In about 2012, I got a LinkedIn message from an editor from Macmillan. She was called Tamsine O’Riordan and she said she was interested in having a book written about the sharing economy by someone actually running a sharing economy company. I told her no-one running a company had time to write a book. She said she’d buy lunch. And that’s how it started.
We met at Pizza East, back when JustPark was a tiny 4 person company renting a couple of desks off another tech company. And towards the end of the lunch, she hit me with it:
“Will you write this book?”
“Me?” I replied. “I’m already working over 70 hours a week. I don’t even have time to write a blog. Who else is on your list?”
“Just you,” said Tamsine.
“Just me? Well what if I say no?”
“Then it probably won’t get written.”
I think I swore at that point.
Apparently, I was the right person because I had written a book, ran one of these companies and read English at uni. I suppose it has to qualify you for something.
But I knew it was too exciting an opportunity to say no to. So in the next few weeks, I got myself an agent – the unflappable Viv Schuster at Curtis Brown – negotiated a contract and then gulped hard at the prospect of writing a book…
And that was the end of the beginning.
Alex Stephany 