And the Beat Goes On

The school holidays seem to have lasted for at least six weeks, but the calendar says otherwise. Determined to get my money's worth from our National Trust and English Heritage membership cards, I've subjected my younger son to a gruelling tour of castles, stately homes and parks. His older brother has remained in his room, mostly sleeping, like someone in cryogenic suspension on an interstellar voyage.

I find the planning and recollection of days out much better than the thing itself. The reality is usually either slight disappointment, or an awareness of being detached from the thing I am looking at and wondering why. But occasionally, something serendipitous happens that negates the angst.

My last moment of serendipity happened recently, on a mild, end of March day. I was sitting on a bench, by the ramparts of an 11th century castle and could hear birdsong, a cock crowing and the sound of people singing in the nearby parish church - it was Good Friday. At one point, a brimstone butterfly fluttered past and I remembered why I love this time of year so much.

On the way home, I picked up my mother and brought her to have lunch with us. As she struggled to get into the car, she suddenly said "I'm running out of books. Can you get me some more on your thing?"

I've ordered so many books for my mother, Amazon now thinks that my literary tastes revolve solely around tales of working class girls who become impregnated by the local squire's son. When I open the Amazon home page, a long list of titles is waiting for me.

I found one novel that looked like my mother's cup of tea, but the customer review was one of the oddest things I've ever read, straggling the line between madness and a haunting, epic beat poem.

To quote it in full (and scroll down if you lose the will to live):

Wow this Book was absolutely Great. or shall I say Fantastic
Yeah. Kay Brelland knows how to write a Book.. Thought the
Windmill Girls was good. But she's gone one better with this
One. It's been good to begin with . Got more exciting as it
Got to Rosie joining the Ambulance service. And her father's
Old Associate.I will call him Frank Purves was a bad man
Wanted to cause trouble and make him start his old business
Up. And Rosie s father said no he wanted no part in the deal
He'd made with someone down at the docks.
But he said to this man he got five hundred pounds to start
Up. A whisky brewing set up. Illegal. But John said no.
And sent a man to see him called Connor Flint. John told
Him no way was he going to do this. He'd given it up years
Ago. And .Connor said but you got five hundred pounds for
This. He said. No Frank Purves got that . He hasn't seen any
Money at all. Come his way. Frank has it all stashed away
Somewhere. Connor believed John. Cause he didn't trust
Purses and didn't like him either. So he went after him
Rosie had a child. And she'd been attacked by purves son
And had his child. Lots of hair Raising episodes happened.
From Kidnapping of Rosie s Daughter. And John and Frank
Having a bad fight. And Rosie ending up falling in love
With Connor Flint. Who was in his thirties. Rosie was twenty one
And her dramatic life in her Ambulance job. She was once a
Windmill girl. And settled down .eventually. but will not
Spoil to much by giving away too. Much. But. This book is
A must to read. Lots of war. Happening V1 Rocketts falling.
And causing disasters. keeps you on the edge of your seat.
Well this was truly great .enjoyed it very much . Worth waiting
For. To read. So I give this
Five stars truly worth it and more."

I like the seventh line from the bottom "but will not Spoil to (sic) much by giving away too."

I've been taking lots of photographs, trying to improve. I now have a cheap but cheerful zoom lense, which makes it easier to take shots of people. I'm particularly pleased with the touching scene below. It may not be a great photograph, technically, but it warms the cockles of my heart:

And further along the beach, another heartwarming sight - someone reading a book:

I used to wait for good weather before taking photos, but Gothic style buildings like this look far better on dark, stormy days. 

This is Pevensey Castle. It used to be by the coast, before the sea disappeared.  

This doorway appears to be the only surviving remnant of a much older building than the one behind it, but I can't find any information on the internet. It's just outside a village with the memorable name of Blackboys. 

This is part of Battle Abbey, built on the sight of the Battle of Hastings. Unless you visit at the height of the tourist season, it's usually mercifully empty.

Hove Station, where a footbridge offers this striking perspective.

This medieval ruin reminds me of a Caspar David Friedrich painting. I'd love to come back here at dusk and take some pictures, but I expect the staff might have something to say about it as they close at 5.00. I wonder how tall the walls are.

