A Heaping Helping of Self Help

The book is coming along fine. I've been working with an artist on the cover. This is the first pass. I discuss below some changes we're considering.

The title has changed:
 
New title: The Theory of REALity:
The Funniest, Most Outrageous Self-Help Book of All Time
 
When my potential innocent victims, er readers, are browsing for a book on Amazon,
I have maybe six seconds to get their attention, or they go on to the next book.
 
So the cover has to grab their eye.
I’m working on the new cover with the great Shaun Hutchinson.
Shaun lives in the north of England and is one of the two employees of Space Impossible.
The other employee is my son Eric, who lives in Texas. Space Impossible makes computer games.
 
I enjoy working on the covers, because I ask Shaun to do something, and he does the actual work. A rough draft of the cover is included. When I saw the cover, I thought three things:
 

1. Many of the most successful Self-Helpers, from Dale Carnegie to Tony Robbins, have their picture on the front cover. So we’re going to include a picture of Jimmy Sizemore on the cover. This book is “By Jimmy Sizemore, as told to Jim Flynn.”
2. The title: The Theory of Reality, if read quickly might be mistaken to say: The Theory of Relativity. This would scare away potential readers who would think it was heavy duty physics. So we’re capitalizing REAL, thus The Theory of REALity
3. The original subtitle was the kind of mumbo jumbo that is frequently on real Self-Help books. I’ve got to tell the browsing potential reader that this book is funny to avoid the having wrong people buy it. My best-seller continues to be Hit Your Second Shot First, a funny golf book. But a few readers bought it with the thought it was serious, a book that would help them with their golf swing. To avoid misunderstanding, and a few really irate emails, I want people to know what they’re getting.

 
The structure of The Theory of REALity is: Jimmy Sizemore gets a call from his agent, who is desperate for a hit title, and wants Jimmy to write a Self-Help book. Jimmy reluctantly agrees, but has never read a Self-Help book, so he begins to research the genre. Fact is stranger than fiction. A small sampling of things he discovers:

1. One of the most successful Self-Help books was written by a desperate guy who was one step ahead of some banks that he borrowed money from to fund a Ponzi scheme. It features interviews that most probably never happened with famous people. This classic from the Depression era remains a best seller today.
2. When the average reader buys one Self-Help book, they usually buy at least ten more. One reviewer claims to have read 5,000 of these titles. Self-Help is an $11 billion a year business.

 
There is a lot of material for Jimmy to review with us before he reveals his Theory of REALity,
which he says is the basis for all human interaction and will make all other Self-Help books obsolete.
 
We’re shooting for a September publication date. Work continues of the fourth JR Johnson book.