Imposterophe

Look what I found hiding on our window earlier this morning.

It obviously saw the 'S' and thought that if it snuggled up behind it nobody would notice. We feel a bit sorry for the apostrophe, so we're going to look after it for a while. If anyone's missing one, please get in touch.

Bookselling stuff.

It's always a bit strange in the bookshop in January. After the buzz of Christmas, where you're sometimes so busy you don't get time to think about stuff, the New Year offers a slightly different challenge.
In most cases in the shop, the stuff we buy in December has to be paid for by the end of January. Obviously we buy a lot in December, both to fill the shelves with joy and wonder for our customers, but also to get in the books that we don't have that our customers ask for. Most of those we can get with 1-2 days.
So at the end of December our bills are big. Ideally, we'd like to minimise these bills, so it is traditional that January is a good month to do returns. Returning books that haven't sold, is something I don't enjoy doing. It is, in a sense, an admission that the books that you chose to sell in the shop were the wrong ones. Obviously you can't get it right all the time, but it still makes me sad. I think that we had a pretty good range of titles this year & were able to pick up on titles that we'd originally missed very quickly. Probably better than the last couple of years, if i'm honest. However, we still have lots of books to send back, so for the next week or two we'll be clearing the shelves of slow selling titles.
January is also the month, where for no other reason than the fact that it is a new year, people traditionally make resolutions. We do this for the shop too. One of these is that I will do more blogposts. Sadly for you, this means that there may be lots of dull posts like this one. But you never know, I might occasionally do something relatively interesting. Who knows.
I plan on doing book reviews, getting guest bloggers, talking about the everyday business of running the bookshop and also announcing new stuff that we have planned. But what else do you want to see on here?
If there's something about books or small businesses or the local community that you'd like to see more of, let us know.

2011. It happened.

It is hard to sum up how incredible 2011 has been for us. But I am going to try. Many things happened and I can't list them all (I could, but it would take a very long time and I need to sleep), but I hope this gives you some idea of why we love what we do.
Let's go.....

This time last year, we realised that we were in a little bit of trouble. Financially. We decided that the best way to try and deal with this was to let people know. We had a solution to the problem and just needed a bit of help to get us through the tricky situation we found ourselves in. So we wrote this  'Please Help' message, and posted it on the blog, Facebook, Twitter and we sent it to all the people on our mailing list. The response was staggering. Withing 24 hours we were inundated with incredible offers of help, donations and the sales in the shop increased sixfold. This continued for weeks, and raised the profile of the shop like nothing before. It also got us out of our immediate financial difficulty. The goodwill and warmth that the bookshop was shown still brings a tear to my eye.

Remember the Strugglometer?

We started a monthly Comedy Night this year in the bookshop. I think it was February that the first one happened and it has grown and grown since then. It is awesome, and this is mainly down to Chris and Ben, two of our friends who have taken it upon themselves to organise it all for us. This is such a great thing to be happening in Wood Green and we are now regulalrly getting standing room only audiences, such is the talent of the acts who perform here. (next night is on Friday January 20th at 8pm)

We also started a Monthly Poetry Night which with the help of Eliza will hopefully be as big as the comedy night soon.

In July, I cycled 120 miles overnight, from Hackney to Dunwich on the Suffolk coast. I wasn't by myself, or else I would have got lost many many times. Luckily there were about 1,500 other cyclists who turned up too. It is a thing called the Dunwich Dynamo and here is why I did it. It was amazing and I loved it. It is a truly incredible feeling cycling down a hill in pitch blackness following  the red back light of a bicycle 50 metres ahead of you. It is also a truly incredible feeling watching the Sun come up after cycling 100 miles. I would recommend it (if you like cycling a lot).

This is me and my magnificent bicycle after 120 miles. Seconds after this photo was taken I was asleep.

August will be remembered for the riots, which started on Saturday August 6th in Tottenham. During that night of trouble, loads of people turned up in Wood Green, having realised that the police were busy a couple of miles up the road. For 5 hours they looted and smashed shop after shop. The following day I wrote this post . I was angry and upset, as were many other people, but trying to find a positive, one of the things that came about from what happened in Wood Green and Tottenham (and i'm sure in many other areas affected), was how strong the community was. The support that those affected were shown afterwards by the local people was phenomenal. People gave their time and money to help those who'd become homeless or had lost their businesses and for the weeks afterwards there was a kind of steely determination not to let this dreadful series of events damage the area permanently. As I said then, I am in no position to offer solutions, but there is a strong core of people in Haringey who, given the chance, can make a real difference. Let's hope they are one day soon.

