‘It is going to take more than just a couple of good-hearted souls to raise this child. It will,’ said Silas ‘take a graveyard’.

This is the first Neil Gaiman book I’ve read, although Malcolm has read a few and I loved the film of Stardust. Those of you who know his work well will gasp in horror at that, but I have to confess that fantasy has never really been my thing and with it being segregated from mainstream fiction in the distant reaches of bookshops (virtually labelled ‘here be dragons’), I’ve never found myself browsing it. I only really heard of Neil Gaiman when he was among the people enthusiastically recommending Victoria Walker’s children’s fantasy novels as candidates for our publishing programme. I thanked him for plugging our edition and for his support and still, not really knowing how successful he was, offered to buy him dinner if he ever found himself in Edinburgh – always willing to encourage poverty-stricken authors, that’s me! I did cringe slightly when I found how just how many books he sells…

However, when the Bloomsbury rep dropped off a proof copy of The Graveyard Book (due out at the end of October), I was eager to read it, having already read so much about it on his blog, but, not being a fan of fantasy, I wasn’t sure quite what to expect.  What I found was one of the best books I’ve read in a long time - certainly the best I’ve read this year.

It is the story of Nobody Owens who grows up in a graveyard after his parents and sister are brutally murdered by ‘the man Jack’ who still pursues him. Escaping death by chance, the toddler ends up at the graveyard on the hill where the spirit of his deceased mother pleads with the ghosts who live there to keep him safe. Taken in by Mr and Mrs Owens who died some two centuries earlier, Nobody is given the Freedom of the Graveyard, looked after by his new family of ghosts and spirits and protected by the mysterious Silas who alone can leave the graveyard and who obviously knows much more than he’s letting on about why Bod is being hunted by the mysterious Jack.

The early part of the book feels a little like a collection of short stories but that’s not a failing; rather it allows Gaiman to establish characters and plot without the need for long and detailed descriptions.  Each chapter takes place around two years after the previous one.  The way that he introduces characters is especially good - he sketches enough detail to be satisfying but leaves some elements for the reader’s imagination.  For example, we are never told exactly what sort of being Silas is; we know he’s not human, but was he once and what is he now?  And as for Miss Lupecsu - the evidence suggests that she is a werewolf (or is she?) but it’s never laboured; we’re left to come to that conclusion by ourselves.  There are lovely and unexpected variations in pace rather than pages of narrative and big set pieces and moments of subtle humour and plays on words that avoid falling into pun territory.

I also loved the sheer joy that comes through in Gaiman’s writing; yes, the book is chilling and scary but there’s a real sense of the author flying along, loving the story he’s creating and bursting with the need to tell that story.  Here and there are hints that there could be a sequel and I do hope that there is.  This book deserves to become a classic of children’s fantasy writing, up there with likes of Alan Garner and Susan Cooper and I’m sure that it will.

In the meantime, as soon as the book is published in October, our customers should be forewarned that we are going to be recommending it to almost everyone.

One should not covet another woman’s joinery but I struggled with that at the weekend when we visited The Mainstreet Trading Company in St Boswells in the Scottish Borders.  They sell books (mostly) and gifts and have a fabulous cafe but the bookseller in me spent quite a while admiring their shelving and the way that their open plan space managed to feel spacious without being barn-like.  Set up by Rosamund and Bill de le Hey, the shop opened a few weeks ago and already they seem to have built up a good Sunday afternoon trade. 

The stock selection is interesting and like any good bookseller I scribbled down the titles of a couple of books that we’ll have on the shelves soon and the children’s section is well laid out so that parents having a coffee in the cafe (excellent scones) or browsing the rest of the shop can easily keep an eye on their little darlings.  There’s also a gallery space where they can hold author events and and as Rosamund worked at Bloomsbury for many years she has an eviable contacts book so I expect she’ll have some amazing visitors - Michael Morpurgo is doing an event there soon and we might even drive down from Edinburgh to see him.

