The bookshop that blew away

For the last ten years Nottingham has been a one bookshop city. (I declare an interest, having worked in the last indie, Mushroom Bookshop, from 1978-1995, which closed in 2000.) There are two good small indies in the County, The Bookworm at Retford - which is nearer Sheffield than Nottingham - and The Bookcase in Lowdham, but they can't do the job that a city independent can do so brick and mortar book buyers have a choice of Waterstone's or the book section of a single WH Smiths. However good or bad that one Waterstone's may be, that's not a lot of choice.

In September, I went to look at some offices with another book group as both of us were in need of bigger office space. The space they had found is pictured here - the old HQ of the wonderful Victorian architect, Watson Fothergill. On the ground floor you will see a shop... Immediately the plan changed to have a bookshop there, with the Five Leaves' office behind. A radical(ish) and a literary(ish) shop, with a big events programme the stock going way beyond what we publish. The rent was good as the premises are in a dead shopping area - fine if you are a "destination". But the premises are about three minutes from the arthouse cinema in town, three minutes from a main thoroughfare and seven from Waterstone's. The beautiful Grade II listed building would be our best advertisement. Perfect. We had to move fast. We sorted out terms with a wholesaler and some major suppliers, a computer package, agreed to buy shelving from a Christian bookshop that had just closed, semi-organised staffing and started drawing up the initial stocklist and events programme - to open in October. Everyone would want to visit - but they might only visit once before returning to Waterstone's and Amazon, so they had to visit at a time they would spend most money. We would open for the Christmas season. One Friday morning we agreed every bit of detail with the landlord's agent, with the lease to be signed on the Monday. That same afternoon the landlord decided to withdraw the shop from the market as he now wants to turn the offices upstairs into flats. And flat was how we felt.

Are we looking for alternative premises? No. This was the one. You can see why.

ps. Just to cheer myself up I walked past the premises yesterday (15th December) and found the landlord had let the shop after all. Good luck to "Silky Hosiery". So how did that happen?

"There are fairies at the bottom of our garden..."

... and, now, in our warehouse. The Rose Fyleman Fairy Book was first published in 1923 by Methuen. Fyleman was a prolific writer in her day and was best known for her many poetry collections of fairy poems. She was born in Nottingham in 1877, dying in London in 1957, and though she had a long writing career her whimsical poems remained popular. She wrote within a Victorian milieu where fairies were a popular subject, and within a tradition that included JM Barrie, Charles Kingsley and Kenneth Grahame. Fyleman rejected the darker side of fairy writing and her work is now perhaps more suited for the nostalgia and gift market (and the further reaches of the internet where you can still find her work). Our version of the book is a near facsimile of the 1923 edition, with wonderful illustrations by Hilda T. Miller, about whom we know little and would be pleased to learn more. This is the first of an irregular series of Bromley House Editions, hardback editions of once well known, but long unavailable books by Nottingham writers, found in the Bromley House collection.

Copies are available for immediate dispatch from our mail order agency: http://www.inpressbooks.co.uk/the_rose_fyleman_fairy_book_i022082.aspx, and, yes, the heading of this posting is from one of Rose Fyleman's poems.

The Cockermouth Poems

Sometime Five Leaves' book editor (The Night Shift, On a Bat's Wing) Michael Baron is endlessly energetic, despite, or possibly because he lives so far from metropolitan poetry circles and despite, or possibly because he is not exactly a young man. He crops up in all sorts of poetry projects up in Cumbria but I think he has excelled himself with his project "The Cockermouth Poems". Michael, who lives in Cockermouth, has set up a poetry trail round the town as part of the positive ways it is responding to last year's disastrous floods. He has persuaded a great range of poets with strong or loose Cockermouth connections to contribute to the trail - a great line up. Here's the story at greater length in the Guardian books blog.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/booksblog/2010/nov/29/poets-disaster-relief-wordsworth-country
ps I should also mention his own collection of poetry - More Than a Man in a Boat, which is very good. I can't find it on Amazon but its ISBN is 978 0 9565134 0 3 so bookshops can order it. Retail is a fiver.

