How to Write a How to Write Book

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Category:	Self-Help
Author:	Brian Piddock
Publisher:	Neil Rhodes Books
Price:	£7.00
ISBN:	9780955555701
Pages:	200
Reviewed in issue:	7

This is quite possibly the strangest book I have ever read. At first I thought this was going to be a genuine ‘how to write’ manual, but after the first chapter I knew I had been wrong. How to write a how to write book details the trials and tribulations of Brian Piddock’s attempts to see his work in print. Anyone looking for useful advice on how to get published will not find it here. Instead you will read Piddock’s vitriolic attack on publishers, his peers, his wife and just about anything else that stands between him and a six-figure publishing deal.

This book appears to be a parody of all the ‘self-help’, or ‘how to get published’ books that many new authors turn to. Piddock’s writing is full of wry humour and sarcastic observations, and anyone who has received a rejection letter could identify with his bitterness and frustration. Unfortunately, the joke wears thin after a while; at 29 chapters, it is overlong. What could have been a caustic, but amusing, swipe at the publishing elite turns into an over-long whinge.

The writing is overly garrulous, repetitive and meandering, and as I read on, I couldn’t see what this book hoped to achieve. Don’t buy this if looking for genuine ‘how to write’ tips, it’s not to be taken seriously, the author definitely has his tongue firmly in cheek. Should be taken with a huge pinch of salt!

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