Glamorous musical visitors this year included Pauline Black from the brilliant 2Tone 80's band The Selecter, Hugh Cornwell lead singer of the legendary punk band The Stranglers, and the superb Jimbob from Carter The Unstoppable Sex Machine, who played a brilliant acoustic set in the shop. We also had a visit from (sweary) darts legend, the King of Bling, Bobby George.

Bobby George. I hugged him. This is what he looked like afterwards (sorry Bobby).
 We have had more than 100 authors an speakers visiting this year, which is rather an achievement.We love putting on events in the shop and without these wonderful people giving up their time to visit the shop, it wouldn't be the same. I started listing them, but quickly realised this was a very long job. So I won't. But here's a few...David Vann, Karen Maitland, Andy Stanton, David Nichols, David Lammy MP, Hayley Campbell, Naomi Stadlen, Zehra Hicks, Nadia Shireen, Mark Watson and the Gruffalo. Thanks to everyone. Really.

Storytelling and Songs for the under 5's have been a real hit this year. Tim has nailed the guitar classics like 'Zoom Zoom Zoom, We're Going To The Moon', and 'The Wheels on the Bus'. But more recently, he's added the Wiggles classic 'Hot Potatoes'.

We started our Local Market in July. We decided that it would be cool to get people who did locally produced stuff (honey, cakes, knitted goods, ceramics, cards, veg and fruit etc) to come and sell it in the shop once a month. So, on the last Sunday of the Month at 10.30am-1.00pm the shop turns into a Local Market. It's had really good months and also it's had slow months, but we think it's a good idea (and so do a lot of other people) and we're going to keep at it next year.

We tried to break a World Record for the World's Largest Reading Group. It was hilarious (for us) and failed magnificently. But Norris McWirter certainly didn't give us much help. However, we did get about 50 people involved and that, I think, is good. We have the systems all set up now for this years effort. Which will happen btw.

I published a book in November. I published a book in November. I thought i'd better mention it twice, because it really is a very exciting development for me. London Tales by Greg Stekelman. It is the greatest book ever published and you should all buy it. It's only £40. Here is a story about how all this came about.

LOOK. THIS IS THE GREATEST BOOK OF ALL TIME. BUY IT NOW.

The rather good author Haruki Murakami had a book published in the UK this year, which was all rather exciting. It was called 1Q84 and those cheeky little pumpkins at Random House (his publishers) wouldn't let anyone sell the book until 18th October. Right, we thought, let's have a special shindig with food, film and fun on the eveining of October 17th stay open till midnight and then sell his book. We ticketed this event, (read this cos it is rather good) Fantastically, lots and lots of people wanted to come. It really was a brilliant night and many thanks go to Hungrywolf for their incredible food.

Murakami night at the shop. One of my highlights of the year.

There were loads of other stuff wot happened too. NaNoWriMo, Booker Prize Book Challenge, we have a new Graphic Novels Book Group and a new Children's book group. Knitting Club continues, as does our monthly Boardgames Day.

Plus we had this geezer turn up too;

Thanks for making this year one of the best ever. We love what we do and we can't thank you enough for allowing us to do it .

2012 will be even better.... 

Our friends on Twitter save the Day

This is a quick message.

On Saturday, a delivery that should have arrived at the bookshop didn't. It was supposed to be delivered by Yodel. This isn't the first time that this has happened and it seems that Yodel are not having a very good time of it at the moment. I guess their problem is that they are supposed to deliver parcels to people at agreed times and singularly fail to do so. Yeah, that's probably it.
There were a few customer orders in the box that never arrived and so we tried to get in touch with Yodel to ask where the box might be. We tracked it online, and apparently it was in a van, but somehow didn't quite make it to the shop.

