Enough of the enoughness
Mixed emotions this week as I finally face up to the fact that 'The Economics of Enough' is hitting the bookshelves in the UK.
Positive emotions because it's great to see the concept in solid paper format, available for all and sundry to read; negative emotions because the author of said tome is not my good self but someone else.
It's my own silly fault, of course. I spent five years telling everyone I was working on a book called 'The Economics of Enough'; I spent bloody ages actually drafting the thing; and I had an agent in 2009 who gaily took the title to the Frankfurt bookfair where it began a life of its own. Who could blame the publisher who heard the great title, but also heard that the text itself was too long and that the author was someone no-one had ever heard of? A much better idea, surely, to publish something by an established and capable author.
So, well done Diane Coyle. The reviews are coming in and they look solid; the lecture tour is underway and as a Fellow of the RSA I'm even part-funding it. It's a great idea, and I genuinely hope it's successful. It is, in the end, the ideas that matter, not the egos.
I, meanwhile, have to re-think a little. It seems that the Diane Coyle Enough and my Enough, whilst both looking at the future of economics, take different perspectives and cover different ground, so there may still be some room for the things I wanted to say. It looks, too, like I may finally have found someone to publish the thing - only now it's going to need to be called something else.
We'll see what emerges.
Positive emotions because it's great to see the concept in solid paper format, available for all and sundry to read; negative emotions because the author of said tome is not my good self but someone else.
It's my own silly fault, of course. I spent five years telling everyone I was working on a book called 'The Economics of Enough'; I spent bloody ages actually drafting the thing; and I had an agent in 2009 who gaily took the title to the Frankfurt bookfair where it began a life of its own. Who could blame the publisher who heard the great title, but also heard that the text itself was too long and that the author was someone no-one had ever heard of? A much better idea, surely, to publish something by an established and capable author.
So, well done Diane Coyle. The reviews are coming in and they look solid; the lecture tour is underway and as a Fellow of the RSA I'm even part-funding it. It's a great idea, and I genuinely hope it's successful. It is, in the end, the ideas that matter, not the egos.
I, meanwhile, have to re-think a little. It seems that the Diane Coyle Enough and my Enough, whilst both looking at the future of economics, take different perspectives and cover different ground, so there may still be some room for the things I wanted to say. It looks, too, like I may finally have found someone to publish the thing - only now it's going to need to be called something else.
We'll see what emerges.
[If there's a photo down here it was added
August 2017 as part of blog refresh. Photo is either mine or is linked to
where I found it. Make of either what you will.]
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