Friday, August 10, 2007

Typo - A Great Read

Back in early July via Richard Charkin’s blog I was alerted to ‘Typo’, David Silverman's book about his catastrophic business collapse running a typesetting company. Richard gave it an excellent review and in its own small way proved the potential of the internet to market books is the way forward - but not like most publishers think it should be done.

It was also interesting because Jonathan Main at the Bookseller Crow immediately posted a message on your blog saying he'd secured a supply of the books from the publisher's MySpace site. I ordered it from them - it arrived and I've just finished reading it. It is an absolutely brilliant book, not just if you're into typesetting. The story concerns David and his partner buying a typesetting company in Iowa, see it begin to grow and then ultimately collapse through a series of unfortunate situations - personal and professional. It reminded me of one of my favourite sayings - in business you can never save yourself to prosperity.
It's the story of every company as much as David's company. It's also extremely funny, insightful and ultimately heartwarming.

3 comments:

James Higham said...

This strikes a particular chord with me because I had a disastrous end to my screen-printing business and so it would be good to read.

Richard Havers said...

Don't hold back, buy it. You'll love and sympathize and from the sound of it empathize in equal measure.

ds said...

Awesome. You sir, in the vernacular, rock.