Recently my friend Michael Levy had a very clever idea. It was to publish cheaper versions of well-known books, the idea being that they would be ba

Six Pillars of Wisdom: lesser versions of famous books | Bill Wadge's Blog

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2021-07-17 15:00:09

Recently my friend Michael Levy had a very clever idea. It was to publish cheaper versions of well-known books, the idea being that they would be basically the same but slightly altered to avoid copyright problems. For example, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 would be re-published as Fahrenheit 350 – who needs the extra heat?

In the same way F Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby would reappear as The Mediocre Gatsby but it had a much cheaper price. And finally, Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse could be obtained under the title To the Outhouse at a bargain price.

However, little did Levy know that this phenomenon had already appeared. Famous authors produced, on their own initiative, cheaper versions of their famous works. Often this was the result of trial and error trying to find a good title. A lot of times it was the result of trying to follow up a success with similar versions of the popular work.

For example TE Lawrence (of Arabia)’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom wasn’t always that. Initially it was ( checks notes ) Three Pillars of Wisdom but that was a flop. So Lawrence increased the wisdom from four pillars to five then eventually six. At this point he almost gave up but decided on one more try, and it turned out that seven pillars was the Sweet Spot.

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