200 blank pages: Book called What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex sells more than Harry Potter and Da Vinci Code



When author Sheridan Simove sat down to write his new book, What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex, he drew a blank... literally.

So he had it published anyway with a front cover and 200 completely empty pages.



But it's proved a cult hit and has outsold both Harry Potter and the Da Vinci Code within weeks of its release on cyber bookshop Amazon.com.



Drawn a blank: Sheridan Simove's £4.69 masterpiece has transcended its original purpose as a novelty gift, and is being used by students as a lecture notebook

The £4.69 masterpiece has transcended its original purpose as a novelty gift, and is being used by students as a lecture notebook. And it's selling by the thousands.

Nottingham university student Jess Lloyd told the Telegraph: 'I bought a copy for my mate as a joke and he started using it as a note pad for lectures. Now everyone seems to have one. It’s started a real craze on campus.'

Mr Simove, 39, an Oxford University graduate, author, performer and entrepreneur, said: 'I never anticipated that my book would be used for students to take their lecture notes in.



'In a sense they are proving me wrong by filling my book with content. But I wonder how many of them go back to thinking about sex once the lecture is over.'



The item has sold out its first print run, slotting in at number 744 on Amazon's list, ahead of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (2,910) and JK Rowling's Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2,406).

'In a sense students are proving me wrong by filling my book with content. But I wonder how many of them go back to thinking about sex once the lecture is over' Sheridan Simove

He told AOL News that the idea came after he published a self-help book called Ideas Man.



He said: 'It was about my life and success and failures.

'It took me five years to [write], it was out for two years, and it got to number 5,000 on the Amazon charts.'

What Every Man Thinks About Apart From Sex, rather unsurprisingly, took just nine days to complete, from conception to publication.

But authorities refused to give it a tax free status, as with other books, despite it having an ISPN number.

This is not Mr Simove's first controversy.

He recently he changed his name to God, but hit a wall when he tried to withdraw money from his bank. God doesn't have a bank account.

'My bank was very angry with me,' he told AOL News. 'They said that they couldn't put me in the system with only one name.

'I said put me down as Almighty God. It went all the way to the top of HSBC. They said they would close all my accounts. In the end, I changed my name back again.'

He says his follow up is going to be called Reasons to Trust Politicians.