On Monday, we kept a close eye on its' progress.
At 9.17am it was 'Out for delivery'. Excellent, we thought. It will arrive sometime soon.
When we looked again at about midday it stated that at 11.41am it had been 'unable to gain access' to our shop. Mmm, interesting. I don't remember closing the bookshop at 11.30-12.00 in the busiest retailing week of the year. Oh well.
Then, at 12.21 a new message came up. It had been delivered and had been signed for by somebody called Steve.
Who is Steve? We'd love to meet you and get our box of books. But that is unlikely to ever happen, as you don't actually exist.

So, this put us in a tricky position.

We checked through all the orders that hadn't arrived and re-ordered all the books that customers had asked for to arrive before Christmas.
Sadly there were two books that were no longer in stock at our suppliers.
This was bad. Very bad. We had promised these customers the books before Christmas and because of Yodel's shiteness, we were going to struggle to fulfill this.

So, this morning I sent out a message on Twitter.

' I need help to find 2 books for our customers that stupid Yodel have lost & are now out of stock at the publishers'

I am not going to name the books as the recipients of these may read this blog, but magic happened and we found both books and two of the people who follow our twitterfeed (and who we follow because they are superace) @lucebrett and @kaitharshayr helped us find, buy and deliver the books to the Big Green Bookshop.

This is a great example of how brilliant and thoughtful our customers (I think possibly a better word would be friends) are and also how rather wonderful a 'social networking site' can be.

Lovely friends. Lovely Twitter.

x

One of my Bookshelves

I've taken a photo of one of my bookshelves at home. I thought it might be fun to introduce you to it.  I look at my bookshelves all the time and i'd like to share with you how each book makes me feel. There is a conclusion to this blog, so you can skip to the bottom if you like, but if you don't mind reading how I feel about these books, i'd appreciate it. So let's start at on end (how about the left) and have a stroll along it. I've numbered the books (or series of books) 1-26. With a bit of luck you can click on the picture and it will get bigger. I don't know how these things work. Anyway, shall we set off?

1. Love and Summer by William Trevor.
    This was on the longlist of the Booker Prize in 2009. This was the first year we ran the Booker Book challenge in the shop, where we challenged our customers to read all 6 of the Booker longlist before the prize is announced. We met up on the night of the announcement and discussed each of the books and then decided who we thought would win. Then we watched the result and were delighted or appalled (depending on who we were). It's great fun. Anyway, when the longlist was announced, I thought i'd get a head start, and trying to be sneaky, I guessed which of the longlist would get into the shortlist. William Trevor was one of my guesses. I'd never read any of his stuff before and, although it took about 50 pages to get into, I absolutely loved it. Of course, it didn't make the shortlist and yet JM Coetzee did (!), however, if we hadn't done the Booker book challenge, I might never have read it. I love that this book reminds me of all this.

2. Noel Park. A History, by Caroline Wech
    Noel Park (it's a lovely little area in Wood Green) is where my girlfriend Katie and I bought our first flat. This booklet is something that every resident of Noel Park was given after Noel Park won a grant to put it together. I'm fascinated by the history of our area and this is a book I constantly go back to. Lovely

3. Box of Delights by John Masefield.
    I bloody love this book. This has the cover with Patrick Troughton (the second Doctor Who) on it, who played  Cole Hawlings in the BBC adaptaton of this brilliant Christmas story. Katie and I watch the DVD of this every year sometime in December (we also watch It's a Wonderful Life, Home Alone, Planes Trains and Automobiles and  National Lampoon's Christmas, but don't judge us) and i've read the book more times than I can remember. I can't wait for my daughter to be old enough, so I can read it to her.

I'm warming up now. There is a point to all this, so please persevere.
4.  Where Would I be Without You by Guillaume Musso.
      This book reminds me of a delicious meal I had in Old Brompton Road with the author and the publishers, Gallic Books. It also reminds me of our World Record Reading Group attempt we tried earlier this year. I have very happy memories of both these things. Guillaume is charming, the book is bonkers brilliant and looking at it always makes me smile inside.

5. The Rebel Bookseller.
      Whenever i'm feeling a bit down about work, I take this book off the shelf. I don't even need to read very much of it before I feel better again. It's about how a small Indie bookshop in the US survived and thrived in a very difficult market, by thinking outside the box, being massivley stubborn and hugely positive. It's ace.

