British Comedy Guide

Getting a book of comedy published

Can anyone give me advice on how to get a book of hillarious quites published. I know someone who doesn't stop making comments which people would pay good money to hear someone in a comedy club say. I think if these are all compiled it should have no trouble selling.

This is the 21st Century. I think the current accepted method is to get them all on a blog and get offered a book deal on the back of it.

Quote: Talman @ October 11 2011, 10:45 PM BST

Can anyone give me advice on how to get a book of hillarious quites published. I know someone who doesn't stop making comments which people would pay good money to hear someone in a comedy club say. I think if these are all compiled it should have no trouble selling.

Give us an example?

One example is his advice on chatting up women outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in central london. He advocates talking about the failed terrorist attack there and says if you have newspaper clippings you can provide its even better.

There are so many others which will have people in stiches, but I wounder whether any publisher will publish these without this guy's authority.

Alternatively I can mix this with other classic comedy comments from my office work.

Quote: Talman @ October 17 2011, 1:20 PM BST

One example is his advice on chatting up women outside Tiger Tiger nightclub in central london. He advocates talking about the failed terrorist attack there and says if you have newspaper clippings you can provide its even better.

There are so many others which will have people in stiches, but I wounder whether any publisher will publish these without this guy's authority.

Alternatively I can mix this with other classic comedy comments from my office work.

It's not sounding that so far funny Talman. We had a guy who worked with us whose previous department had kept a list of all the stupid/funny to them quotes he had come out with. Because we knew him, we could see the comedy in those quotes. If we didn't know him and were just reading cold from a page, most of the comedy was lost.

If you read a book of quotes from David Brent you would laugh because you know his character therefore the context they are in. You don't know me so if I quote myself with,

"Cats are just dogs with no loyalty, who lick their own arses"

...you wouldn't necessarily find that funny.

An idiot abroad works because the 'idiot' willingly takes part. WE can see who and what he is then contexualise his comments. If Gervais had just published a book of Pilkington quotes without us having 'met' him, would it have been funny?

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