Sardina Pichardus: The Book That Never Happened

In 2023 I set up my fake book, Sardina Pichardus on the Kobo website. This book was an imagined story: imagined because of a newspaper reader's letter which complained about the use of classic storylines in new chic lit books or films. So I imagined the re-telling of the classic story Moby Dick (see Classic Fiction on my OTHER STUFF page).

The reason for taking this idea one step further and producing a fake book was because I get upset by the number of books that appear on the Kobo website (and presumably it is done on other websites) that have a release date that is far off into the future (I've seen April 1 2054). I suspect these have been set up so as to appear first on the DATE: NEWEST TO OLDEST sort list. Fine if your book is due out next year but (to my mind) not fine if you put in a clearly ridiculous year (2054).

I also set up the fake book to see whether it had any impact on sales of any of my other books (with it appearing near the front of the DATE: NEWEST TO OLDEST sort list). Apparently it doesn't...

The fake book was taken down before the release date in the following year. I had a lot of fun setting up the front cover and had actually written some words for it. Maybe I will complete it and put it out as a short story... in 2054..?

See also:

• It Never Happened
• This Never Happened Too
• Painting By Numbers
• One Hundred And One Strange Stories
• This Could Be Our Finest Hour
• I, Chimp - novel
• Tall Short Stories - Free e-book
• Short And Curlies - Free e-book