6. Testament by Alis Hawkins
       Alis was among 8 authors who came and spent some time at the bookshop on it's opening day. She and I had chatted after she read about us on the blog and I heard that her first novel was coming out thought Macmillan new Writers. She doesn't live in London and made a special journey to the bookshop to be there for the opening. I bought this copy at her book launch in... ooh gosh, what's the name of that bookshop just off Charing Cross Road that sells lots of signed first editions and stuff? No, I can't remember. Anyway, it was lovely as was Alis.

7. Tescopoly by Andrew Simms
        Tesco. What a bag of poo they are. Avery large and dangerous bag of poo, but nonetheless, a bag of poo. This is my opinion, and also that of the author of this book. Clone town monstrosities, community destroyers, I feel a bit icky writing about them. I remember when I first moved to the Waterstone's in Wood Green (having just read this book), when it was still there, I ordered 50 copies of this and made it our Book of the Month. Yeah, I know, Waterstone's didn't do shop based books of the month. Ha ha ha. Anyway, the good news was that we sold all 50. As you can clearly see, this has brought Tescos to their knees.

8. Mark Leyner.
        The greatest contemporary writer I know. Not available in the UK, I import these and occasionally try to gently sell them to our customers. I realise he is not for everyone. For a start it is sometimes hard to find any narrative in his writing. It's like a rollercoaster ride of words and thoughts, but in my opinion Leyner pulls it off every time. He is totally incredible. I would never part with these books.

9. Crawlers by Sam Enthoven and Witchfinder by William Hussey.
     Two brilliant young adult books that I read within 3 days of each other. We hired a theatre and  put on a Horror Night in Stoke Newington last year and Sam and Bill were a big part of the show. William's book is staggeringly good. It's the start of a trilogy that has quality written all over it. It's bloody scary too.
I read Crawlers in one sitting and finished it at about 4.30am. That's how good it is.
I like that these two books sit next to each other.

Hey, are you still with me. Well done we're getting somewhere now.

10. Sound Bites by Alex Kapranos
       Katie and I went to the launch party of this. Alex is the lead singer of Franz Ferdinand and the launch party was in Wapping (I think). The party was brilliant. Free drink, great live music and lots of famous people. We got lost on the way. As the party drew to a close I told Alex that we were going to a pub down the road and asked if he'd like to join us. I drew him a map of how to get there and off I went. 20 minutes later he came through the door. The dozen of us who'd been at the party and had come to the pub had another great couple of hours of fun as Alex and his chums played pool chatted and were generally delightful. I will not forget this night.

11. Two books by the Publisher Gallic
    The Suicide Shop and Hector and his Search for Happiness.
When I look at these books I smile. Hector is an interesting book. A multimillion bestselling story about a psychiatrist who decides to travel the world looking for what it is that makes people happy. The Suicide Shop is about a guy who is born into a family who own a shop that sells stuff for people to kill themselves with. Poison, rope etc (use your imagnation). However he is far too positive and happy for this serious business of death and this threatens to ruin the whole thing.
I was introduced to the Suicide Shop by Scott Pack (a lovely chap) and from this introduction Big Green and Gallic have become very firm friends.

12. Company of Liars by Karen Maitland.
    Wow. This is another book that makes me very excited when I see it on the shelf. Penguin sent me this book a few years ago and said it would be worth a read. I read it. I LOVED IT. This is the first book we decided to make Big Green Bookshop Book of the Month. Historical fiction, brilliant pageturning fun. If you haven't read it, then you really ought to. Seriously. Karen is a superb author.

13.Threepenny Memoir by Carl Barat.

      One my loveliest moments in the bookshop. Who would have thought that we could get one of the biggest musicians of the time to play a set in the bookshop. But that is what happened. I'd seen the Libertines live (and also Carl's band Dirty Pretty Things) and when it was announced that Carl was bringing a book out I thought it was deffo worth asking if he's be up to play in the shop. Why not? I put together a pich and sent it off. The next day i heard back that Carl said he'd be happy to do a gig in the shop. And he did. This was within 3 weeks of The Libertines reuniting for the Reading Festival and it was amazing. Carl was superb and he stuck around for a couple of hours afterwards to chat and sign and generally be lovely. I was very happy that night as you can see by this photo.

