As mentioned in the first posting, I am Robert Williams, a Trustee with the Individual Self-Discovery Trust (ISDT). That posting above was actually an email to this site made when we were informed a pirate copy of our book Unlock Reality (UR) was being linked to from here, I had no idea that it would appear here as a posting.
The Trust I work for seldom make any announcements, and this is no exception, but after having a couple of conversations with Og on the phone, it became obvious that some of what has been happening to us might be of interest here.
Our story starts early in 2004 when we inherited the UR text. It is only a short book, but the intention of those who wrote it was to finally say what most of us are thinking about the state of the world today, and to give people a decent alternative to work towards. The authors asked us to handle it because they wanted to remain anonymous, and they have the desire to contribute some of the proceeds to a good cause. We are a Charity in the UK, and we formed this publishing arm specifically to deal with this work.
We started by creating the footnotes and making suggestions to bring the work up to date. Around June 2005 several of the editors, who had all signed confidentiality contracts, asked for permission to let their family and friends read it which lead to a mini movement within the Trust, of people insisting this work should be available. Various suggestions were made. One the Trust found attractive was to release a few copies via Bookcrossing.com, which some of you may know allows for books to be left in public places, and reported on, through their website. It was reasoned that this might provide a few genuine reviews to be included in the books proposal for publishing.
Interest grew very fast. Much faster than we had imagined was possible, and soon the thousands of Google hits it was clocking up did impress a British publisher, One World Publications, from Oxford England. They offered an acceptable deal, which the Trust accepted. The work was to be published worldwide, in September 2006.
Right around this time the book started receiving threats and bad postings on several sites, primarily from someone who claimed to be part of the Baptist Church. He claimed the book would lead people away from the Church and the Military, (which is true), and he fronted a campaign for the book to be banned. We have no idea how he managed it, but his threats of protest cumulated in the publisher dropping the project. At this time several of our editors had received anonymous threatening letters, imploring them to drop the project. Letters were also received by people working with us in other areas, such as our office supply retailer and cleaning company, stating that we were involved in a holy war that would not be without consequence. As you can imagine this made daily life for us a little tricky for a while. We had to announce that the release date, which was being counted down to on several site, would no longer happen.
Within the next few weeks thousands of people emailed us to release the book in manuscript form. People had been sharing the Bookcrossing copies in Round Robins, which had by now reached round the world, and they encouraged us that a simple manuscript release would be good. We reasoned that about 7,000 copies would satisfy the demand for a few months. All of these sold out in less than six days. At that point some very good counterfeit copies began to surface, which had had the revolutionary parts of the book surgically removed. These read like a joke book without the punch lines. Some of these are the pirate versions being offered on line today. One totally nonsense copy appeared in the British Library achieves, and is still there as far as we know. The manuscripts are actually quite rare, but not so the counterfeits. Much easier to find and scan one of those, while the real thing was selling for over 200 pounds on eBay.
Then we heard a report that that Bishops from the Pontifical Council for Science and Life (PCSL) were seeking the backing of Pope Benedict to call for the texts immediate banning. Greg Watts from the Catholic Church Press Office has gone on record as saying: "this matter is unlikely to be dealt with directly by the Pope, despite any request made by the Bishops of Spain and Pappa New Guinea to have him get involved."
Obviously we were in the process of presenting the book to publishers at that time, when almost over night the doors began to shut in our faces. People very interested in all the presales activity and the Internet chatter, all of a sudden became uninterested. Appointments were cancelled overnight, and one well known publisher of Mind Body and Spirit books, (Element Books), who did see us, claimed they were not publishing this sort of book anymore, even though such publications are what they are famous for.
The work was being handed round some of the biggest publishers in the world, who were all lit up about it, then all of a sudden, nothing. Not interested. A board member of Bloomsburys read the book, but it was dropped shortly after he had a visit to his Bishop. We were actually told this was the reason, but no specifics were disclosed. The most talked about unpublished book in the world and suddenly no one wants to touch it, meet with us or take our calls! Seems strange hay? You do the math.
Meanwhile the interest on the Internet continued to grow unabated, so we decided to use the one channel left open to us, and release Unlock Reality as an eBook. Two days before the planned release date, these PDF pirate copies began to appear. Some of them might be real, but we have yet to see one. Some are just one page from a gardening book repeated 122 times, to match the page number of the book we presume.
Thing is guys, we are charging only 5.49 GBP for a copy, and ours is a proper eBook, made to look like the manuscript, binding and all, designed to open where you left off, and even the pages appear to stack as you read it. But more important, and the reason we defend the copyright, is that this is the real thing, uncut and uncensored as intended by the authors. True to say the authors and those who have worked voluntarily to produce this work deserve to be rewarded for their efforts, and the majority of the proceeds are earmarked for charitable projects, but the main point of protecting the copyright, is to insure the message does not get watered down.
The fact that these pirate copies appear within forty-eight hours of the planned release is very strange indeed. We suspect this may be part of the campaign to stop people from reading this book. Truthfully it is a very antiestablishment book, but we never thought it would be taken this seriously, this early in the game. The authors designed it to infiltrate areas where revolutionary material normally does not make it passed the door, unfortunately their efforts feel short in this regard and its true nature has been spotted early on by those with the most to loss.
I will take up Ogs suggestion and provide you with a link, so if you feel like it, you can have a read. It is very slow starting as it covers points that are obvious to most, but if you give it a chance, you might see why it is causing all this concern.
It has made what many of us know, much easier to understand. There are still some who can't see it, or get it, but they are few and far between.
Read the Real Unlock Reality - Uncut