Rants

From time to time we want to let off steam
I will move any rants here and we can look back and laugh at how pious we sounded
Or just have the evidence of our convictions...

7/10/12
As I type this...it sadly could be my last posting..Things aren't/haven't gone to plan in the small local bookshop world...I have tried my upmost to provide a platform to books/authors/events in the NW

Guess what..it was fun and mostly things went ok-ish

But with the economy and the lack of media support/focus..well I was doomed from day one!

I will close my doors at the very latest New Years Eve..maybe even tomorrow

It hasn't all been fun, my wife and I split up over my 'desire' to 'run' a bookshop, she was probably right, get a job, earn a wage, worry about the mortgage and the kids etc

Maybe some of us just can't juggle and things get broken when you drop them

I also was dumbfounded by the absolutely disgraceful behaviour of ex-colleagues, they waited three months and then re-opened the shop I had run for 24 years and well THANKS! Sleep well guys you really are 'proper' booksellers...

As it goes the real problem is publishing itself, it can't see the way to fund the industry as a whole, it just funds the top dollar successful bits and doesn't actually look at the bigger picture.

Weirdly, I was asked did I blog, by folks in publishing, I didn't then, did and now won't..because it isn't seen or viewed enough to make it work!

As to the media...locally they are pants, they carry a local name but are most definetly not local, they need to rebrand to ads near you dot com with bad news tagged in and a few proper bits cos else they can't be called a newspaper..IF you have similar near you well good luck

as to what has happened, the economy, weather and ebooks and apathy and then the lack of moral fibre in modern life akin to just watching telly rather than making a programme


16/7/12 Reading is it a Trend or a Pas(sed)TimeI was thinking about writing and reading and tweeting and facebooking etc
It seems to me that we all spend too much time socialising without actually meeting anyone real!

Yes, I am guilty as charged too

We probably spend about 3 hours a day on our mobile devices, web and gaming devices

We could be spending about three hours with real nice people or alone with a good book

I shudder to think how many more books we all could read if we dropped the social media and suchlike

Maybe we should though, read more that is..

I go through stages where I read voraciously and then 'sift' a bit, I am becoming a bit of a media nerd and feel maybe time is to be used more productively. I have started a new book of my own and it burns a whole in my mind, so I think that maybe the new waste of time for me..

I am sure I will still waste time on line too! as this blog is new and still growing

A point I want to raise though, we need to stop shopping in supermarkets (I hear why?)
 and also on line with certain traders- not all (again why?).

 There are reasons, consider the milk debate, well when I was a lad we had a milkman, he got up at 4am and made sure we had milk and a few other items and we never said thanks or saw him apart from when he came for his hard earned cash. We all stopped because the convenience /price of shops made it seem better. It wasn't it was just the beginning of a long seated disaster.

 We now shop on line with shops we should visit, why! We closed CD shops because we went on line, Amazon 'killed the radio star' and is now killing the real writer.

 Even real writers advocate amazon and they should know better. Yes some new talent develops because of free kindle books, but real new talent will develop by actually sorting the wheat from the chaff, I don't think I know of a real writer who has become well read/known because of amazon/kindle, but I do know a lot who would do better if readers stuck with real bookshops and not amazon and supermarkets.

 The publishers are seemingly driven by numbers/volume/chart placing and yet surely these events were there before amazon and supermarkets?

More books 'sold more' when we shopped in shops, the thing was and still is knowledge and choice and real recommendations and we had strange free venues called libraries, they were and still are great. We need to start meeting in them and discussing books and life and suchlike rather than using the web so much.

Consider the fact that Amazon don't pay UK tax and we proper shops do, also to some extent couriers and petrol and packaging are being wasted and it will all add up at some point.

As to supermarkets, they are sucking the economy dry and yet they proliferate and are so convenient, well again when I was a lad, we walked from a few shops to a few shops and chatted and bought and all was OK. Now we drive and moan or shop on line and moan about not getting what we ordered, well we weren't there to choose the ripeness or the fat on meat in PVC packages, butchers and greengrocers know their onions and bacon but we choose to not shop there anymore!

I am guilty too, but at least to some extent I am trying to make amends. It wouldn't take much effort as it goes, you can shop on line with some shops, try www.localbookshops.co.uk or once you have discovered a local Indy or to some extent a Waterstones then at least that is OK. believe it or not, they will have books that you want and others to recommend, they will have great events and may even give your kids/students real jobs and it won't hurt or in many cases cost anymore.

I lived/work in Formby and it is a lovely place, we have teachers, schools and a few famous folk. We have lots of coffee shops, and believe it or not 12 charity shops! We also have a rampant 'park and fine' service c/o the council, that really helps folk shop local!

We also have two local newspapers and wouldn't you think they would be full of great news and features about Formby...well, not so! They do need advertising and we do need to be encouraged to go elsewhere for social fun too, but mainly we should see and read all about everything local too. One of them used to (shock) charge for their paper it was extortionate about 50p and yet they decided distribution wasn't good and went free like the other one. Now we know free papers survive off ads, but they carry the word' news' and a local tag so they do need sorties and pictures too..but ours..well it appears not.

A lot of us do our bit and try to make our community vibrant and cultural and it would ever be better if folks knew all about it every week. It seems though that a 75% ads to 25% news is the norm, so although they do put news in for some reason it is usually about Southport and other areas and not Formby!

They don't like criticism and offering of news/pictures though, oh no!
Best they ignore or say they 'don't have room' or 'well if you advertised we would guarantee entry'. 

It seems to me that there is a major flaw here, if we small shops were supported and folks knew what went on locally they wouldn't go out of town/village and would shop locally and well I think we would all be able to advertise in the basic way and not the way I have had to do so..I have had to pay to squeeze mentions in the papers, and yet If they ran a book/culture column and even let me contribute, then I 'did/would' just advertise my basics of 'who/where/how' to shop with me.

You know the problem is time ticks on and my small shop may not survive much longer, we struggle to pay even the basic overheads and yet it will be decreed, a 'shame' and 'why' and he' knew what he was doing' and all that, it needn't be the case, we can survive, but we need real and on line shopping for what we specialise in BOOKS, we need a campaign to get he papers to do their bit and not be lazy and ignorant of culture.

I don't know that the message facility works on this blog, I will look into..but you are welcome to email me 
tonythebook@live.co.uk to offer any advice/criticism (I can't be 100% right)

Also do consider contacting the local media and asking them to engage with culture and their communities properly, after all if we all stopped advertising they would soon close..wouln't that be a shame as we would soon spend even longer on line and not engaging properly with others. The Internet is great, social media is great, but more importantly we need to make time to do things and enjoy fresh air even if it rains.

It would be nice if some of you read this and agree and try to do something about these matters, we could just vacuously watch celebrities and pop-tastic-tv and like things with a click that we don't actually know anything about. I think anyone who gets to this line will be agreeing with me (welcome to sanity).

Enough for now, let's see if this gets more hits than the like button on 'Peter Andre does sex tips for all men as we don't know what women like'

And to close..go to a library and also a bookshop read something good and share it..it is fun and we may yet start a trend #lovereading #realshops