This has been a bit flexible – first it was going to be in the middle of August then we decided that we were ordering stock which would then be being stored for three weeks more or less as soon as it arrived and so then we decided to move early next week and then for the same reason and because we’re a bit short-staffed we decided to move the core children’s stock to The Edinburgh Bookshop tomorrow instead.  That also leaves us just over a week before the builders move in to clear out the enormous amount of junk that seems to have accumulated – bits of dump bins, proof copies, boxes, acres of bubblewrap that we’ve kept because it might come in useful and it feels too wasteful to bin it, posters, free stuff to give away, out-of-date catalogues… and to find places to store things, somewhere to work when we’re not in the shop etc, etc.

Anyway, from sometime tomorrow and defnitely from 7th August – all core children’s stock will be at The Edinburgh Bookshop at 181 Bruntsfield Place.  We’ll have as many books as possible there and will be able to arrange speedy delivery of anything we don’t have on the shelves.

Then, following 4 weeks of hard work by ourselves and our happy band of builders, sparkies, carpet fitters etc, not to mention a few of our friends and customers who have offered to come and get the shop ready for re-opening, we will be reopening the super-duper, fan-dabby-dozy, new and improved and enlarged The Edinburgh Bookshop on Friday 3rd September.  Mind you, we’ve just realised that that’s the day after our re-launch party so you might need to speak gently to us before about lunchtime or until Rocket’s bacon rolls have kicked in…

There you go – dates for your diary.

So, if I had a message it would be ’shop local’.  In most cases, your local butcher, baker, fishmonger are just as good value as Tescobury’s.  Okay, so the butcher up the street might not be able to sell you a chicken for £3, but is that poor little ill-treated, unhealthy, water-injected bird really what you want to be eating?

And your local bookshop offers you so much more than Amazon or big chains even if we can’t compete with the cheap-chicken merchants – we can find you the novel that can change your life or the perfect present…  I’ve written about that more here – a blog post which I’m told caused some people to get a bit teary, which was a bit of a surprise.  Okay, I’m not going to be able to flog you Dan Brown or Katie Price’s latest output as cheap as Tesco or Amazon but that’s partly because we don’t bother stocking them – we don’t have room for all the books we love so why bother stocking tripe?

But if you want your high street to have a future that includes businesses other than huge conglomerates, that keeps jobs and investment and profits in your community then that’s in your own hands.  Because voting in the election for the party you think might keep the country afloat is only part of it.  We have another (sadly neglected at the moment) blog where we write about the trade side of bookselling and you can read about the latest shop local campaign being imported from the USA by the Booksellers Association here.

Anyway, this is an interim post – a mere digression – tomorrow I’ll be back with details of our changes and developments.

It sounds cheesy, but we really do want to make The Edinburgh Bookshop the book lover’s bookshop. If you’ve not visited us yet, we have a Simon Callow event in August, so that’s a perfect excuse to come to Edinburgh!

Becky’s Sarcastic Inner Monologue: We. Are. A. BOOKSHOP.

As we’ve said before, Nicola Morgan’s new book Wasted is utterly brilliant and we’re delighted that she’s visiting us as part of her blog tour to promote it.  Wasted has its very own blog but Nicola’s dropping by lots of others to talk about all manner of bookish things and – appropriately given that we have two bookshops – she’s here to talk about the relationship authors have with booksellers… over to Nicky…

Vanessa says I am allowed to be snarky. Does she not realise the risk she runs when she actually invites a crabbit old bat to be snarky?? Thing is, she then emasculates me (or whatever the feminine of that is) by saying lovely things about Wasted and telling me it will sell in shed-loads. And when a bookseller says your book has big commercial potential, how is a crabbit author then supposed to be snarky?

Meh.

And meh, frankly, is how authors usually feel when we go into bookshops. Which is what I will now be snarky about.  Vanessa has quite rightly (*bows and scrapes*) griped about bad author behaviour in bookshops. Bad author behaviour, fyi, includes things like: improving the display by putting our books face out and covering up the Harry Potters and Flower Fairy nonsense best-sellers; accosting real customers; never actually buying anything; sneering at the bookseller for not having heard of us; not believing the “oh, we sold the last copy just three minutes ago” line; and generally behaving like a prima donna.

But booksellers are very scary people, holding our career, self-esteem and earning power in their hands, so going into bookshops is usually HORRIBLE for authors, even though we love books and really want to buy lots and lots and lots.

So, I want to use my snarky card to describe what a bookshop experience feels like and why. First, we are usually drunk when we get through the door, because it takes that to make us brave enough. Either that or we’re feeling a bit sick with all the cake we just ate at Falko Konditormeister or a bit guilty about the money we’ve just spent in Coco’s of Bruntsfield to give us some much-needed feel-good factor before the inevitable slough of despond.

Then we open the door and we see All Those Books which are probably not ours. And bookseller recommendations for books that are probably not ours. And customers. And the scary bookseller, who is smiling because she thinks we’re a customer. And we know we’re not.

