until I, like every other online cesspool, would make reference to Pippa Middleton's bum.
Actually, sorry - I mean her new book!
Here is an article on the Guardian Books site today, in which Alison Flood (sorry, Al - normally you're ace) decries the ridiculous advance Pippa recently got for her book on party planning: http://bit.ly/ugb3sX
It's very late and I'm very tired, and as usual there's wine involved, but I'd just like to point something out here. Publishers have to juggle talent and money. Talent and money. Sadly, the two don't always come together. So, when you get someone like Pippa, who they know they'll make mega bucks off, they'll give her a massive advance, just to keep [her] profit safe [with them]. What that means, then, is that they have more money. And what do they do with all this money?
Oh, that's right. Spend it on developing new and interesting authors. Cos, y'know, wealth begets wealth in the same way that poverty begets poverty.
So, sometimes, it pays. Selling out pays.
Monday 28 November 2011
Tuesday 22 November 2011
Sunday 13 November 2011
How does this happen?
Already, already it is mid-November. How has it been a month since my last entry?
A quick update on what I've been reading recently, to be followed by some choice top tips about the how to behave in a bookshop:
I've just started a book entitled Calories and Counting. It's a history of dieting from the Greeks onwards, and so far, it is amazing. It'll be on the recommends table at work in January (when it is to be published). Profile Books are a super lovely publishing company too, so I'm glad to support them in whatever little way I can. I'm due to write a review of a novel called Q: a love story for Harper Collins too. I really must crack on with that - the novel is good - I never knew that Freud had spent his early career studying eel genitalia - but not wonderful. Not as wonderful as The Tiny Wife, which is a very short work by Andrew Kaufmann, which I finished at the start of the month. I also re-read Lolita and was once again amazed, simply amazed.
Here are some bookshopp etiquette tips in case today if a bookshopping day for you:
1. Customers: it's fine if you buy all your books from Amazon, but don't expect there to be any bookshops in ten year's time. And that's fine, if that's how you want it. But browsing in a bookshop only goes so far, and certainly not far enough to pay the rent. As found out the owner of The Travel Bookshop, a beautiful indy in Notting Hill.
2. Just because I work in a shop, I am not stupid. Have you read Ulysses? Five times over? We can have a brain off if the answer's 'yes', but otherwise, for now, accept that I do have a brain and I buck the 'retail = stupid' stereotype.
3. People who come in and buy the 'Life in the UK' book: I don't actually make the decision. You are all lovely, as a general rule, and I'd let you all stay, but it's not up to me, sadly.
4. Please do not let your kid/grandma vomit/shit in the bookshop. It feels excessive to state that this is not acceptable.
5. Do not assume that because I work surrounded by books that I must have necessarily read them all. Why would I read a David Nicholls book? Why would I read Sophie Kinsella? Why would you assume that my cultural opinions are in some way lacking for not having done so?
A quick update on what I've been reading recently, to be followed by some choice top tips about the how to behave in a bookshop:
I've just started a book entitled Calories and Counting. It's a history of dieting from the Greeks onwards, and so far, it is amazing. It'll be on the recommends table at work in January (when it is to be published). Profile Books are a super lovely publishing company too, so I'm glad to support them in whatever little way I can. I'm due to write a review of a novel called Q: a love story for Harper Collins too. I really must crack on with that - the novel is good - I never knew that Freud had spent his early career studying eel genitalia - but not wonderful. Not as wonderful as The Tiny Wife, which is a very short work by Andrew Kaufmann, which I finished at the start of the month. I also re-read Lolita and was once again amazed, simply amazed.
Here are some bookshopp etiquette tips in case today if a bookshopping day for you:
1. Customers: it's fine if you buy all your books from Amazon, but don't expect there to be any bookshops in ten year's time. And that's fine, if that's how you want it. But browsing in a bookshop only goes so far, and certainly not far enough to pay the rent. As found out the owner of The Travel Bookshop, a beautiful indy in Notting Hill.
2. Just because I work in a shop, I am not stupid. Have you read Ulysses? Five times over? We can have a brain off if the answer's 'yes', but otherwise, for now, accept that I do have a brain and I buck the 'retail = stupid' stereotype.
3. People who come in and buy the 'Life in the UK' book: I don't actually make the decision. You are all lovely, as a general rule, and I'd let you all stay, but it's not up to me, sadly.
4. Please do not let your kid/grandma vomit/shit in the bookshop. It feels excessive to state that this is not acceptable.
5. Do not assume that because I work surrounded by books that I must have necessarily read them all. Why would I read a David Nicholls book? Why would I read Sophie Kinsella? Why would you assume that my cultural opinions are in some way lacking for not having done so?
6. Please do not get pissy with me when I tell you that the book you want is out of print. I do not print the books.
....there'll be more to follow. There are always new breaches of behaviour occurring, and I'll notify you as and when they do.
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