Definitely worth a visit and there’s lots of other places to visit in the area such as Thirlestane Castle, Abbotsford (Walter Scott’s house) and towns such as Melrose and Galashiels.  Or you could just buy a few books and hole up in the cafe with a coffee for the afternoon.

Reading an Alexander McCall Smith novel is like drinking hot chocolate - an indulgence to be savoured.  Although I’ve never really got on with his Botswanan novels, I do love his two Edinburgh series - The Sunday Philosophy Club and 44 Scotland Street, especially the latter with the hapless Bertie, six year old son of the dreadful, pushy Irene; Domenica; Angus and Cyril the dog; the vain and self-obsessed Bruce; Matthew the nice-but-dim art dealer and Big Lou, dispenser of coffee and wry observations, together with a number of Edinburgh characters as themselves such as David Robinson, books editor of the The Scotsman and Ian Rankin.  Originally published as serial novels in the The Scotsman, the Scotland Street novels have been an annual treat and this, the fifth is as delicious as the rest. 

To say that nothing much happens sounds a criticism but it isn’t.  One of the joys of these novels is the minutiae of the characters’ lives.  Bertie continues to ask awkward questions about the parentage of his baby brother and starts Cubs (at the church hall opposite our bookshop), Matthew gets married, Cyril finds himself a father and Angus finds himself with six puppies to find a home for, the Spode tea cup reappears, Bruce discovers the redemptive power of moisturiser and a Jacobite Pretender arrives in town.  The book is wry and wonderfully observant of middle-class Edinburgh: Domenica can be spotted in Jenners or lunching at one of the city’s art galleries, while Angus’ doppelgangers can be spotted in the Cumberland Bar and Bruce in the designer menswear shops of George Street.  The Unbearable Lightness of Scones is an unadulterated treat and I heartily recommend it.

Sadly, there won’t be a Scotland Street novel next year, but I’m told that we can look forward to one the following year - maybe Bertie will even visit us with his mother.  I shall be on the look-out for them.

Last week saw the release of the paperback edition of the last Harry Potter book - HP and the Deathly Hallows.  The release of the hardback last year saw retailers battling to undercut each other, with the supermarkets selling it for less than cost price and even Amazon probably only breaking even on the sale of the biggest book of the year, if not the decade.  Last week saw price cutting reach new extremes with Asda selling HP7 for £1.  That’s right, one pound.  That’s a loss of around £3.50-£4 per book.  This secured Asda approaching 80% of the market share for this book reducing the average selling price to £1.96 leading to The Bookseller taking the unprecedented step of disqualifying it from their bestseller charts.

To be fair, Bloomsbury, who have always denied giving big retailers more generous discounts than they give to anyone else, did say that Asda’s initiative wasn’t something they could control and that is true: that’s the nature of the free market.  However, given that Bloomsbury will only allow retailers to purchase Potter on firm sale terms* and given that the market for many booksellers, especially independent bookshops who had already placed or even received their orders, disappeared into thin air due to Asda’s pricing strategy, closely followed by Waterstone’s increasing their discount to 50%, it seems a little unfair that they’re still insisting on firm sale terms.

For independents who don’t discount, such as ourselves, sales of Harry Potter outside launch weekend are fairly slow - we sell more Alan Garner than Rowling (mostly because  we hand-sell his books a lot because we think they’re better and partly because discarded Potters can be found in every charity shop for a couple of quid).   So it would be nice if Bloomsbury dropped their firm sale policy in order that the rest of us don’t get stuck with copies of this book.

As we sell so little Potter and in fact have only purchased the hardback of HP7 as customer orders since about March so that we don’t get lumbered with unsaleable copies once the pb came out, we still have several left of the copies we ordered and they should last us a long time, especially as there was little advertising by Bloomsbury in evidence.  Thus, unless Bloomsbury are going to relax their terms we’re optimistically hoping that the author, who lives about 300 yards from our shop, will pop in to sign them as I reckon it’s the only way we’ll shift ‘em.  I very much doubt that that will happen so we’ll have to hope that customers will decide that they can’t be bothered to trek to Asda to buy their copies.

