Swallowed by Amazons

Anthills and Stars is now available at Gardners wholesalers. I Sent off a load of books yesterday as part of the exclusively independent promotion. www.exclusivelyindependent.com I've also been getting orders via Amazon Advantage, which, apparently is the all singing all dancing ordering system from the bookselling behemoth. However, it wouldn't accept my password and when I logged in to change it, it took umbrage and spat out the answers to the security questions. It told me I wasn't born where I know I was born and my mother's maiden name was not the one she was born with. Now I know Mr Bezos is a man with several brains and who am I to question him? However, I know where I was born. After several emails to the Amazon technical centre just left of some orbiting software planet a quark away form Pluto, all is well. I know you have to deal with 'The long tail,' but it's a pfaff and and a half. By the time I get paid I will have to resort to quantative easing from Moosebank International.

Moose versus Tabloiders

Moose HQ has been hacked into by Murdoch . I can't say too much suffice it to say our communications director and CEO of Spinning are filing a law suit. Nuff said Skippy.

Wades Bookshop

I was at Fred Wades bookshop in Halifax yesterday. It was all lights, cameras and action. Photograph taken, interview with local newspaper and hopefully some book sales. However,. the best bit was when I was leaving the bookshop and Jennifer, the owner of Wades Bookshops and a well read lady in her mid seventies, stopped me and said that she had just read the first two chapters of my book, Anthills and Stars, and they had made her laugh and giggle. Well, smiles all round. I'm a simple soul.

Surgeons of literature

The Moose is being interviewed today. I'm meeting a journalist form The Halifax Courier, Virginia Mason. I've bathed and brushed my teeth. They're doing a feature on independent publishers. Local boy made good kind of thing. Start local and then who knows next week it could be The New York Times Literary Section. Mmm not sure. Not sure I'd be up to the etymylogical half sibling brigade. Those didactic surgeons who take all the pleasure out of reading with their academic insight into structure and meaning. Semantics, semiotics. What about Soul and pleasure? Can't get an MA in Soul now can you?

The Quill is mightier than the PC

I met a poet yesterday and liked him . A first. He didn't rant or shout or show off with his understanding of etymylogical half siblings. He liked reading, had a list of books that was chosen because he liked the stories and not their improving nature. He also railed against the education system in this country, telling us that teachers taught literacy and not literature. I enjoyed what he had to say a lot. His name is John Siddique. However, there was another writer of non fiction who stated that she always knew when a writer had written on a computer. Their sentences weren't constructed properly. Utter bolleaux me dear.

Bookfair.

Today Bluemoose is part of the Hebden Literary festival. I'll be appearing at Hebden Library with wares to sell . Writers talking at the event will be Jill Liddington, Mark Illis and John Siddique. They will be giving creative writing classes and answering lots of questions. I'll be selling books and chatting to the massed throngs. I'm sure it will be great fun unlike Mr Amis's review in The Grauniad yesterday about John Updike. What he was saying was that most of Updike's last published work was clunky and a tad shite but of course he had to dress it up in academic language to prove he has two brains. Kept on about etymylogical half siblings and rime things. No wonder half the population get turned off from reading when critics stuff their reviews with French and other long words trying to make people feel inadequate. Tell it as it is and you might get a better response. People might read and buy more books. Anyone for new teeth Martin?

Pitch

Both sons away at a music festival, so all is quiet in the Moose household. Trying to put together a pitch for the film wallahs in London about Anthills and stars. I'm putting together the standard seven word pitch. Apparently when Hollywood calls you have seven words to sell your film. Nightmare. Aliens was sold as, 'Jaws in Space.' I have been doing an electonic update on the telephone tree, emailing all firends and family and telling them about the Exclusively Independent showcasing of the book. I've asked if they could order the book through their libraries. Many have done so and the orders are starting to come through. Pyramid bookselling. It's the way forward.

Reviewing and Rants

Here we go....Lots of authors bemoaning the fact that critics sometimes are not very nice . Well, welcome to the real world. Perhaps your book isn't that good. Thought about that one? Some Literary Editors, as they like to call themselves, do have a problem with the very act of creativity in that they can't create much themselves bar a few nasty jibes, which their friends in the Lit Club find very amusing. I'm having a run in with one very famous (why is it that you need to see a picture of said lit ed next to his poisonious outpourings?) critic because I asked what his criteria was for reviewing books, apart from the very large advertsiing spend the big houses spend in his national newspaper? There was a double page review of the latest Sarah Waters novel and surprise surprise on the back page a full colour advert of said novel, which must have run to tens of thousands of pounds. Which came first the advertsing pound or the review? Answers on a postcard.He got all petulant and took his PC home and refuses to speak. However, with the demise of the newspaper as an organ of note, the tinternet is becoming the first port of call for readers to find out what a book is really like. Critics, high falutin purveyors of their own self worth will soon be nationalised and reduced to barking their thoughts from a darkened corner of The Graucho. Bless.

Charlie and the train

Banks and railways nationalised, Gordon Brown really is The Mao of his generation. Now that the East Coast line is not as profitable as it once was, we can use The Royal train. Instead of pulling it out of mothballs once or twice a year because Charles or Queenie wants to visit their friend Thomas somewhere up North, it can be put to some practical use. Perhaps Charles can be the driver and power the train with some of his organically grown electricity.

Milngavie Bookshop

I visited an independent bookshop yesterday 6 miles north of Glasgow,called Milngavie Bookshop, and the joint was jumping. The bookshop was rammed with browsers and the cafe teeming. The staff are enthusiastic, passionate, knowledgeable and the bookshop is stocked with a great range. Here lies the nub of their success. They know their customers and buy books accordingly. Waterstone's managers take note. You can succeed and make a profit. Leave it to those who run the shop to buy for their customers. They really do know best. Oh yes, and don't decdide to distribute your books from a hub that isn't working.