to paraphrase Joni Mitchell

Not so much "you don't know what you've got till it's gone" as "you don't know what you weren't given until it's too late to go back and ask what happened to that important bit".

As a lyric, it needs a little work.

Theatre

I went to the theatre recently. A big production at a major west-end London theatre. (Sorry, am I showing off?)

We booked the tickets in advance - but not enough in advance - so the choice of seats was limited.

(As an aside, isn't that a ridiculous phrase? It's similar to the commonly used 'limited availability'. What they mean is 'little availability' or 'get your skates on there's not much left'. Because, unless the show is going to run to the end of time, or the venue stretches off into the distance and beyond to the stars and thence to eternity (yes, even bigger than the Dome, or the O2 if you must) - then there will always be a limited number of seats. Thank you. Sorry. As you were.)

The friendly booking dude suggested going to a preview, well into the second week of previews, just a few days before the official opening night, minor blips possible but the show should be all tickety-boo by then. And we went for it.

Not because it was cheaper, mind you. Oh no. Because the date suited us and the seats were in a good location.

The evening arrived. We filed in, all excited as one would be when about to watch a play. We were let into the auditorium a bit later than expected, only five minutes before the show was due to start, almost as though there had been some technical problems (surely not?)

To say there were technical problems would be true. Set malfunctions, prop malfunctions, special effect malfunctions, serious looking people purposefully using power tools all over the stage during the interval.

And then, as we reached the climax, it just all sort of ended very quickly. Tension lost, resolution slammed into place, cast bowing, lead actor looking very annoyed and everyone goes home.

Some time later, I flicked through a copy of the play script and realised that a long and structurally important scene from very near the end hadn't actually happened that night.

Yes, but it's a preview. No, but that's not good enough. I think. Am I right?

Lesson learned - never buy tickets for previews.

Books

Far be it from me to refrain from jumping on bandwagons to do with books. Today is no exception.

Wonderful news that Harper Lee's first novel, 'Go Set A Watchman' will finally be published.

(For those who missed the news story, she wrote that book about sixty years ago and was advised to write a different book, set when the main character was a girl. So, fifty-five years ago, she published 'To Kill A Mockingbird'. And the manuscript for GSAW was thought lost...)

But...

Once and for all, this could have shown the pointlessness of the publishing industry. Except she appears to be using a mainstream publisher.

And so she will collect pennies from each copy sold while the publishing house and assorted retailers will rake in many multiples of what she, the mere author, only the person without whom none of this would exist, will receive.

What does she need?

• A printer - these are not hard to find. For a hefty print-run, I think we can assume a good price could be negotiated.
• An editor - again, she could take her pick, pay a generous flat fee for their time and move on.
• A cover designer - see above
• Retailers - as long as the printer was hooked into the global book distribution system, any retailer could order it, if they wanted to. But they'd want to, right? As long as they knew about it because of the...
• eBook selling - see editor and cover designer. Get someone to format, beautify it and load it up. Pay them a flat fee for their time.
• Marketing - are you kidding? That's already started, free of charge, in the world's media, and will continue to publication day and beyond. Even if the original seed was planted by the publishing house's PR department, I suspect it would have spread even if Harper Lee had just phoned her local paper and told them the good news.

And then she could have kept a far greater proportion of the earnings from her work. But we'll never know how that experiment might have turned out.

In this case, I (and now you, hello!) know what didn't happen here.

If I'm ever in that position, I hereby guarantee that I will try it and report back. So keep buying my books and one day I'll get there.

http://www.petertarnofsky.co.uk

Did I mention I've got another book coming out within the next few weeks?