For millenia, gold has had a hold on the human psyche. The alchemy of transmutation, creating gold from the elements, has obsessed fortune hunters, charlatans and intellectuals alike.

Now a small publishing house has uncovered the secret of how to turn paper into gold and is offering to share it with the world. Everyone who buys a copy of The Good Life Gets Better, one man's tale of how gold fever drove him to uproot his family from their comfortable Cornish life and move to the harsh Canadian wilderness, can own their own personal share in a real goldmine.

'It's the chance to possess the elusive Eldorado - your own golden goose,' said Dan Hiscocks, managing director of Eye Books publishers. 'The mine is in the Klondike gold fields, just upstream from the mouth of the Klondike River's famous Bonanza Creek. The Klondike has yielded incredibly vast fortunes of gold since 1896 and is still doing so today. It is the site of the most frenzied gold rush in history and remains home to some of the richest gold-bearing gravel in the world.'

The goldmine on offer is one of 10 staked by Dorian Amos, author of the book. Amos sank his family's entire savings in the group of 'claims', or mines, after discovering that the previous owner's rights were about to lapse.

'It is incredibly rare for the rights of mines such as these, which have been proved to contain gold, to fall free,' said Hiscocks. 'Dorian's discovery was an amazing stroke of luck. '

It is seven years since Amos and his wife, Bridget, emigrated. 'We were more naive than knowledgeable. We had little money, no legal right to be in Canada and no equipment,' he said. 'But we had enthusiasm.'

After a canoe trip through 500 miles of wilderness into the far north, they found the Yukon. 'There we found the endless, remote wilderness. We built a cabin, struggled through -40C winters, surviving rotting ice, killed our meat, built our fires and gave birth to a son.'

It was there that Amos developed gold fever. For two years he dragged his family up lonely creeks and through dense forest in search of a fertile mine before settling on his claims, which he is only now starting to mine. When Amos offered the story of his adventure to Eye Books, Hiscocks decided to buy one of the author's goldmines and share it among those who buy Amos's book.

Although the site has proved profitable in the past, Hiscocks says decisions about the way it is mined in the future will be down to the collective vote of the shareholders. 'If half a million people buy the book and want to focus on making money, we could afford to industrially mine the area. But it is a democratic decision: if the majority want to keep the site as a place to which we all pan for gold together, then we will do that instead,' he said.

Alternatively, shareholders can choose to reverse the alchemy and turn the gold back into paper. 'The site is being mined for between three to six months of the year by Dorian and his team,' said Hiscocks. 'If they discover a rich seam, there is a high chance a mining company will offer hard cash to buy the land. The shareholders might choose to accept the offer, and either invest in a new claim or take the money and run.'

Hiscocks is in the process of setting up a webcam and internet site to Amos's remote base camp, enabling shareholders to see his progress.