. I’m not very good at answering them in person. So here goes...

Have the people mentioned in the book read it? Are they still speaking to you?
Most of them have read it, as far as I know. All of the ones who were speaking to me pre-publication still are; all of those who weren’t, still aren’t. Only more so.

Has Ben Cohen confronted you about what you said about him?
No. Fortunately Channel 4’s technology correspondent rarely comes to new media events. 

The story about you xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx is pretty unbelivable. Is it true?
Yes. The book is a true story. It says so on the cover.

Have you seen xxxxxxxxxxxx since the book came out? Has she forgiven you?
No.

Which characters in the book did you give fake names to? Why?
Sam Lewis and Karen are the only pseudonyms. Sam: for a variety of professional reasons; Karen: because she didn’t ask to get tangled up in all of this. Everyone else is identified using their real name. 

How many copies has the book sold?
I honestly - honestly - don’t know. Beyond the fact that the first print run sold out in a little over a week, I’ve avoided sales information like the plague.  Cui bono?

Will you take me to Mr Rong’s?
No. It’s moved. You’ll have to wait for the next book to read the story about the deposit. 

Are you writing another book then?
Yes. 

...

So there you go. And one last time - just in case I haven’t made it clear enough - to everyone who has read the book; thank you. I really, really do appreciate it - I just have a funny way of showing it.

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