Durban — After decades of trying to publish his book, Gavin Weir’s Mr One Hundred Billion is now ranked 4th in the top 100 on the Amazon.co.uk list of “Biographies & Memoirs of Journalists”.
Weir, 60, who was one of a handful of Daily News staff writers who penned the weekly Natal Fever column over a two-year period in the 90s, moved to England in 1999 and is now a senior sub-editor at The Times in London.
Weir said the book was about him growing up in Benoni in the 1970s.
Sales overtook even big names such as Jeremy Clarkson and England footballer Ian Wright.
He said the success of Mr One Hundred Billion had taken him by surprise.
“I expected to sell maybe a few dozen copies at best, and mainly to friends and family, but the response has been overwhelming.
“I think I underestimated just how big an appetite there is for any kind of book that reminds us of who we were when we were young and we were filled with hopes and dreams and ambitions.
“The daily grind of life takes a huge toll on all of us. I’ve tried to lighten the load for a day by dropping in on my 10-year-old self and remembering what a weird little kid he was.”
He said the blurb warns, intriguingly, that the book is “the truth and nothing but the truth, but it’s not the whole truth” because, Weir admits, he doesn’t want to be sued by a few of the kids he grew up with who, like him, “have somehow emerged as responsible, law-abiding adults and who would rather the world didn’t find out about their troubled beginnings”.
He said he had used first names only, most of the time “because it is safer for everyone concerned”.
Weir described the book as not so much of a novel, but a memoir which is a record of the trials and tribulations of a Scottish boy growing up in apartheid-era South Africa.
“All that is absolutely fine by me, because while I like to think it offers a snapshot of a unique time and place, I’m hoping more that it will one day prove to be a valuable resource for future generations of Weirs who might wonder (as I sometimes do) about the day-to-day lives lived by their ancestors. Assuming, of course, that there are any future generations of Weirs and that is only going to happen if my son Jordan ever gets out from behind the computer in his bedroom and heads down to London and starts indiscriminately spraying some wild oats around,” said Weir.
“In an ideal world, the book would sell a few million copies a day for the next thousand years, with me eventually eclipsing William Shakespeare as the best-selling author of all time, but realistically it’s more likely to manage maybe a dozen sales, to friends and family.”
After decades spent trying and failing to get it published, he finally managed to secure a lucrative deal with somebody willing to take a chance on an ageing hack… which is to say “I’ve published the damn thing myself on Amazon!”
Mr One Hundred Billion is available from the Amazon bookstore, in ebook form. It can be read on a Kindle device, but also on a home computer, iPad or tablet, or even a mobile phone, simply by downloading the free Kindle app.
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