Happy

14.Meat by Joseph D'Lacey
       This has a blank spine. But I know what it is. One of the best horror novels I have ever read. Incredible imagery, brilliant pacing and totally horrific. This was sent to me whilst we were trying to set up the Big Green Bookshop and it sat on my shelves for a long time until i got round to reading it. I'm so glad I did though. I got in touch with Joseph after i'd finished it and asked if he'd visit the bookshop if and when we actually opened it. He said yes and he was our first ever author to come and sign copies of his book in the shop. He turned up 2 weeks before we opened in a 'meat wagon', but it was such a lift for us and Jose is now a good frienof mine. Eco horror has never been so good, so read his books.

15. The Inner Game by Dominic Lawson.
    The story of Nigel Short's attempt to win the World Chess Championship by beating Garri Kasparov. OMG, this book is incredible. I remember watching the chess matches on the TV and being baffled but fascinated by the whole thing. I love chess, although i'm not great at it, and this book looked inside the story, at the incredible work that is put into playing a seemingly simple game of chess. It staggers me every time I read this book. Short got battered, but there were one or two games where he showed total brilliance and this is what chess is all about. Kasparov (a bit of a hero of mine) shows brilliance more than most and I often dip into this to remind myself just how good he is.

16. Nights at the Circus by Angela Carter.
      one of my top 5 books of all time. I wrote about it here. I love the cover too. her most complete novel. Amazeballs .

We're on the home stretch now. Not long to go.

17.  Dog Binary by Alex Macdonald.
    There's a story behind this book. I've written about it before, and Alex (the author) has no idea how highly I rate him, but this is a very very special publication. If you want to know more about it here's a link. The book is also lovely to stroke and its cover has pots of meat and urine on it. Top notch.

18. Tom Hodgkinson.
     Tom is one of the people who influenced me in deciding to open the Big Green Bookshop. 'How to be Free' is a book that ultimately encourages you to rid yourself of all the stuff that gets in the way of you living the life you want to live. WORK was one of those things. Work. A thing you do all your life to ensure that when you're old you don't have to. It's a weird idea isn't it? I prefer to do something I want to now. So let's open a bookshop! Hurrah.

    Tom's been to the bookshop a few times and it's always great to see him. We keep in touch, especially now that he has his own bookshop (copycat) and it's great to be able to offer what little advice we can to him.

19. The 30 Minute Cookbook by Nigel Slater.
     Nigel Slater is a shiny man who you want to hug and pat and stroke and say 'Thanks Nigel, you're lovely, and a real foody inspiration (but don't overdo it on the TV)'. He has produce some of the best cookbooks I have and 30 Minute Cookbook is one of the best. It is also THE FIRST BOOK WE EVER SOLD IN THE BIG GREEN BOOKSHOP'. A very special title indeed.

20. A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep by Greg Stekelman
    I have written many things about Greg Stekelman. Here's a link to an interview I did with him. I love this book, I look at it all the time, I can open it at any page and it makes me smile. Greg is a very good friend of mine and I would feel odd not having this in my house.
 Oh yeah, buy his new book too. I publish it.

21. The Complete Novels of Geroge Orwell
    George bloody Orwell. If I see a copy of any of his books in charity shops I have to buy them. This man was a total genius. Years ahead of his time. He spoke to everyone and was unafraid to say things that weren't considered popular. Coming Up For Air, Keep The Aspidistra Flying, Animal Farm, 1984, this geezer knew how to write. I read an Orwell book once a year at least and this reminds me to do it. It looks down at me LIKE BIG BROTHER.