A Taxing Problem

The knives are out for Amazon. Following a recent report that revealed that they are allegedly guilty of tax avoidance*, the great and the good of the UK book industry have lined up to condemn the online retailer. My old boss James Heneage recently described Amazon as "dangerous", whilst Tim Waterstone condemned them as "rude, contemptuous, arrogant and subversive".

Strong words, but relatively mild compared to Waterstones' (the apostrophe was officially moved in January) current managing director, who branded Amazon a "ruthless, moneymaking devil". Devil? That sort of hyperbole is usually associated with some of the more outspoken members of the Iranian parliament, not retail executives.

Amazon have clearly got under a few people's skin.

James Heneage, somewhere in Wiltshire

According to James Heneage, Amazon are "damaging the high street book trade and threaten to undermine publishers' ability to nurture new talent. If you are concerned about the sort of books that get published you have to look to the future and the amount of value that businesses like Amazon can remove from the publishing business model".

Heneage goes on to argue that "great writers such as Patrick O'Brian and Joanna Trollope...did not start out as uniquely brilliant. (They) built gradually because publishers worked with them and had the money to invest, and pay for the expertise that spotted the books in the first place."

There is a lot to be said for this argument. I remember how it took around ten years for Ian Rankin to become a bestselling author, by which time he had written over a dozen books. When I worked at Waterstone's in the early 90s, the only Rankin we'd heard of was Robert, the author of humorous fantasy novels.

(On the subject of Robert Rankin, I once had an embarrassing exchange with a middle-aged woman who'd asked what I'd recommend for her 17-year-old son. When I said "Has he tried Rankin?" she misheard me, but to her credit didn't bat an eyelid and replied "Well, I suppose that would keep him quiet")

Ian Rankin could have continued to languish in the midlist, but he had a publisher that believed in him (probably encouraged by a recent Gold Dagger award) and they relaunched the Rebus novels with new jackets and a nationwide marketing campaign. It worked and the rest is history.

I wonder how Ian Rankin would fare today if he'd just written his first Inspector Rebus novel? Would he find a publisher for 'Knots and Crosses' as easily as he did in 1987 and if he had, would they publish a further six books before Rankin really hit his stride with 'Black and Blue'?

It's possible that a writer of Ian Rankin's talent could still succeed today by circumventing the normal publishing process. Several lesser writers have gained publishing deals by making their work available for nothing (or a nominal fee) to Kindle readers, allowing viral marketing to do the rest. But could Ian Rankin have afforded to do this without the financial support of a publisher?

As far as I was concerned, James Heneage had hit the nail on the head, but then I read this (and please forgive me for quoting it at length):

"I don't like it when someone like James Heneage steps forward to give the media a quote and blows it by mumbling about irrelevancies. Perhaps he is being misquoted or the paper is focussing on what were intended to be peripheral remarks, but this article makes it seem like his main objection to Amazon is that they're not really members of the club.

Firstly (sic) he seems to believe that great authors need to be nurtured by publishers: eliminating publishers imperils literature. I personally am quite sure that great authors will continue to emerge if 'publisher' goes the way of 'lamplighter' or 'footman'. He also seems to believe that publishers have an important role spotting those great writers: without publishers we wouldn't notice the diamonds in the rough. I agree that's a role publishers fill... for now. But if what replaces the current model is readers reading any old thing, including lots of self-published novels, and then blogging and tweeting about them, I think we'll see books with lasting appeal being taken up more not less quickly. I won't lament the loss of the 'kingmaker' role in publishing. And there will still be prominent figures who can champion new writing.

Heneage also thinks that Amazon is not 'investing' enough in the industry, in (implied) contrast to the way that publishers do. He doesn't elaborate, but single-handedly developing and popularising a global e-book platform sounds like investing to me. As does allowing any solvent reader with an internet connection to get any book through the mail in a day or two - including titles that 99% of bricks-and-mortar stores never carried. And it may not be the sort of investment Heneage likes, but Amazon have also made books cheaper. In fact I would say that the problem is that Amazon is investing too much rather than too little.

Heneage concludes by saying that if you have the long-term success of the industry at heart you don't undermine the competition too much. This is a terribly woolly remark. Is he suggesting that the only thing that's stopped Macmillan or Random House from grabbing 99% of the book market is a sportsmanlike restraint and a custodial mindset? The directors of publicly-traded firms would be fired if they announced they'd called a halt to growth because they were worried about the competition."

