Joffa -- The Autobiography

[Sly]

Hi. I use to post here quite a while ago. Currently, I work as an editor for a small boutique publisher, Busybird Publishing (www.busybird.com.au). We release only a handful of books each year, one of those being a fiction anthology, but the others in nonfiction, usually with an altruistic outcome intended.

In 2012, we released Journey: Experiences with Breast Cancer, dealing with people’s real-life stories with breast cancer. A portion of proceeds went to BreaCan Victoria and WHoW (Women Helping other Women). We’re now working on a companion book about Prostate Cancer. We also just released a coffee-table book, Walk With Me, which is a photographic journal of our owner’s trek up to Mount Everest Base Camp and back to raise money for CMTA Australia, and to raise awareness for the condition CMT (Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease), which his son has.

Now, we’re working on a book with Joffa, about his life. Some mightn’t think this is a very worthwhile endeavour, or that it’ll just be a Collingwood book. It won’t. Joffa’s going to write about his personal life, and a lot of stuff that probably doesn’t make the public forum, because the media are happier to portray him as a boofhead, (just as they like to portray Collingwood supporters as boofheads).

Joffa will write about his abusive upbringing, a life of homelessness in his teenage years, his daughter’s battle with epilepsy and, yes, there will be some stuff about his support for Collingwood there. (Collingwood themselves have no affiliation with this project.)

We’re running a Pozible campaign to help with the production of the book http://www.pozible.com/project/187228. We are a very small publisher, so any help we can get goes a long way. Importantly, though, the campaign isn’t about donations, but pledges – the value of each pledge correlates with a reward that you get in return.

I know there’s going to be people who are cynical about this, or who are doubters, or maybe just want to cut it down for the sake of cutting it down, but we developed this project because we thought it might be interesting for people to hear the other side of the story, and that story itself might help people who could be going through similar stuff. Our aim isn’t to produce a commercial for Joffa, but simply a good bloody read. Joffa himself was very conscious of not appearing egocentric, and that’s certainly not what the project’s about.

Also, a portion of proceeds will go to the Epilepsy Foundation, for whom Joffa does a lot of (largely unheralded) work.

Some links:

‘Joffa’ Pozible page: http://www.pozible.com/project/187228
‘Joffa – An Autobiography’ Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/joffabook?fref=ts
Busybird Publishing: http://www.busybird.com.au/
Busybird Publishing – Joffa page: http://www.busybird.com.au/?page_id=4798
Busybird Publishing – blog on how all this came about: http://www.busybird.com.au/?p=4829


Thanks for your time.

[ronrat]

i know Sly and he is a straight shooter for one who is so incandescent. So I wouldn't doubt his credentials. I will be in.

[Sly]

Thanks, Ron!

[stui magpie]

I'm in. Pledge done.

[Darkstranger]

Seriously really? No thanks.

[stoliboy]

Done

[ronrat]

[1061]

He has every right to comment.

[Sly]

Thanks to everybody who's pledged.

[Piesnchess]

Give it serious consideration.

[inxs88]

Does the literary world really need to explore any time on a subject matter that is peripheral to the peripheral??

[Hiss]

I would certainly buy it. Joffa is a true Club legend and his life story is that of a time when passion and love for our Club bleed through our veins. He is Mr Collingwood to me. Please support this worthy cause and by it for yourself and friends.

[Sly]

Thanks for the replies and support.

To those who express skepticism, I fully understand and respect that.

But if I pitched it to you as, 'I have a story about somebody who was abused as a child, who was homeless as a teen, but found some direction through football, and used his modicum of celebrity for charitable purposes', arguably you would look at the project in a different light. (And Joffa does a lot of charity work -- the people at the Epilepsy Foundation speak glowingly of him.)

People like to knock Joffa because of the celebrity he's achieved through Collingwood and, as I said originally, this isn't just a book about Collingwood, or an exercise in self-promotion. Take the preconceptions out of it. Hopefully, we'll produce a book that'll impress also the doubters.

[Nick - Pie Man]

I don't understand why you are seeking donations in this fashion. Aren't publishers supposed to take on the financial risk of producing books themselves? Are you a business, or a charity?

I mean, I'll buy it when it comes out, maybe, but ..

[ronrat]