22. Memoirs of a Sword Swallower by Dan Mannix.
    Not in print any more, which is a real shame. It really is the memoir of a carny performer who slowly learns how swallow swords (as the title gives away) as well as flourescent tubes and worse. I read this for the first time when I was lying by a swimming pool in Italy and seeing this on the shelf not only reminds me of the dark and dirty world of freakshows, it also reminds me of this wonderful holiday I had. Aces.
23. Stuart Evers and ting.
    Stuart wrote a book which was published earlier this year. Ten Stories About Smoking was published by Picador and is a series of short stories where the general theme is loosely cigarettes. It is excellent and therefore sits proudly on my bookshelves. Actually it is more than excellent and his style has been compared to Raymond Carver and Raymond Chandler. I used to work with Stuart when we were booksellers in in Charing Cross Road. He introduced me to Hermann Hesse (not personally) and also was an excellent drinker. A fine combination.
  Before we opened the bookshop, after we'd finally got the keys to the shop, we asked if anyone could volunteer to help us with the decorating etc. Stuart was one of the first people to get in touch.
here is an example of this. The other book arrowed here is called Beginning In Bookselling, a book that Stu gave me on the day before we opened. Thanks Stuart.

Well done. 85% of the bookshelf done now.
24. Reach For The Ground by Jeffrey Bernard.
    Another one of my treasures. Bernard is a true antihero, who lived life to the full, usually at the expense of everybody else. But his charm (and talent) always seemed to get him through. A gloriously awful man to know I imagine, this book is a collection of his contributions in the Spectator magazine. I have his other collctions too, but this one is the one that, when I notice it on the shelf, I like to pick it off and dip into it. He is a true master.

25. The Fairy Tales of Hermann Hesse.
     If you go back to book 23 you will see that Stuart Evers introduced me to Hermann Hesse. This is the book that did it. Staggering. Only available from America (and the Big Green Bookshop), this is a superb collection of adult fairy tales, which have been lovingly translated by Jack Zipes (he knows everything you need to know about Fairy tales). It's a book that, if I didn't have on the shelf, I might never return to. But i'm so glad I do.

26. Legend of a Suicide by David Vann.
    A very special author. I got a postcard from him once from USA, thanking me for the stuff i'd written about this book. Joe Pickering, from the publishers (Penguin), sent me a copy of this and asked me to read it, cos he thought it was brilliant. I did, and it was.
David came to our shop last time he was in the UK and it really was an amazing evening. I struggle to think of an author so dedicated to his craft, but so generous and friendly.

So, we have reached the end of my shelf. I ask myself this question. Would my memories still be this strong if I saw this instead.

No

Books are more than just pieces of paper with words on them. They each tell a story that is more than the one that you read. I love looking at the books on my bookshelves and the way they each evoke special memories. I hope that there are enough people that feel the same way so that books will stick around for a long while yet.

3 for 2 on All our books. Oh No, Not Again.

I could tell you about KNITTING on Sunday, our CHRISTMAS CRAFT FAIR next Thursday or our COMEDY NIGHT next Friday. But you could look up this on the Website here http://www.biggreenbookshop.com/events-diary/info_6.html

What we’re going to tell you about though, is this. 

TOMORROW, SATURDAY 3^rd DECEMBER 2011 BETWEEN 9AM & 6PM WE ARE HAVING A 3 FOR 2 ON ALL BOOKS AND BOOK RELATED STUFF ON SALE AT THE BIG GREEN BOOKSHOP.

As is traditional with these things, the cheapest item is free and we will PROBABLY have biscuits. This doesn’t include Book Tokens or Vouchers, but it does include pretty much everything else. The offer is just for books that we have in the shop on the day, so this is a brilliant chance for you to get ALL your Christmas shopping done in one massive go.  

You might want to have a look at our second hand books department while you’re here. We’ve expanded it and it now has its very own special corner in the bookshop.

My advice would also be to bring your own bag, as we are running low.

Look forward to seeing you tomorrow.

Christmas Card Competition. YOU DECIDE.

OK. We ran a Christmas Card Competition, where we asked children to design a christmas card for us. The winning six entries are going to be made into cards and sold at the Big Green Bookshop in packs. Also the six winners will each receive a £10 Big Green Bookshop Voucher to spend at the shop.
The overall winner will receive a £50 Big green Bookshop Voucher. Yes, it's crazy, I know.

We had lots of entries. Over 600.  

We want to say how brilliant the cards were and also a huge thankyou to everyone who entered, it was great fun looking at your cards. We will be displaying as many as we can at the bookshop over Christmas, so do come in and have a look at them.

But, we had to make a decision and, hard as it was we chose the 6 winners. But now what we want to do is to let YOU decide who will be the overall winner of the competition. The six winners are displayed here and at the top right of this blog there is a thing where you can vote for the card you think is the best. Please take a minute or so to do this and also if you can, please share this post with anyone else who might be interested.

