North London Reading Group

Think of a book and you think of a finished article. Whether made of paper or virtual pixels, the book you read is the end of result of months, years or decades of work by the author. After slaving away in seclusion over a hot pen or laptop, the author proudly delivers the fruits of their labour to the world. Once out in the world, the book can be lauded, criticised or just ignored, but there’s no turning back once it’s done.

I’ve had books like that published. It’s a heady process – the years of work, the anxiety over what the public will think, the anxious search for feedback once it’s out and the frustrating collation of errors spotted too late and improvements for future editions that may or may not ever be published.

But since the end of 2011, I’ve been working on a different kind of book; one that’s published piece by piece, one in which the public play a big role before it’s even finished.

The best water skier in Luxembourg

The book is called The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg: Tales of Big Fish in Small Ponds. It’s part-travelogue, part personal story, part pop sociology. In the book I visit obscure ‘small worlds’ to find the people who matter in them, the unknown heroes (and sometimes villains) who make big waves in their own small ponds but are invisible outside them.

The book derives from a joke I used to tell about myself. I’m one of the top academic experts in heavy metal and in the UK Jewish community, both of them very small fields – making me a bit like the best water skier in Luxembourg.

In 2011 I had a brainwave: why not track down the real best water skier in Luxembourg? This could form the basis of a book that pays tribute to the commitment and excellence found in small worlds; a book that would be an antidote to the obsession with celebrity, power and ‘bigness’ often celebrated in the publishing industry.

The Best Water Skier in Luxembourg is about connecting with people, hearing their stories and making them part of my own journey. I wanted to involve readers in this journey too. So I chose to publish the book not through a conventional publisher, but the ‘crowd-funded’ publisher Unbound. Set up in 2011, Unbound lets readers support books before they are written.  The people behind Unbound select a few projects to put their weight behind, filming a pitch video in which authors appeal directly to readers for support.

Uncovering a turbulent history

I started modestly, by asking for funds to write the first chapter, in which I would attempt to track down the eponymous best water skier. It took a couple of months but eventually I got the money and in December 2011 I found myself in a village called Mondorf-Les-Bains, near the French border, meeting Luxembourg’s best water skier. I also found much more: stories of the turbulent history of Luxembourgish water skiing, from the successes of the 1960s (in which one Luxembourger, Sylvie Hülsemann, won the world championship), to the turmoil of the 1970s, when the Luxembourg water skiing scene split into two rival federations.

This wasn’t the end of my journey. In summer 2012 my pitch for the rest of the book went up on Unbound. Since then I have been appealing appealed directly to readers to fund my journeys to find the most powerful politician in Alderney, the Icelandic special forces, Malta’s favourite soft drink, Botswana’s top heavy metal band and Surinam’s best-selling novelist.  Anyone who supports the project gets to download the Luxembourg chapter immediately and other chapters will be uploaded as they are written. Supporters can support at a number of levels, from a simple e-book, to a lavish hard copy with other goodies such as postcards from my travels and a unique best water skier T-shirt. Pay enough and supporters can even join me on my trips!

Slow going

It’s slow going as I need to raise a lot of money, particularly for the Botswana and Surinam chapters. But by October last year I had raised enough to go to Alderney to find the channel island’s most powerful politician. As in Luxembourg, I found more than I bargained for – an intricate and fascinating story of how a tiny group of people jostle for power on a tiny island.

Throughout the project I’ve been speaking at festivals and literary salons about my work. This is a vital part of the process and not just because I need their money! I’ve received many suggestions, queries and reactions that have helped shape the book.

On 26 January I spoke at the North London Reading Group’s Bookstock event. I shared sections of my first draft of the Alderney chapter and the audience’s response will be vital to how the chapter turns out. I will also reflect on what I found in Luxembourg and what I hope to find in my other destinations.

In 2013 I hope to travel to Iceland and Malta to research the next two chapters. Whether I do so is partly up to you! Have a look at my page on Unbound and consider helping me shape a book whose final form even I don’t know yet.

Keith Kahn-Harris is a writer and sociologist. His website is www.kahn-harris.org