Their tiny wings are frozen

I had hoped, tomorrow, to launch The Rose Fyleman Fairy Book at the Christmas social of Bromley House Library in Nottingham, the Fyleman book being the first of our Bromley House Editions, a new imprint. We had lots of technical problems with the book, having to use a printer that did "random" colour plates, though that is a strange word for it as the plates had to be in particular positions, just irregular positions. That printer discovered that they could not print the dustjackets as the size was too big, and their normal binder could not bind the books because the spine width was too small. There were other problems, lost computer files... anway, the book was guaranteed to arrive by December 1st. Except maybe not by December 1st, what about on December 1st - that being the date we'd given to BH members when the book would be available, but still in good time for the 4th. We had not counted on the local Interlink Express' depot, our printer's carrier being in Huthwaite, closer to God maybe, but the highest place in the County - and thus deepest in snow. The poor bloody fairies have been sitting in one of three container lorries for three days and nights in some feet of snow. So no Bromley House Editions books being launched at the very well attended event tomorrow. I don't even have a sample to use to solicit interest and orders, And will they be saleable anyway after several days and nights at sub-zero temperature? Paper does not like that kind of treatment. The curse of the fairies is on us.

More on the book when we have it.

Beirut or bust

Five Leaves' friends (and the many more friends of Peter Mortimer) will know that he brought a group of children from Shatila Palestinian refugee camp to the North East last year and plans were in place to bring another group in February. Money had been raised, venues had been booked (and we were gearing up to another big sale of his Camp Shatila book), and everything was in order. The perils of organising theatre between two places 3,000 miles apart became apparent when the UNRWA, which runs the school the children attend, said they would have to postpone the trip until later in 2011. Rebooking everything could at best be a nightmare, at worse cause the trip to be cancelled. Rebooking has been done, though some of the events/venues could not manage to reschedule. Pete Mortimer is currently in Beirut trying to sort out things at that end. It must have been so tempting to have given up - Pete has his own life and needs to earn a living - but hard to give up when incidents happen like some anonymous person from the North East putting £1000 in cash through Pete's door "for the bairns". You can catch up with the project on Pete's blog and through the Children of Shatila group on Facebook.
http://shatilatheatre.wordpress.com/

Reasons to be happy

Penguin Children is joining the throng of publishers marking the Royal wedding, with two of its imprints publishing souvenir editions to commemorate the event. Ladybird will release a full-colour picture book, William and Kate: The Royal Wedding. It will track the relationship from when the couple met and include information on the wedding venue, and other Royal weddings. It follows the publisher's souvenir editions for Prince Charles and Diana's wedding and that of Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson. It also produced books to celebrate the Queen's 80th birthday, and Diana Princess of Wales to mark her death. Will and Kate's Dress-Up Dolly Book will be published by Sunbird. A cut-out-and-keep paper doll book, it will feature illustrated paper dolls of William and Kate with various paper outfits based on actual clothes worn by the pair, and will include Kate's engagement dress. Category publisher for brands and licensing Eric Huang said: "Ladybird has a huge history of publishing Royal titles, and Sunbird is a new imprint aimed at older kids, and we wanted to be part of that history, and make a more fun, kitschy, tongue-in-cheek title for older kids. This is quite unique, it's not word heavy."

Simon Hoggart rides another hobbyhorse

Simon Hoggart writes amusing Parliamentary sketches and a rather dull weekly diary for the Guardian. The latter mostly comprises mildly amusing anecdotes about being on trains, of restaurants he's visited or events he and his circle go to. Whenever he has a new book out rest assured that the log will be rolled, and rolled again. Simon Hoggart is - rightly - very popular at book festivals as he is a witty performer and Guardian readers more than anyone love book festivals. In yesterday's paper he has a go at book festivals, complaining that they often get 500 people at an author event at £8 a time, paying the author £150 before the organiser sits back and counts the dosh. He might be right. But I do know that when he came to a book festival I have a hand in organising his fee was well north of £150. We were pleased with his attendance of 200 or so but, without giving too much away, we did not sit around counting our profits afterwards, not least as marquees have to be hired, as do PA systems and lighting. Programme printers tend to want to be paid as do the technicians making sure the author can be heard. Of course there may be authors that can fill 500 seater marquees that are available for £150. Perhaps he could let us know who they are so we can book them. And what of those who do demand high fees but attendances are not quite the number hoped? Can we ask for our money back?
There is a debate worth having about paying writers at Festivals, but Simon Hoggart is not helping.