Thanks.

I would read it!

Maybe I'll write it...but would anyone publish it?

Welcome, SF.

I can see where Simons would rub people the wrong way on the show-off stuff, but I think his position as a manager and founder of a club is pretty unique, and worth reading for that reason.

Wilson has spent an awful lot of time in Eastern Europe over the years, so he might not be as deeply embedded as Bennets in a single country, but I think he is quite knowledgeable in the area.

Looking forward to reading When Friday Comes - I ordered it ages ago, but it still hasn't come. Glad it sounds worthwhile.

I mostly agree about Baghdad FC. Still, not entirely worthless as an exercise in putting all that very interesting data in one place.

Wilson is certainly knowledgeable, it's just his very English, stand back style that i can't handle.

I though that part of Football Dynamo when he goes to interview the CSKA president was the kind of thing that Wilson's book could have done more with. More tension!

Agree about Baghdad Fc. Not a bad book per se.

See, I didn't think the interviews were any great shakes, apart maybe from the one with the self-styles head of the hooligan group. I think Kuper's among the very few authors who have been able to make those interviews actually work in literary terms.

If you didn't like Wilson because of style, what did you think of Goldblatt? I find them similar as stylists, did you?

Didn't Wilson have a lengthy interview with the owners of Shakhtar Donetsk in Behind The Curtain?

My only problem with that book was that Wilson didn't bother doing a chapter on the Czech Republic/Slovakia, because for some unfathomable reason he doesn't consider it to be in eastern Europe.

Haven't read that Goldblatt book. It looked a bit like "football for beginners" for me...is it worth a read?

Yeah, Wilson did interview the head of S.Donetsk. But again, I didn't find it very interesting.

Oh my, no it's nothing like that. It's the absolute definitive book on the history of football everywhere in the entire world. It's scarily complete and incredibly good.

In fact, it's more or less screwed the genre, because very little matches up to its standards

I'll give it a read.

Off topic a touch, but how much do you think writers like Wilson, Bennetts, Goldblatt, etc get for their books? Do you think they can live off the sums paid? (Or do you think they make more money from journalism?) I'd love to write about football for a living...And how does one go about getting a book published anyway?

No, the income from books just supplements what they make from their day jobs (usually journalsism). The canny ones write their books in bits and get various mags to publish them, so that they have a stream of income while writing the book. Bits of Wilson's first book were in WSC and FFT long before they hit print; Steve Menary did monthly non-fifa sqaud profiles for World Soccer while writing Outcasts, etc.

The authors I know tend to get about $2 (1 pound) for every copy of the book sold, plus free trips abroad to help sell the book (if it's thought to have potential).

You know a lot about it! Sure you are not Wilson or Menary in disguise??

Quite sure. I have a couple of books under my belt, but disappointingly these don't include any on football (though I managed to slip in a reference to Arsenal in the dedication of one of them). Like you, though, I have pretenstions of writing one in the future, and to that end I maintain a d-base of football writing (which is how I know about Wilson and Menary's publication records).

Swindon fan wrote:

QUOTE:
And how does one go about getting a book published anyway?

Do what I did - drop an email to a specialist publisher with your idea, a cv of relevant writing that you've already had published (in magazines, newspapers, websites, etc), and (if your idea is club-specific) an endorsement from the club (or at least a confirmation that this wouldn't be a problem). It also helps to provide an indication of possible sales (e.g. how many copies similar books have sold, or at least what the average crowds are to see if they compare well against numbers of other clubs that they're already publishing).

What's your book called, boris?

Well, I was being a bit previous - I sent two emails to different publishers, and as a result they've commissioned me to write three books between them. However, I've not yet received any contracts, so I haven't started work on them yet.

One publisher has asked me to write Oxford United: A Complete History, which I initially suggested as an update to a book they published 20 years ago, but which they've requested I totally rewrite, with a publishing date of late 2009. The other publisher wants me to compile two books - Oxford United: On This Day, and Oxford United: Miscellany. The first to be published for Christmas '09 and the second for Christmas 2010.

Good timing, seeing as I finish my job on Friday so should have plenty of time to devote to them (provided they get the contracts to me soon).

Wow. That's a lot of work. Best of luck.