Image 1. The Three Kings

Image 2. The Snowman

Image 3. The Penguin

Image 4. Santa in his Sleigh

Image 5. Mrs Santa (?)

Image 6. Child and Christmas Tree

Right, there are the 6 winning cards that we're going to make into real Christmas cards and sell at the bookshop. Congratulations to all 6 winners.
But now it's up to you to choose the overall winner, who'll get the £50 voucher.
Voting Closes at midday on Saturday 26th November, and the winner will be officially announced on Monday 28th.

VOTE NOW!!!!!

 

World Book Night

World Book Night is happening again next year. Remember last year, when there was all that telly stuff and Traflagar Square and Margaret Atwood did a TV whatsit. It was nice. Well this time it's on April 23rd, a sensible distance away from World Book Day, which is on March 1st. (last year it was a little bit closer, and caused a bit of a kerfuffle). The 25 titles for World Book Night were announced earlier this week. Alison Flood did a piece about it here. I mention this article specifically, because I am quoted in it. Ha ha ha.

The article, among other things, questions whether giving away free books will hurt Independent Bookshops. On a personal level, it makes not the slightest difference to us whatsoever that these books are being given away for free. In reality, we are likely to sell between 2-5 each of these titles a year. In fact 10 of them we don't regularly keep (although all shops stock profiles are different), so in terms of black and white facts, it really isn't that big a deal.

'but if people are reading these books, that means they might not buy a book from you instead'.

Well that is possible, but it is also possible that if the organinsers of World Book Night get it right, it will raise the profile of books and how ace reading is, and then get more people into bookshops, libraries etc.
My concern is that last year, the organisers did NOT get it quite right.

The idea of World Book Night is a good one. Give lots of free books away to people who don't usually have access to books or to people who don't read. Good, I like it.

But how do you get the right books to the right people?

That's incredibly hard. But asking for volunteers take packs of 48 books and expecting them to do it is not, in my humbly bumbly opinion, the right way. These volunteers are wonderful people who want to get involved, but a lot of them are (I suspect) pretty well read. My concern is that the books will often be distributed to these well read group of people's well read group of friends. I know this is not true in lots of cases, but it was certainly true of a number of volunteers who picked up their books from our shop. I am not in any way blaming the volunteers, because all of them clearly wanted to spread the word about reading and gave up their own time to do this. All i'm saying is that I think the point is to give books to people who don't usually have access to books or to people who don't read and there is probably a better way of doing this.

Tricky.

World Book Day is good. Very good. The idea of World Book Day is to encourage children to explore the pleasures of books and reading by providing them with the opportunity to have a book of their own. 
There's more;
Thanks to the generosity of.....participating booksellers, school children are entitled to receive a World Book Day £1 Book Token. The Book Token can be exchanged for one of the six specially published World Book Day £1 Books or is redeemable against any book or audiobook of their choice at a participating bookshop or book club.

Ooh, now here's an idea. Instead of giving away one from a selection of 24 titles to random people, why don't we give certain people (people who don't usually have access to books or to people who don't read) a voucher up to the value of say £7.99 to buy a book of their choice from a selection of thousands and thousands of titles at any bookshop in the country.
Here are the plus points.

• People get to choose a book they might actually read.
• It will get people into bookshops.
• It's more likely that the people who should benefit from World Book Night, do benefit from it.
• More people will read books.
• It is ace
• There will be no need to print 1,000,000 extra books with special covers n' stuff because the books that people want will already be on the shelves. Hurrah.

There are negative points too, like not everybody will use the vouchers (did everyone read the free book they got given last year), and i'm sure that it will be impossible to target 100% accurately the poeple most in need of these vouchers. But I suspect that if a little research was done to work out those people most worthy of the vouchers (area's with lowest literacy, highest unemployment etc), then it would be totally brilliant.
The cost of the scheme could be shared by everyone (government, publishers, bookshops, BA and the like), and WBN is a charity too so that's good.
Well anyway, that's my idea.

Here's a picture of  a kitten with some cute ducklings

London Tales.