The author of this extract is Rob Jones, co-owner of the small publisher Snowbooks (you can find the full article on their blog, here) and he argues his case very persuasively. He could have added that what's happening now is the logical outcome of a process that allowed Ottakar's to expand so quickly during the ten years following the collapse of the NBA.

However, the advent of self-published ebooks is my idea of hell. Yes, there are some very good novels that have failed to gain the attentions of agents and publishers, but how can we identify them amongst the thousands that are available? It's equally woolly to suggest that the glut of self-published books can be successfully curated by a loose coalition of bloggers and tweeters.

I regularly receive emails inviting me to read and review a 'remarkable' new novel by an author I've never heard of. If I had more time on my hands and wasn't such a slow reader, perhaps I'd occasionally take some of these offers up out of curiosity. But life's too short. I'd rather spend my spare time reading unread masterpieces like 'Catch-22' or 'Mansfield Park'.

Even if I did review the new thriller that claims to "revive the genre with a splendid mixture of innovation and cutting edge timeliness" (I'm quoting from the publicist's email), what are my credentials? What's my relationship to the author? I'm not against amateur criticism and trust the integrity of bloggers like John Self far more than some of the 'You scratch my back...' reviews that appear in the broadsheets. But with the exception of John Self, Caustic Cover Critic, Gaskella and a few other notable book bloggers, I still prefer to leave it to the professionals rather than wade through the blogosphere.

As far as Amazon are concerned, I think it's naive to expect them to do anything other than avoid paying taxes. Unless they suffer a drop in sales from outraged UK customers (and let's face it, they won't), Amazon can't be expected to unilaterally sacrifice a sizeable chunk of their net profit. That's why governments need to force the issue rather than simply trust 'the market'.

What's the point of this article? I did have one an hour ago, but that was before a succession of "Daaa-aaad, Daaa-aaad"s from upstairs completely broke my concentration...Naughty Amazon, yes, but they're very good at what they do and unlike some people, I love ebooks, seeing a wonderful opportunity to bring thousands of obscure titles back into print.

As for James Heneage, I'm not sure if he's in a position to complain when, 15 years ago, he was charging across the high street bookselling landscape like Attila the Hun, driving many independent bookshops out of business (I know, because I was one of his henchmen). Admittedly Ottakar's paid its taxes and James was a wonderful man to work for, but like Amazon, we used our buying power to drive the competition out of business.

Nobody knows quite how the book industry is going to change during the next decade, but there are two certainties: bookshops will continue to close and ebook sales will probably overtake those of paperbacks. The worst case scenario is a virtual Amazon monopoly, with Kindle charts dominated by thousands of self-published titles of questionable quality. But in the same way that the best independent bookshops are thriving (think Topping's or Much Ado), I believe that imaginative publishers and booksellers will ride the storm successfully.



I'm sorry if this post has rambled. There was a cogent argument here somewhere, but it disappeared into the ether, aided by screaming children and an exploding lightbulb (or was it my Kindle?).


* Thank you to the kind person who advised me to change the original word to 'avoidance'.

Kindling

Until last week, kindling was always a common noun in my house. I have a huge bag of it next to my Danish piano (an unusual instrument, that looks as if it's been stolen from an infants' school gymnasium). However, during the last seven days it has become a verb for something completely unrelated to fire, although it has had an incendiary effect on the book trade.

I have written many derisive comments about the Amazon Kindle and ebooks in general. As someone who has spent most of their working life in the book trade, it was the default position to take. I love books. For all their worthiness, books are surprisingly sensual objects, engaging all of the senses except taste. Ebooks were the enemy: drab, monochrome devices, reducing every reading experience to uniform fonts, grey backgrounds and a dependence on electricity.

However, like most puritans, I was a hypocrite, secretly fascinated by the ebook phenomenon.

I first saw an ebook in 2000. It looked like an upmarket Psion Organiser and I was underwhelmed, but slightly unnerved by the realisation that something better would appear in a year or two. However, fours years on, ebooks still showed no sign of making any inroads into the book trade and a lot of people were content to bury their heads in the sand.

It says a lot about the book trade that during the mid-'noughties', The Friday Project were regarded as 'zeitgeisty' for turning web content into paper books. We had no idea.

