Well, despite being short-listed for the Bookseller Retail Awards we didn’t manage to win the award for Children’s Independent, that went to the children’s book department of Jarrold’s department store in Norwich.  Simply Books in Cheshire, recently assisted with their rebranding by one of the judges so known first hand to be an excellent bookshop, won the general independent bookshop award. 

We were really pleased for The Book Depository’s win for Direct to Consumer retailer and the face-like-thunder of one of the other nominees sat at our table was hugely amusing.  We were somewhat baffled by Waterstone’s customer service being praised as one of the contributing factors to their win as High Street Retailer of the Year given that we have customers ordering books from us (24-48 hour delivery as standard) who’ve been quoted up to three weeks in our local Waterstone’s branches but I missed some of that announcement as I had to nip out to the loos as all of our staff and many of our friends and family were waiting eagerly to find out whether we’d be bringing the trophy home to Edinburgh, so it may be that I just didn’t hear the other criteria upon which they were being praised.  WH Smith won the overall Bookselling Company of the Year award which also surprised us given that one of the best things that we hear about Smith’s is that they’re not as rubbish as they were.  They also won General Retailer of the Year beating off competition from that well-known powerhouse of bookselling, Asda.  The award for Outstanding Contribution to Bookselling went to the delightedly surprised (and completely trollied – she said it!) Amanda Ross of Richard and Judy Book Club fame.

Jen was also tweeting my texts to her onto the Edinburgh Bookshop Twitter feed so some people were following the evening that way.  I did manage to give my busily texting thumbs (takes a long time when you have a tendency to use semi-colons and apostrophes!) a break by phoning Becky who was in Washington DC and hugely excited at having shaken hands with Michelle Obama that day (“what would Michelle do?” is a motto in our office) and Andrew who appears to live in a wireless communications black hole in the centre of Edinburgh. 

Overall, it was an interesting evening.  Being a horribly competitive person I was naturally disappointed not to win, but from a people-watching point of view it was fascinating and we did get to have dinner next to a brontosaurus skeleton in a building which is a jewel of Victorian architecture.  The food was more edible than usual at these sort of events and although I don’t think we’d bother making the trek down to London again for this sort of do unless it could be combined with something more productive, it was fun and a break from being hands-on at work for a couple of days. 

And Malcolm in his kilt completely outshone all the other chaps there, some of whom were even wearing lounge suits to a black tie event.  Kilts in Edinburgh are nothing out of the ordinary but he was stopped in the street as we walked down the Cromwell Road by a lady who wanted to admire his get-up!  And contrary to predictions, no tipsy publicity assistants tried to look up his kilt to see if he was a true Scot!

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