I met Greg Stekelman a few years ago. Probably just after Waterstone's in Wood Green closed down in 2007. I absolutely loved his book A Year in the Life of TheManWhoFellAsleep, and wanted to get in touch with the author to let him know. The book sadly went out of print, as the publishers went bust (this is becoming a theme of my blogposts). Rather than having his book pulped, Greg sensibly bought a few hundred copies from the administrators. You can read a longer version of this story, plus an interview I did with Greg in 2008 right here.
I was very proud that our bookshop was the only one that sold Greg's book, which we got directly from him, and it was probably the most consistently bestselling book we have stocked. Inevitably, Greg ran out of copies earlier this year, such was its popularity.
I had spoken to Greg last year about the idea of publishing a book with him. Initially the idea was to re-issue his original book with a few changes, but Greg was getting some really positive feedback from some of the illustrations that he had been doing and he persuaded me that a collection of these would actually be a much more exciting project. And London Tales was born.
We wanted the book to be something special. A lavish, beautifully produced collectors item, which complimented Greg's wonderful atmospheric drawings. Here are a couple of them to give you a taste of what I mean.

The book slowly took shape and sure enough a new London (fairy)Tale was written.
What Greg has done is incredible. The book contains the dreamlike quality of his first book, but what London Tales offers is a new perspective on London and the people who find themselves living here.

Such a special book needed to be presented in a special way, and as such there is a limited edition of  just 250 copies. Each will be signed by Greg, and the first 50 copies ordered will contain a personalised hand-drawn London Tales postcard. The book costs £40

Here is the final product. I hope you like it.

The book will be published on November 10th, but you are able to pre-order copies by going to the London Tales microsite here. Please take a look.

I shall share with you all the story of how Timeline Books, my new publishing company came about later, because right now, it's all about the book. As it should be.

Thank you for reading this.

Beautiful Books

A couple of weeks ago I read this on Beautiful Books website;

"Today, 11th October 2011, Beautiful Books entered administration. For information regarding the administration of the company, please contact Leonard Curtis...All the employees at Beautiful Books would like to thank everyone with whom we have worked over the past six years."

Now I really like Beautiful Books and this made me very sad indeed. They have published some of my favourite books of the last few years. Let me give you a couple of examples.

1. Meat by Joseph D'Lacey. Actually this is published by Bloody Books (the horror arm of Beautiful Books) and I have said lovely things about this book on the blog. I did an interview with Joseph here, and also Joseph was the first author to come and do a signing at the shop...two weeks before we even opened. Here's a link to that story. Beautiful books consequently went on to publish Garbage Man by Joseph and also the wonderful horror of Bill Hussey too. If you like eco-horror, or think you might, then Meat is the book for you. Or at least it was.

2. Dog Binary by Alex MacDonald. Alex is/was one of our customers and came into the shop one day asking if I wouldn't mind reading the first chapter of a book he'd been writing for the last seven years. He'd only showed one other person his book and I was totally blown away that he had asked for my opinion. That evening, I read the first chapter, and for the second time that day I was totally blown away. The incredible imagery and power behind Alex's writing was a real pleasure, and the next morning I called him and demanded that I see the rest of the book.
It was me who suggested to Alex that he should contact Simon Petherick, the MD of Beautiful Books to show him his novel. And I was so pleased when Simn showed the same enthusiasm as me for Alex's book. It would be a real shame if nobody picked up this little masterpiece and gave it a new home.

Not only did Beautiful Books publish some great stuff (other titles include Role Models by John Waters, The Glassblower of Murano by Marino Fiorato, 17 by Bill Drummond, The Wreckng Ball, The Sweet Smell of Decay by Paul Lawrence and The Secret Lives of People in Love by Simon Van Booy), they also were one of the most innovative publishers around. The way they marketed the books was refreshing and infectious, as was their enthusiasm for the books they sold. I was lucky enough to work with Beautiful Books on a number of occasions and each time I did it was a real treat.

There are probably lots of reasons why BB went into administration and i'm sure there are many unhappy people who are far more directly involved as a little bookshop in Wood Green. I hope all the legal issues are sorted out and a satisfactory conclusion is reached.
But I didn't want to let this news pass without sayng how sorry I am that it happened. That's all.