The Amazon Kindle was launched on November 19th 2007 and sold out in under six hours. Customers had to wait for five months before the Kindle was back in stock. But in spite of the apparent demand, the Kindle had a neglible effect on book sales and at the time, it looked like a geeky toy that would never break through into the mass market.

But last year, everything changed. The third generation Kindle was one of the bestselling Christmas presents of 2010 and sales of ebooks began to affect the bestseller charts. Admittedly, this was largely driven by Amazon, who were keen to reduce their warehousing and postage costs by selling ebooks, but nobody could deny that the Kindle was changing the way people bought books.

I became increasingly obsessed by the Kindle and railed against it in various blog posts, but somebody saw straight through me and said that I was on the "verge of Kindledom".

Last week, I asked people to give me reasons for not buying a Kindle and received a number of interesting comments which helped me make up my mind. The following day, I ordered one:


These book titles are quite apposite and I like the "Welcome Philip" - everyone calls me Phil apart from Amazon and my mother. That's how it should be.

It took a while to get used to the light grey screen, but overall I like the Kindle. I had very low expectations and was pleasantly surprised. As some people have said, it doesn't replace the printed page, but it does provide an interesting alternative.

I like the fact that I can order the new Henning Mankell - a book I will probably never read again - without having to go through the process of travelling to a bookshop or ordering a hardback, only to find a slip on my doormat saying that the parcel was too big for my letterbox. I also love Project Gutenberg, which enables me to download any one of thousands of classics in under a minute.

What I don't like about the Kindle is the conspicuous absence of most titles published between the 1940s (the threshold of copyright) and four years ago. These titles are all not available in Kindle format:

The Unbearable Lightness of Being
The Great Railway Bazaar
The Songlines
Mr Norris Changes Trains
The Stone Diaries
Brightness Falls
The Slaves of Solitude
Blindness
The Well of Loneliness
I Capture the Castle
The Dice Man
The Accidental Tourist
Things Fall Apart
The Female Eunuch
Moon Palace
The Bone People
Guns, Germs and Steel
Miss Smila's Feeling For Snow
The Tin Drum
The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold

I could go on.

Obviously these gaps will gradually be filled, but at the moment I'm impressed by how many books aren't available as downloads, in spite of the hyperbole. We could probably all live without The Bone People and The Dice Man, but Blindness? Come on Random House!

In spite of this, as a reader, I like the Kindle more than I thought I would. As a bookseller, I feel nervous. My project at work is going well and on its own merits, is pretty Kindle-proof, but it is completely dependent on a larger business that sells used paperbacks for a penny on Amazon marketplace. If they go under, so do I.

Last week was my best ever, but in spite of that, I could still be out of a job. I won't be taking out any loans for the time being.

It's hard to know what will happen, as the success of ebooks depends on a number of factors. If digital books become as easy to illegally download and share as MP3 files, then book trade as we know it may be largely finished, apart from niche areas like titles for young children. But on the other hand, people have a greater emotional attachment to books than they did to records, tapes and CDs, so the reading world may be more pluralistic.

I bought a Kindle for two reasons. First, I wanted to understand at first hand the phenomenon that is having such a large impact on the industry I work in. Second, I loved the Kindle's space-saving properties. My small, Victorian terraced house is slowly sinking under the weight of books, many of which I'll never read again. I don't need a hardback copy of the latest Henning Mankell. I'd rather save the shelf space for books that are particularly beautiful.

I know that some people may cry "Judas!", but I've tried to remain open minded and the pro-Kindle comments on this blog have been so eloquent and well-argued, I had to find out for myself.

Jonathan Main (aka Bookseller Crow) wrote this excellent article on the Kindle, arguing that "It is functional in the way that listening to Mozart on a transistor radio is convenient in the circumstances but ultimately completely unfullfilling". However, I think we have to separate the message from the medium. I was all geared-up to hate the Kindle, but was surprised to find that once I was immersed in the text, I forgot that I was even reading one.

Of course, when we enter the next dark age, all of our digitised culture will disappear in a puff of smoke and the Riddley Walkers of the future will be denied the pleasure of reading The Da Vinci Code.

Now there's a thought.

P.S - STOP PRESS - Visit Bookseller Crow's blog for this funny, poignant anecdote about the threat of ebooks.