Quick one.
The first printed copy of Who Decided This Was Normal? arrived yesterday. It's real. It has a spine, and my name is on the front.
This one is a test print, not the book you'll eventually be able to buy. The back cover says "Private edition · Not for sale", and it means it. A few copies are going to people who'll read it properly and tell me where it falls over, before anyone is asked to pay for it.
When I sent the files off, the printer's website congratulated me. "You published your book. It's a dream for so many…" I know it's automated. I took it anyway.
Then Facebook decided to help. It turned my post into an ad I don't remember creating, and started asking people questions on their behalf. One woman was asked, by Facebook, in her name, what inspired me to write the book. She replied that she'd asked no such thing and was not in the least interested. Fair. I'd have said the same.
And a reading service I wanted to hire turned the book down, because AI helped me write it. Their form asked, and I told the truth. Here's what AI is actually brilliant at: finding the one line that matters. The rebate for a standard GP visit sits on a single page of a 1,760-page Medicare schedule. The sentence I needed about card surcharges was buried in a 202-page Reserve Bank paper. The rule on excuses for not voting lives in a law so long it comes in two volumes. Finding each of those used to cost an afternoon. Now it costs a question, and I still open the page and check it myself. The experiences, the opinions and the receipts are mine.
I said I'd find the typo that had been hiding from every screen I own. It wasn't a typo. On page 18, a heading in the middle of a chapter had been set the same size as the chapter titles, so it looked as if a new chapter had started halfway down the page. Every screen missed it. Paper didn't. It's fixed, along with seventeen other headings like it, and a small run of corrected copies is being printed.
The plan is to publish it properly, for sale, in February 2027. If we hit January, even better. Between now and then, it gets read by people who'll tell me the truth.
If you'd like to be one of those readers, reply to this email. If you want it quickly, I can send you a PDF, or if you'd rather have a printed copy, let me know. All I ask in return is honest feedback, especially about where it loses you.
And if you know someone who has ever put down a government letter and said "who decided this was normal?", forward this to them.
— Mark
The Escape Report documents one person's attempt to build a way out of the cage in his fifties — the real numbers, the mistakes, and what actually happened. No schedule. It arrives when there is something to say.
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