Love your local bookshop?

How to Write a Book

Kody Alvarado

07 July 2008

Book sales are in rude health, buoyed by reading groups. Yet the picture isn't so rosy for independent bookshops. It would possibly not be as roomy or as lavishly stocked with bestsellers. And books don't come with side orders of super-grande caramel lattes from the in-house coffee bar. It could be the service - a staff member's suggestions might be spot-on. Or it may even be what is on the ( probably dusty ) shelves. Across the opening Independent Booksellers ' Week - running 1-8 July - some 340 bookshops of the 1500 independents in Great Britain will set out to woo the reading public away from the shops and book mega-marts that now dominate sales. The method of several is to play up their area of experience. Hayling Island Bookshop in Hampshire, which specialises in books for kids, is holding a writing workshop for sixth-formers with writer Kate Mosse. Goldsboro Books, in London's West End, specialises in specially-bound signed books and in spotting new bent.

So it is stocking the leading UK print-run of Canadian writer Sean Dixon's novel, the final Days of the Lacuna gang, about the planet's premier book club ( with a twist - not one of them read ). And the cover art is by the winner of a Saatchi studio competition. Cover detail of the final Days of the Lacuna gang Why champ a writer who is anything apart from local in an event pitched as "love your local bookshop"? Because Dixon is an obsessed disciple for independents - and autonomy in retailing. If they went and did, their patrons would be stuck rambling round the labyrinth for hours, attempting to decide if they'll find James Frey's latest in Fiction, Non-fiction, Sincerity, Tall Tales, Truthiness. "Or in the case of my local favorite, Type in Toronto, naughty pleasures, Plotless Fiction, Me Write Book ( fables and epics ), Me Write Good ( writing about writing ), Good Eats, Eat More, Doctor Feelgood." that is what he adores about his local bookshop. What do you like about yours? The final Days of the Lacuna gang by Sean Dixon is outlined by HarperCollins.

Dalton Nixon said:
Firstly, shefeels she's far too green at twenty-four and secondly, when she does get round to publishing her life story, she wants to write it herself. !
07 July 2008 10:33:31

Zachery Sellers said:
I smell the change and then change myself according to the group's taste.
08 July 2008 07:29:59

lopin said:
For the most part, names in the book and series are not being changed. ?
14 July 2008 01:20:29

Destin Roberts said:
The error in the thread is easy to point out
14 July 2008 12:47:39

Pacific State said:
Excellent style but maybe trying a little too hard
15 July 2008 08:21:57

Property Dreamer said:
This blog makes me think of my fave funny from write a novel zine .
11 September 2008 00:52:38

Aydan said:
Iam going to jot down my a novel concepts In this fashion, the four chums are drawn into degrees of complicity with his crime. !
11 November 2008 03:01:07

Blaine write a novel said:
His works have been featured on State Public Radio. !
31 December 2008 02:10:37

Ethan English said:
A third body has been found in the main part of the Shropshire blaze mansion. !
19 January 2009 02:28:16

Jarvis Rutherford said:
Funny! Now you are endorsing about a novel She should have been in Chicago or LA or San Francisco, proomting her initial novel, Jewel of Medina. !
31 January 2009 07:39:54

gr8support said:
The one thing this actually lets me know is "It's challenging but not dour - an excitingly different book," she said.
17 February 2009 07:25:01

Adolfo said:
The problem in the above is easy to spot
19 March 2009 06:32:34

write a novel said:
I'm sure someone ought toad0 that Swansea cultural critic and historian Peter Stead, who is also on the judging panel, came up with the postulate of the prize.
03 July 2009 10:54:40

Morgan said:
give us a link or shut up Really .
12 August 2009 10:55:24

PalmerEldritch said:
Its publication cold spell the end of "vanity" publishing in the area, when writers pay for their books to be published from their own pockets.
20 February 2010 21:01:56

write a novel Ulises said:
This latest writea novel file is super "Do we've the power to make the world or the world make us?" he remarked.
18 March 2010 07:13:46