 * when it comes to firm sale, I do agree with Emma Barnes at Snowbooks that removing this prerogative would encourage bookshops to actually think about their stock levels and order what they need, re-ordering more as necessary, instead of simply ordering masses and returning most because they can.  We return very little stock - mostly titles that we ordered by mistake because we’re new and still learning!  Returns are a waste of money, transport costs, paper, print costs, admin time and cause huge hassles for the poor devils who have to calculate royalty statements and I completely agree with Em that a more businesslike attitude could reduce them to a bare minimum.  Also better discounts - one publisher gives us a 50% discount for firm sale orders and 45% if we want sale or return.  There’s a lot of stock in our shop that I’d be more than willing to adopt similar terms on.

Picture books are a huge part of our business here and among our favourites are Simon Bartram’s - especially Bob the Astronaut. 

We are delighted that on September 26th at 3pm Simon will be at The Children’s Bookshop to read from his brand new book Bob’s Best Ever Friend and to sign copies.  I expect it will be really popular and spaces are limited so if you’d like to come along do let us know.

Since Elinor passed away in May we have been pleased to see that she has garnered a number of obituaries in the broadsheets in recognition of her writing.  I have always felt that she was an author of enormous talent and was surprised that her books fell out of favour while less well-written titles with less engaging storylines (in my opinion at any rate) remained in print.  It’s been marvellous to see that so many other people have a similarly high opinion of her work.

The Times obituary can be found here, The Independent here and The Guardian here.  The Telegraph commissioned one and now have it in their ‘queue’.  We’d like to see it so if people of note could refrain from passing away in the next week or so that would be much appreciated!

I was given an advance copy of The Luxe by Anna Godbersen at the London Book Fair and it has now been published with tremendous hoo-hah: display of The Dress From the Cover in Foyles in Selfridges and parading of said dress around London etc, etc.  Firstly, I am surprised that there is so much talk of the author as I was under the impression from the publicity material that the author was actually a writing team, in the same way as the much-derided (by me) Rainbow Magic books are actually put together by a team of ghostwriters - Daisy Meadows doesn’t actually exist.  Apparently The Luxe is “from the same stable of writers as Cecily von Zeigesar, the author behind Gossip Girl, so who knows?

But no matter - none of that matters if the book’s good, does it?  Well, I hate to break it to you, but this book is dire.  “This is 19th century Manhattan where the girls are glamorous, the boys are irresistable and the secrets are jaw-dropping” but none of that managed to keep me entertained on the train back to Edinburgh so I just skimmed it.  It was clunkily written, the supposed plot-twist at the end couldn’t have been flagged up any more obviously from the very beginning, the characters were incredibly unsympathetic and the dialogue unconvincing - the female characters didn’t actually say ‘whatever’ and ‘like’ at the end of every sentence but those phrases hung there silently.  The dresses might be fabulous but definitely a case of style over substance.

Edit:  I have to take back my rather scathing comments about The Luxe being ghostwritten as I received an email from Puffin’s publicity department yesterday explaining that “Anna Godbersen is 100% real and is definitely only one person! She was commissioned to write the books and in that way ‘is from the same stable of writers…’ etc etc (the same thing happened with Gossip Girl), but there is definitely only one of her!”  Thanks for clarifying that but I suppose it explains to a degree why I didn’t like the book - it was written for a very specific demographic and I’m not that market.  Still probably won’t be stocking it in the shop though…

As some of you may know, last Thursday saw a meeting between the Publishers Assocation who came up with this at best misguided plan to add age-ranging to the covers of children’s books and representatives of the Say No to Age-Banding campaign including Mark le Fanu and Celia Rees (on behalf of the Society of Authors) and Philip Pullman.  At the weekend I received an update based on Philip Pullman’s own feelings about the meeting, although the official minutes aren’t ready yet.

