Words For Free, Words For Sale

Good news. My old friend from London, Linda Whetstone, who chairs the think-tank International Policy Network (IPN: visit their website here), just wrote to say that the 2nd edition of my little book on Market Economics for the young, Free Your Mind: A Beginner's Guide to Political Economy, is soon to appear translated into the following languages:

Chinese, Arabic, Turkish, Russian, Kyrgyz and Portuguese.

This book has never been published in India, not even in English. The first edition, published by a Delhi think-tank, is now out of print. There is a Hindi translation of this first edition available. This version has also been translated into Gujarati.

Linda wrote to ask whether I wouldn't mind handing over the text for free. I happily agreed. I am, after all, in the business of words. I produce words - and a lot of hard work goes into this. I survive by selling some of these words - and Mint still owes me some money. But I also give a lot of words away for free - like these blog posts. The idea is to pursue long-term success in The Market - to create a brand name, to build markets, and thereby sell the books that I will write in the future.

It was IPN who first published this second edition of Free Your Mind (which you can read and download here) - but on a CD. This is a truly wonderful CD called "Ideas for a Free Society" that contains a huge amount of resource material for both teachers as well as students on the "classical liberal" way of looking at society and the economy. All the great names are there, and I was honoured to be included in that list. This CD was specially aimed at Third World countries where books are difficult to obtain. I have received mail from two think-tanks in Africa, in Ghana and Zambia, that have found Free Your Mind extremely useful, thanks to IPN and their excellent CD.

So that's me. Just another peddler. Selling words on The Market. Building his brand name. Building his loyal customer base. Looking long-term. I have quite a few books for sale actually, and would be glad if some serious publisher got in touch.

On the flipside: I am NOT a "politician." I am not a NGO. I am NOT organizing any political activity.

I am just selling words - words with meaning. Arranged together to convey ideas. Very important ideas.

As the old song goes:

It's only words,
And words are all I have...