Retired at last!

Well, it looks like I'm properly retired at last. The other day I turned down an illustration job and yesterday found out that the publisher of the book I've been working on for the past year 10 principles of graphic design has just gone into administration!Vivays was founded by a couple of ex-employees of my main publisher Laurence King, including commissioning editor Lee Ripley. Ah well.

It's happened before. In 1991, my second book CAD for product design was commissioned, written, edited, picture researched and ready to go to press when its publisher (whose name escapes me) was taken over by Phaidon. What I didn't know was that Phaidon had also been recently taken over and was relying on its back catalogue to generate income. They weren't publishing anything new, so sat on my book until I asked for it back. After sending it to another couple of publishers (Wiley was one, the Design Council another) and waiting for them to read it (this was before the internet and email), I decided it was getting too out of date to continue, so it never saw the light of day. Soon after, Laurence King approached me about Production for graphic designers, and I've worked for them ever since. When they proposed a second edition of Drawing for designers, which would have been virtually a different book to the first edition, I declined, saying that I'd retired.

So Lee emailed me last year about her new venture and I couldn't say no - only 17,000 words required. Incidentally, another of their authors is Ruth Slavid, who I worked with at IPC Science and Technology Press in Guildford all those years ago. Her book 10 principles of architecture did get published, though it's unlikely she'll see any royalties!

That makes three unpublished books on my hard drive. CAD for product design, which is only openable as a text file, seeing as it was probably written in Claris Works; my NaNoWriMo novel from November 2011, which I'll self-publish just as soon as I can decide on a title; and the graphic design one. Maybe the administrator will find a buyer, maybe not.