A scary statistic...

There are now more pound shops than book shops in the UK, according to the Local Data Company:

"In the year to the end of October, there was a 14.2pc increase in pound shops taking the total to 3,005, according to research for The Daily Telegraph undertaken by Local Data Company, which tracks shop numbers in 487 town centres.

This is in contrast to the 2,705 book shops in the same area. Book shops have suffered from a decade of unrelenting competition from supermarkets and the internet. This year Waterstone’s has trimmed the number of stores it operates."

I'd love to see some other stats - surely there can't be more bookmakers than book shops?

All the more reason to support your local book shop!

Copycat Covers

The covers of books say so much (for example the 'Dragon Tattoo' books, or 'One Day', which we're reading this month, but more and more books seem to be using similar pictures and themes on the covers - for example these two, which use the same stock photo, but cropped and coloured differently:

You can see a bigger collection of similar examples here, and here is link to other examples where the picture is different, but the theme is very similar (a spade in the ground, a chair in an empty room). Just how little time to publishers take over the cover design,,?

Alluring book titles

A very entertaining idea from McSweeneys - titles of classic books re-written as the sort of attention-grabbing headlines you online to boost website traffic:

How many can you get?

"7 Awesome Ways Barnyard Animals Are Like Communism

The 11 Stupidest Things Phonies Do To Ruin The World

8 Surprising Ways West Egg Is Exemplary Of The Hollowness Of The American Dream

6 Shockingly Evil Things The Turn-Of-The-Century Meatpacking Industry Doesn't Want You To Know

5 Insane Ways London Could Become a Dystopia (And How It's Not That Far From Reality)

1 Weird Thing Caddy Smells Like"

We like!

Literary Lodgings

This is a set of birdhouses, made from old hardback books. The one in the picture has part of one of our January books The Wizard of Oz as a front.

Very sweet, very creative, but also, strangely, 'Not for out of doors'.

Buy one here.

Women Running From Houses

This blog has a great collection of classic book covers from pretty trashy paperbacks.

With the blurbs too - for example:

The Lock by Janet Lovesmith (Paul W. Fairman)

published by Popular Library

Copyright 1972

SOMETHING

FROM THE WORLD BEYOND

WAS STALKING

YOUNG LYN COURTNEY -

The lock was huge, rusted, ungainly. It guarded the

tomb that lay behind the old house - the tomb of the

ill-fated Gantry clan. Lyn Courtney, who had come to

work at Gantry Hill, became fascinated, haunted by

that lock. Her fears, her hopes, her fantasies cnetered

around it.

Could it explain the puzzling behavior of good-looking

Christopher Gantry? The mystery of beautiful, volatile

Lila? The invisible creature that even now was stalking

young Lyn? She must find out - if it wasn't already

too late ,,,

QUEEN-SIZE GOTHICS are a new idea. They offer the

very best in novels of romantic suspense, by the top

writers, greater in length and drama, richer in reading

pleasure. Each book is guaranteed to be:

"READING FIT FOR A QUEEN"

Little Red Riding Hood re-imagined

Brilliant, surreal video.

Slagsmålsklubben - Sponsored by destiny from Tomas Nilsson on Vimeo.

Are we ready for 'Vooks'?

Taron sent this link to an article in the New York Times.

Extract:

On Thursday Simon & Schuster, the publisher of Ernest Hemingway and Stephen King, is working with a multimedia partner to release four “vooks,” which intersperse videos throughout electronic text that can be read — and viewed — online or on an iPhone or iPod Touch.
And in early September Anthony E. Zuiker, creator of the television series “CSI,” released “Level 26: Dark Origins,” a novel — published on paper, as an e-book and in an audio version — in which readers are invited to log on to a Web site to watch brief videos that flesh out the plot.
Some publishers say this kind of multimedia hybrid is necessary to lure modern readers who crave something different. But reading experts question whether fiddling with the parameters of books ultimately degrades the act of reading.
“There is no question that these new media are going to be superb at engaging and interesting the reader,” said Maryanne Wolf, a professor of child development at Tufts University and author of “Proust and the Squid: The Story and Science of the Reading Brain.” But, she added, “Can you any longer read Henry James or George Eliot? Do you have the patience?”

Read on here

Short stories on twitter

I love this challenge, issued as part of the West Port Book Festival - write a short story in under 140 characters.

Some lovely examples here (can take a while to load)

Post-it Note Stories

A very cool collection of stories illustrated by Post-it Notes, like this one The Four Minute Drug


"I knew this guy when I lived in Chicago named Dave. He was the underachieving little brother of a successful fashion designer. He was pretty paranoid and loved conspiracy theories. One night when we were out at a bar, he pointed to a poster of the moon landing and grunted. “Can you believe they’re still trying to sell us on that one?” he said."

Read on...

The Day The Saucers Came

A really intriguing way of presenting short stories online - The Day The Saucers Came, by Neil Gaiman, with illustrations by Jouni Kaponen. It's not long - give it a go!

The Smell of Books

Bizarre - A company is now offering an aerosol spray called Smell of Books to allow e-book readers to still experience the booky smell.

"Now you can finally enjoy reading e-books without giving up the smell you love so much. With Smell of Books™ you can have the best of both worlds, the convenience of an e-book and the smell of your favorite paper book."

Meanwhile, you can also buy a perfume called In the Library: "English Novel taken from a Signed First Edition of one of my very favorite novels, Russian & Moroccan leather bindings, worn cloth and a hint of wood polish"

No thanks. But the perfume sounds a bit more appealing than the aerosol!