As Vanessa mentioned in a previous post, the bookshop is divided into sections- Developing Readers, Confident Readers, etc – and when deliveries come in there’s often some discussion about which section books belong in. This is especially complicated with respect to the Confident Readers/Young Adult divide, because if we get it wrong we risk having irate parents accuse us of peddling inappropriate material to their children.

So we were debating a while ago about where to put The Princess Diaries series. The early books are perfect for pre-teen girls: a bit about boys, but also lots of witty comments about parents, algebra homework and school friends. However, by the time you get to the eighth book, After Eight, the theme of Doing It or Not Doing It has definitely taken precedence. That’s fine for the readers who grow up with the books – reading a couple a year, say – but what about those who love the series so much that they consume one a month? Should we acknowledge in the shop that there’s a difference between the early and later books by shelving them in different places?

Granted, Meg Cabot’s website classifies the series as Teen Fiction, but they don’t really look like Young Adult books: as Vanessa observed the other day, covers are vitally important, and these (pink, sparkly) look like they are aimed at the pre-teen market. The early books also don’t read like teen fiction, because the language isn’t that difficult, and the font is large. Incidentally, this is another example of how age-ranging isn’t very practical, because this series would clearly stretch over more than one age band.

I suppose it’s part of a more general dilemma we face in the Morningside area of Edinburgh: we get a lot of precocious readers and their parents looking for recommendations for the pre-teen age group, and we have a strike a balance between suggesting books that aren’t patronising but also aren’t primarily concerned with Doing It, or violence. My personal tactic is to suggest more classic books such as the ones we publish (how convenient!), or others like I Capture the Castle. The most difficult situation I’ve been in as regards this issue was when one parent wanted a book for her daughter without any inappropriate stuff in it, but also said that the last book she had read was Forever, by Judy Blume. I didn’t quite know whether to disillusion her….    

We’re back!

In case you hadn’t noticed we’ve been unavailable this morning.  Our web hosting company have had some hardware problems (IT speak for it’s broke) with our web and mail server.  They’ve  restored everything to the last known good backup on the new server, but unfortunately that means we’ve lost your blog comments from early Friday morning, and email from early Saturday morning.

For those people that have entered the buy a friend a book competition on Friday, Vanessa should still have your emails, although they won’t appear on the blog comments at present.  However, if you have tried to post a comment or contact us by email on Friday evening or Saturday morning, please can you resend them.  If you’re in any doubt just send us an email.

Thanks for your help, and normal service should hopefully be restored soon.

Now that it’s October, it’s also Buy a Friend a Book time.  Leave a comment naming a book with an animal in the title and next Friday I will put all the names into a metephorical hat and pick a winner who will receive a book completely gratis.  Overseas readers more than welcome to join in as I’m sure I can run to overseas postage!

As we cruise towards the shop’s first birthday (actually, it’s not cruising; we’re frantically planning Christmas, dealing with some some pesky form-filling, organising a couple of big author events and trying to organise the accounts) we started thinking about birthday celebrations etc.  Obviously, we’re going to have a party (hey - we love a good party!) and on Saturday 8th November the shop will be having a party for our younger visitors with balloons, goody bags, discounts on purchases and some very special guests.

However, we also want to say thank you to all the people who have helped us to get through the first year; authors who’ve done events, who’ve got books to us at the last minute; who’ve patiently explained the mysteries of the returns process several times (and I still don’t understand it!).  So, this November will see the first of the Fidra Books “Because Nice Matters” Awards (cue fanfare).

The first will go to the person in the trade who has been the most helpful and patient, far beyond that which is expected of them in their job.  Current contenders include Sarah from Bounce! who brings all manner of weird and wonderful things to show us - a WWI aircraft was the latest - and Ruth from Gardner’s who took away a lot of the stress of initial stock ordering and who still looks after us very well. 