It was a long email so in summary, the PA acknowledged that their presentation of this move hadn’t been ideal but defended their plan saying that it was based on research based on what consumers wanted.  They don’t really seem to have had an answer as to why teachers, booksellers and librarians weren’t asked for their opinions about the consequences of adding age-ranging, nor why the book-buyers that were surveyed weren’t presented with the arguments against age-ranging so that they could consider all sides of the issue before coming to a conclusion as to whether it would make book-buying easier.  The PA also claimed that ‘most authors’ were in favour of the proposal which conflicted with the Society of Authors research among their Children’s Writers and Illustrators group which found that 77% were against age-banding, 17% undecided and only 6% in favour - when the PA were questioned about this answer came there none.

One of the key requests of the campaign is that no book will be age-banded without the express permission of author.  The PA refused to give this undertaking but have offered ‘full consultation’ instead.  As Pullman says: “We pointed out that every authors in the world knows what “consultation” means: it means the publishers saying “This is the cover of your new book” and our saying “Well, it’s horrible”, and their replying “Well, tough”.  “Full” consultation, I suppose, would mean that plus lunch.” 

Eventually, a statement was agreed on:

‘At a meeting involving The Publishers Association, the Society of Authors, and Philip Pullman (on behalf of the signatories of the online statement), the publishers were happy to confirm that there has been, and remains, no question of age guidance being added to a book without full consultation with the author. The remaining point of difference, which is to be considered further, was that those speaking for authors feel strongly that authors should have the right to refuse to have age guidance on their books.’

So this isn’t an end to it.  My own feelings about the folly of this are unchanged and I hope that authors will exercise their right to ‘full consultation’.

So, quite apart from bookish things - will someone buy the last copy of Sandy McCall Smith’s latest Scotland Street novel this afternoon thus thwarting my plan to take it home this evening, the two big issues this weekend are Doctor Who and Nadal or Federer?

We were all quite stunned by Doctor Who last Saturday.  It was brilliant - because he’s leaving for pastures new Russell T Davies had clearly decided to throw absolutely everything he’d got into the last two-parter of the series: Rose, Martha, Harriet Jones (don’t you think she look tired?), Torchwood (with the delicious John Barrowman), Daleks, Davros and then - is The Doctor regenerating again?  Will there be a new Doctor by the end of this evening’s episode that they’ve managed to keep secret?  Our resident Doctor Who fan, sorry, obsessive, is sure that there won’t because apparently The Doctor only has ten bodies and David Tennant is the tenth doctor but I’m not so sure that they won’t find a way of fudging that because let’s face it, DT’s not going to stay forever and they’re hardly going to let this franchise go without a fight.

As for the big tennis question - I’m going with Roger Federer.  I think Rafael Nadal is a stunning player but the fact that he adjusts his pants between every point is too irritating.  It doesn’t say much for the company that sponsors his kit that they can’t make him some undercrackers that fit!  If he could stop doing that then I would be rooting for him as it would be great to see someone depose Roger with his monogrammed cardies.

At this year’s Edinburgh International Book Festival you can hear such luminaries as Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Anne Enright, Rick Wakeman, Terry Pratchett and many more talking about their books and the wider literary world. There’s a schools’ event on the 26th August where you will be able to catch me introducing the very lovely Charlie James, but otherwise I have been cruelly overlooked…

But if you’re bravely hiding your disappointment that you won’t be seeing yours truly wittering on about reissuing classic children’s fiction then weep no more because on 17th September I, together with Jane Nissen, will be at Dunblane Library as part of Stirling Council’s Off The Page festival talking about just that.  Ruth Jolly will also be there on behalf of Girls Gone By Publishers.  We’re in rather elevated company as other events at the festival centre around authors such as Val McDermid, Cathy Cassidy and Vivian French.

Do come - unaccustomed as I am to public speaking I’m much more terrified about having no-one to speak to!  They’re even offering wine as an inducement to attract an audience and frankly, given the price I paid for a glass of Pinot Grigio in Montpelier’s up the road last Friday night, £4 sounds like a bargain…