Olympic Thuggery

"The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe." Dr McCoy, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home.

You know, being an author isn't easy. Even after managing to write a book (supermodels and television stars might want to get a grown up to help with this bit) there's the struggle of finding an agent, a publisher and then, most importantly, a market.

J.K. Rowling might be the richest writer in the world (the only author to make a billion via her works), but that wasn't always the way. She'd stacked up quite a few rejection slips before hitting the 'big time' and it wasn't until The Prisoner of Azekaban that her book series really took off.

Most aspiring authors start small, with a publisher willing to risk printing a few hundred copies in the hopes that they can get their money back.

That's certainly how things started out for first time science-fiction writer Robert Ronsson, whose breakthrough novel about telepathic twins was recently released with a first print run of less than five hundred copies.

But Ronsson has fallen foul of an institution normally praised for promoting amateur ability. The 2012 London Olympic Committee. They've targeted him because his book is called: "The Donovan Twins: Olympic Mind Games."

The Olympics committee jealously police unauthorised use of the word 'Olympic.' After all, the likes of McDonalds, Coca-Cola and Mars Bar are paying millions of quid for the privilege of associating their high-fat, high sugar confectionery with a bunch of athletic bodies - so Mr Ronsson shouldn't be allowed to use that name for free!

But, of course, what's in a name?

My brother, who pointed out this story in the first place, informed me that the word 'Olympic' has been in the English language since 1597. In fact, before the committee gets all possessive over their sponsorship opportunities, it's worth remembering that the Olympic games themselves had their origins way back in ancient Greece, long before Evangelos Zappas reinvented them for modern consumption in 1859.

With that in mind, it seems pretty pathetic that this supposedly honourable and aspirational institution might crush Ronsson's dream of a literary career before it even begins. The Olympics Committee want every copy of Ronsson's book to have the name changed to remove the word 'Olympic' from the title.

You have to wonder about the motivation behind such a demand. It's always interesting how big, bureaucratic entities seem to target the most innocent and innocuous of trespassers to make an example out of.

The Donovan Twins: Olympic Mind Games is available now from Amazon and other online book retailers and is published by Pen Press Publishers Ltd.