My Signature Book

The photo above is of the first two rejections letters I received. 

The one on the left is from a literary agent for my first book that I self-published in 1989.

The one on the right is the one I received from Ten Speed Press dated November 19, 1992. I let the publisher know that The Joy of Not Working had sold 10,000 copies in Canada in the first year. But TSP sent me a standard rejection letter that had the title and date handwritten. Talk about no respect.

Being the good trooper that I am, I thrive on rejection. I like hearing about how the hounding habitual haters talk about my lack of talent and abilities. I semi-retired when I was 41 years old, broke, with a new worth of MINUS $30,000 (due to student loans). Practically all the critics and haters said that it was impossible for me to semi-retire in such a pathetic financial situation. Guess what? I proved them wrong!

September 13, 2026 marked 35 years to the day since I picked up 10 copies (of the first 20 copies printed) of the original edition of my self-published The Joy of Not Working on my way to the City Centre Airport for my flight to Calgary. Then I rented a car and headed to Banff to make a presentation to the Bolton Tremblay Financial Organization at the Banff Springs Hotel, but not before I stopped at my Grassland school friend's (Brian Johnson's) home on the edge of Calgary and gave him one of the 10 copies.

My records indicate that on September 14 I ended up selling 7 of those 10 copies at the Bolton Tremblay presentation (at which financial expert Gordon Pape also presented). Furthermore, president Terry Stone ordered another 40 copies from me to be sent later.

Then on way out of Banff, I stopped at the Mountain Lights Bookstore and gave the owner a copy of the book. She then ordered 20 copies from me. (I guess that at this point I thought I may be unto something good.) My records show that night I went to the original Rigelleto's restaurant and co-owner Jack Flisiak purchased one copy for $15 from me. That was the last of the first 10 copies I had picked up from the printer.

The rest is history. The Joy of Not Working ended up selling an average of 10,000 copies a year in Canada for 5 years. To date, it has sold over 325,000 copies and has been published in 17 foreign languages by 21 different foreign publishers. The cool thing is that it still sells 2,000 of so copies a year and makes me a few thousand dollars a year. 

Now if I could only get one of my new books to become a true New York Times bestseller. That has been one of my goals since I started in this business. Don't count me out, however, just because I haven't succeeded in over 35 years. I still have my creativity — which has been my biggest asset all this time, and will continue to be my biggest asset.

NOTE: 

THIS WEBSITE IS A CREATIVE WORK IN PROGRESS.

IT WILL BE FINISHED WHEN I COMPLETE IT.

AGAIN, I HAVE MY OWN WAY TO ROCK — THAT'S THE WAY I ROLL!

I MAY BE LAZY — BUT I STILL EARN A MUCH MORE COMFORTABLE LIVING THAN MOST CORPORATE EMPLOYEES WHO WORK 8 OR 10 HOURS A DAY. 

In 1991 I was working on a book on how to happily handle leisure time. The idea had come to me 10 years earlier, shortly after I was fired from my Engineering job for taking too much vacation time.

The image on the left is a scan of page 1 of my working file for the book, it being my list of possible titles. (Note this page was printed on a dot matrix printer, the Cadillac of printers at the time.) None of the titles came close to being what I thought would be a blockbuster title.

Around the end of March, I was about half-done, 3 months into working on the book, with still no title that resonated with me. I was getting more and more frustrated about not having a blockbuster title.

Then one day I went home for a brief rest from the Sugarbowl coffee bar where I worked on my books during the day. I was sitting in my home office and looked at a book called The Joy of Selling. I thought of the other successful "Joy" books such as The Joy of Cooking and The Joy of Sex. 

Then I remembered I had another book in the living room bookshelf called The Joy of Working by Dennis Waitley. In a few seconds The Joy of Leisure came to mind. I rejected it, thinking, "That is dumb." Then I thought, "The Unwork Book." No, that's dumb too. 

I let my mind go a bit and The Joy of NOT Working appeared. As soon as this title entered my mind, I knew I had a winner. It was the Aha Moment! There was no need for me to ask anyone else for advice. I knew I had the blockbuster title I wanted.

The power of this book title was reinforced recently. I hired book coach Charlie Hoehn (who takes on two major clients a year, each at at fee of $250,000 a year) for an hour of consulting at a fee of $1,000. He mentioned that he had developed a title evaluator.

Out of curiosity, I asked him to test How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free. He said, "Wow, it comes in at a score of 69. The highest score possible is 75. That's the highest any book title has scored along with The 4-Hour Work Week of the book titles we have tested."

Then I asked Charlie to punch in The Joy of Not Working. It came in at a score of 68. Not as good as How to Retire Happy, Wild, and Free and The 4-Hour Work Week — but still pretty damn good!  

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The article below in the Business Section in The Vancouver Sun on December 21, 1992 resulted in the first foreign edition of The Joy of Not Working being published. A Japanese woman living in Vancouver read the article and purchased the book. After reading it, she wanted to have it published in Japanese. She arranged for Kodansha, the largest Japanese publisher at the time, to publish it. Of course, I got a resonable advance and subsequent royalties.

The two articles  about The Joy of Not Working in US newspapers below were published on the same day on April 11, 1994. One was in the Oakland Tribune and the other was in the Boston Herald. The book was still being self-published in Canada, before it was published in the US by Ten Speed Press. This is what happens when you write a Remarkable Book (one worth making remarks about).