The second award is for the author or illustrator who has been the loveliest.  The front-runners include Vivian French, Sandy McCall Smith and Cat Rayner - it’s neck and neck and one of them has already resorted to buying Becky and I chocolate in a blatant attempt to sway our decision!  Mind you, we are easily swayed by those sort of things and cake and fizz are always welcome.  There are other possibles -  Steve Augarde leaps to mind and with his launch on the 28th October, there is the possibility that Neil Gaiman could sweep in with a last minute burst of loveliness and clinch the prize.

Ah yes, prizes.  There are actual prizes up for grabs, although not that rather gorgeous trophy at the top of this post.  We’ll be sending cake to our winners.  Real cake - not virtual cake.  Because cake’s nice and nice matters.  We’re also considering other possible award categories - Most Encouraging Blogger, Publicity Department That Has Embraced The Oddest Requests, Loveliest Fellow Bookseller - do suggest any you think of but be aware that the prize fund is limited and cake costs money! 

And on that note, as I leave you, perhaps you’d like to take a look at the Cake Wrecks blog (link over there on the right) so that you can see the horrors that professional cake decorators sometimes come up with.  Our prizes will be nicer I promise.

Magnus recommends:

Bag of Bones
by
Vivian French

This is a wonderful magical tale by my favourite author. The book is about a girl called Gracie trying to prevent the evil witch becoming Queen. My favourite part was when the bad witch shrunk the rival good witches. I thought it was a really exciting adventure, but you’ll have to read it to find out what happens.

Over at Lifehacker, they’re offering advice on how to ungeek to live by suggesting ways on reading well.  I’m sure most of the literate people that read the Fidra Blog, have various methods to choose books, their own favourite bookshops that they frequent, and can find time in busy schedules to read them, but one bit of advice appealed…

But more importantly, find your local bookstore owner. Give her a hug.

Vanessa, you have been warned.

With all the talk of e-readers, Iliads, and e-books going on in the blogosphere, Steve Augarde, author of the wonderful Various trilogy, has managed to put his own spin on the subject of books and technology.  Thanks to this link in his post, I’ve managed to spill coffee on my laptop - now put your tea or coffee down…

We realised this morning that none of us had written a blog post about Simon Bartram’s visit to us. Oops. This is in no way a reflection on Simon, who was so nice we even gave him the unchipped mug for his tea. Anyway, he came and read from his new book, Bob’s Best Ever Friend, and drew a character for us (with some help from the children).

We decided afterwards that Simon would definitely win our prize for Hardest Working Author: some of the children were such avid Bob fans that they crowded round Simon, pointing out details in the illustrations and guessing what would be on the next page. At times it was so (enthusiastically) rowdy I half expected them to start a mosh pit. Full marks to Simon for handling it with aplomb! We also loved his giant blue and yellow pants, which caused more than one passerby to do a double-take into the shop window…

As Polly, also known as The Treasure, is leaving us next week to go to university in Aberdeen and as apparently that’s too far to commute to Edinburgh every weekend we need a new part-time person to work Saturdays plus maybe a few extra hours here and there depending on how busy we are. 

We’ve placed an advert with the University’s employment service but if anyone else wants to apply that would be great.  Email us your CV with a covering letter explaining why you’d like to work in a bookshop and telling us what your three favourite children’s books are. 

Send your email to Iwanttoworkinabookshop [at] fidrabooks.com and we’ll be in touch.

Starting today, The Telegraph is publishing a serial novel by Alexander McCall Smith.  His 44 Scotland Street books were originally serial novels in The Scotsman and it’s lovely that readers south of the border will be able to enjoy these daily episodes.  We’re all particularly looking forward to it as Sandy is one of our favourite local authors and we’re very much hoping that he still likes his idea of Bertie visiting the bookshop in the next Scotland Street book when he comes to write that (he goes to Cubs just opposite and is at the Steiner school around the corner).  I think that would firmly establish us as an Edinburgh institution!