Why a book?
As the pitch video explains, this book project has grown out of a website: www.lettersofnote.com, an edited collection of letters, telegrams and memos which are worthy of a wider circulation. People really seem to like the site, but there are some things a screen just can’t do. To me, letters are small artworks and this book will be catalogue of beautiful, meaningful objects.

Describe it
A large coffee-table volume of 400 pages, with 200 letters, each of them reproduced in facsimile with an introduction by me and a transcript of the text. Unbound’s plan is to produce a physical object of great loveliness: cloth bound, using thick, uncoated paper: something that gives you the experience of holding and reading the actual letters themselves. As well as being a good read, it will make a lovely gift. It’s being printed in Germany where they understand these things.

What’s in it?
Many of the letters will have appeared on the site but I'm holding some of the best back. The main thing is that it will be an eclectic mix of the humour, seriousness, sadness and brilliance that make up our lives. Here’s a random selection of what I hope you’ll find inside:

• * Hunter S. Thompson’s furious memo to a film executive that starts 'Listen, you lazy bitch…'


• * Steve Martin’s 'personalised' form letter to a fan


• * The letter of a Kamikaze pilot to his two young children, written the night before his mission


• * A 9th century form letter from China used to apologise for having drunk too much at a dinner party


• * A memo about some of the surprising candidates for Star Trek: The Next Generation


• * William Safire’s memo containing a speech for president Nixon to deliver if the Apollo 11 mission failed and the astronauts were lost.


• * A heartbreaking series of letters from a 31 year-old women with dementia desperately trying to contact her husband from a German asylum in 1909


• * Aldous Huxley's wife Laura giving a moving account of her husband’s death to his brother Julian in 1963


• * A fan letter from Stanley Kubrick to Ingmar Bergman in 1960


• * A letter from Albert Einstein to a theologian describing God as a 'human weakness'


• * The remarkably polite correspondence between Marge Simpson and former First Lady, Barbara Bush

Where does my money go?
This is going to take me eight months of work obtaining permissions, and agreement from all the parties included in the correspondence, as well as laying out the book and designing it so it works for the reader. That’s hundreds of hours hunched in front of my screen, most of it spent writing (you guessed it) polite letters.

Why Unbound?
The success of the site has meant I’ve had many publishers approaching me to publish a book, but the Unbound idea seems best for me. Let the people who like the site help me make the book. There will be plenty of chance for me to share progress and ask for advice as it goes along. We aim to publish in a year’s time.

Read more...

I’m Shaun Usher, a 33-year-old writer who runs Letters of Note. My chosen career as a curator of correspondence is particularly interesting given that I regularly receive — and more often than not don’t reply to — abuse from exasperated friends due to my apparent inability to return their calls, emails, and, on very rare occasions, letters. I have promised to get back to them as soon as I have a spare minute. 

I live in Manchester with my fiancée, Karina, and our son, Billy.

Follow @lettersofnote