92% of people believe that a limitation is an impediment. We have been brought up to believe that limitations impede development in determined tasks, but nobody has ever told us that they are also an opportunity to reach unexpected, wonderful places. The truth is that a limitation can be an opportunity. This is the disruptive message from RSC that Fnac moves with “Unlimited Moby Dick”, a book written entirely with a limitation: the impossibility of using the letter E. The aim of this campaign is to re-educate society about what a limitation is, something culturally reviled and stigmatized as an impediment and change that perception forever.

So that the reader can really experience what a limitation really is “Unlimited Moby Dick” was completely rewritten with the limitation of not being able to use the letter E. The story of Moby Dick without the E changes certain aspects (instead of a whale, it has to be an octopus, instead of Ahab missing a leg, he’s missing an arm, instead of happening in Nantucket, it happens in Cuba …), but it follows a route that is just as interesting. The rewriting of this book without the E makes readers experience what a limitation really is: an opportunity to do something different.

92% of people believe that a limitation is an impediment. How to change something as deeply rooted as social perception of what a limitation is? Our target was society in general, but especially children and adolescents who are being educated now. For them, seen from the outside, limitations seem like impediments, so the only way that FNAC and its branch of RSC found to change this perception was to make them experience this limitation by immersing them in it. How? Through an entertaining story built from the limitation. This is a new strategy and probably the only extent of prejudice, to redefine limitations is people’s imagination. Experiencing it in a different way.

The challenge was massive (writing a book without the letter E), in over 200 pages and in 2 different languages (English and Spanish), the E wasn’t used once. The difficulty in English was especially tough, as the letter E is the most commonly used letter in English and the limitation impeded the use of “ed” endings for verbs in the past tense. Due to this, the writing process took almost two years until the book was finished and two different writers worked on it daily, one for each language. Since 3 April 2019 the book can be obtained in FNAC shops for free, it is also in schools and libraries and on a webpage where it can be downloaded to be read on e-books and digital platforms.

The book became an educational tool in schools and libraries. Between the printed edition and the digital one (Downloadable from the webpage), the story has reached 90 million impacts, with over 50,000 readers in 54 countries in just 2 weeks. Fragments of the story were read in prime time slots on TV on four different channels. The book is currently being considered as content for a TV series.