Authors Electric

Have a look at this on the internet. It’s a map of independent bookshops across the country (world?). I have no idea where the data comes from but it does show the vast swathes of Britain with no independent bookshop. Where I live (mid-Cheshire), there are no bookshops at all – not even any chain stores. I’m discounting our local branch of WH Smith which doesn’t really have much more choice than the media aisle at the supermarket. And there is also The Works , but that is mostly remaindered stock bundled as 3 for £5 (good value if they have what you like on the shelves). I do have author friends whose books are actively bought by The Works, so maybe they are branching out more?  Anyway, our nearest independent bookshop is in Nantwich. Nantwich Bookshop & Coffee Lounge . As it says on the tin, it’s a book shop and it’s a coffee lounge – not just coffee either. They do a lovely all-day breakfast too and other sandwichy and lunch things. Food and books – how much better can it g...

The Book House, Summertown, soon to close. Two weeks ago I had the melancholy task of collecting a book from the Book House, Summertown, Oxford.   Before I am deluged with outrage that I could ever describe a bookshop visit as melancholy, I’ll explain that this wonderful, deceptively spacious (as estate agents love to put it) jewel of a bookshop is closing in June 2018, and they’d asked me to take back the one copy of Ante’s Inferno still on their shelves. Aladdin's Cave: the Book House, Thame A younger sibling of the glorious Aladdin’s Cave that is the Book House in Thame, the Book House, Summertown, has been a fixture of this part of Oxford for nearly 30 years. During that time the Summertown shopping centre – as so many throughout the UK – underwent a sea change in character, with traditional stores giving way to coffee and charity shops. When I arrived in the 1980s, there were 3 butchers, 3 greengrocers, 2 newsagents, 2 off licences, a toyshop, pet...

A Sterkarm Tryst by Susan Price The first reviews I ever had were for a radio play, and it was a salutary experience. At twenty-eight my self-confidence was not of the highest order, and the column and a half of invective I had in the Times was devastating. Fortunately I had a middling review from The Guardian , and a brilliant one from the Financial Times , otherwise I might have stopped writing altogether, like someone I knew who never picked up a pen again. Rule one for a writer: develop a thick skin. It was good training for online reviews, though, although how objective I manage to be is another matter. I had two kids conducting an online battle for their favourite books, and rubbishing the opposing one. This can seriously affect your ranking. You also get reviews by people who clearly haven’t read it, and say something totally untrue. The one that most annoyed me was when someone complained of a blatant coincidence, and said that two people had “just happened to meet by ac...

Yet another long, warm summer evening and I was in the Dog & Pheasant in Shrewsbury talking publishing to Susan Caroline of Pengwern Books. Our much-loved local indie bookshop has had a checkered life since opening in Fish Street in 2003, and so has Susan.  Her doggedness is astonishing. Keeping in business in the current book-selling climate has taken a lot of ducking and diving. Pengwern Books has had a variety of homes, not least of which has been to the immediate right of the altar in St Alkmund’s Church, courtesy of vicar and PCC - which proved a real refuge when it looked as though Shrewsbury’s only independent contemporary book shop might go down. Nowadays, however, Pengwern Books is thriving in Shrewsbury’s indoor market, a central part of its current renaissance, situated next to Julia Wenlock’s chocolate shop and a stone’s throw from the delightfully quirky Bird’s Nest café.   Susan talked to me about that move, and about her life-long love of boo...

In the years when I was a bookseller the acceptable face of publishers came with their reps. At this distance I can hardly remember any rep who I wasn’t glad to see. That doesn’t mean that I was ever Ms Thoroughly-Sweet (far from it!) merely that my shop was so small and the orders so piffling that only the kindliest and most dedicated of the fraternity bothered to make the detour off the A12 and lug their battered briefcases down the village high street to drink a cup of my indifferent coffee. It was rare that I was so rushed off my feet with customers that I couldn’t enjoy looking though forthcoming titles and wondering exactly which customer each book might suit. Then there was the fun of popping that book in the front window and lurking in my lair to see who might come wandering past … and stop … and look … and make up their mind to come in. When I wasn’t sure about stocking a book, I came to trust my friends, the reps’, advice. They were experienced members of the trade and they w...