The next stage is a combination of Delaying Strategies and the Buttering Up Routine. These involve smiling at the bookseller and holding the door to let a customer with a large buggy in. The customer with the large buggy isn’t actually going to buy anything but she would like her sticky-mitted child to play with the books. The bookseller stops smiling.

Next, we have a clever trick, which must be practised a lot before attempting it for real: it’s called How to Identify the Shelf Where Our Book Should Be, without having to ask for the book by name. Because, if you have to ask for it your only option is then to leave the shop and come back later in thick disguise.

Having identified the shelf, and casually picked up several books by people who do NOT deserve to be there, and having established the absence of our book, there are two options. Option 1, the one I usually follow, is to pretend my phone has rung and it’s Newsnight wanting to interview me. I then leave the shop to complete the “interview”. Option 2 is to approach the bookseller, preferably when no other customers are in ear-shot, and say, “Erm, hello, I was just wondering if by any chance I could possibly interest you in getting me a glass of water because I may actually be about to faint.”

Supposing we then gasp our way through the next bit and actually mention the book and start blabbering about how it’s really quite exciting and has had lovely reviews on Amazon and that they might have seen the Guardian review / Scotsman interview blahdy blah, we then have to deal with any combination of the following responses from the bookseller:

(BTW – this would NEVER happen in Vanessa’s shops.)

• Sorry, I haven’t heard of you but I’ll see if I can find time to read your book, maybe next year because I’ve got a huge pile to read.
• Your publisher didn’t mention it.
• The sales reps don’t really visit any more.
• It’s all done by Central Office, see.
• It’s really hard selling YA stand-alone fiction these days  – what with the recession and everything.
• I think we did have a copy but it sold. I’m not sure when we’ll be re-ordering.
• The system says we’ve got a copy. Someone must have nicked it. You should be flattered.
• You need to get your publisher to pay for it to go in a promotion – it’s the only way books sell these days.
• What did you say your name was?
• What’s it about?
• Will you do a free event?
• I’m only temporary.
• Sorry – I don’t normally work in the teenage section so I don’t really know.
• Have I heard of you?
• I think your name rings a bell. Oh no – that’s my hairdresser.
• Is it self-published?
• Thing is, there are 110,000 books published in the UK every year.
• Oh yes, a customer was asking about that the other day – looked a bit like you, actually. But older. Your mother?

Meh, frankly. Do you feel our pain? It’s a real bugger being an author sometimes.

However, Vanessa does stock Wasted, and Deathwatch, and even others of mine (except when she’s just sold the last copy) and she makes a very, very good job of selling them. But I still enjoy a little foray into  Coco’s of Bruntsfield before visiting her shop – it doesn’t do to be unprepared.

However, I have always felt that writing for a living – even if one had talent – would just be so much of oneself on display, even in fiction. The thought even makes me feel a little queasy, the same kind of feeling as if I had decided to take all of my most personal belongings onto The Meadows for Edinburgh residents to poke about and judge. Intellectually, I know that writers must have boundaries and that as readers we can’t really be living in their heads, but emotionally I feel that the relationship between reader and author is at times almost possessive.

I read a blog post today by Scott Adams in which he talks about how his creative impulses were and are just that: compulsive. The best you can hope for in this life is that your delusions are benign and your compulsions have utility. I am very jealous of those who have the courage and intense hunger to create, and who also have the talent to create something that is full of beauty and humour and light.

[On the other hand, even without that intersection of talent and will, Vanessa and I were saying last week that we could do a better "write-by-numbers" chick-lit book than some of the proofs we've been given recently. One too many glasses of wine one Friday evening and we'll knock up a synopsis and an appropriate double-barrelled author name for you all to judge...]

I’m not sure I had a point I was getting to here, but feel free to ramble in the comments creatively about creativity if you so desire!

MP3 file: download

You can find plenty of other interviews and author events over on the Fidracasts page.

and here’s the poem projected onto the actual rock as it appeared on Valentine’s Day.  Although possibly without the men in high vis vests in front of it…

* Douglas Dunn

On a more cheerful note: the City of Literature campaign this year is the delightful Carry a Poem. They have produced a free book filled with some much-beloved poems, and they’re inviting people to tell them about how they carry their favourite poem. It’s been really popular initiative: we’ve even had some people come into bookshops to tell us their story, which is lovely (if a little unexpected!). Excitingly, love poetry is going to be projected on Castle Rock this weekend, which is the only time an outside organisation has been allowed to do so.

I’m going to jump on the bandwagon at this point: tell me your favourite poem and why. If we get some good stories, then I will randomly select someone and send them a copy of Carry a Poem plus a few of the Carry a Poem poetry cards. (Granted, not much of an incentive if you live in Edinburgh and can get it for free, but more fun if you aren’t a resident!)

I’ll start…

I find it almost impossible to pick a favourite, but if forced, I would probably go with Hope is the Thing with Feathers, by Emily Dickinson. I love the way her poetry often seems so stream of consciousness - a burst of emotion on the page – and yet fits together in perfectly-tesselating agreement. I enjoy a lot of her darker poems, but Hope is the Thing with Feathers catches (for me) that feeling of the determined something inside that flickers even when you feel low.

So, give me yours!