Thursday, May 15, 2008

Ant n Dec of the booktrade?

I don't think so. Back in the day we posted this about stickers.

It was penned (typed) by Marie who is now a megastar author but at that stage she was a mere bookseller/strugglingauthor.

But we are not the only stickerhaters. Alberto Manguel dislikes them too. This is from p17 of his latest (and beautiful) book The Library at Night.

"Old or new, the only sign I always try to rid my books of (usually with little success) is the price-sticker that malignant booksellers attach to the backs. These evil white scabs rip off with difficulty, leaving leprous wounds and traces of slime to which adhere the dust and fluff of ages, making me wish for a special gummy hell to which the inventor of these stickers would be condemned."

So you see, we are not like Ant n Dec, we are a lot more like Alberto Manguel who, as we all know, is a serious, intelligent and thoughtful man.

1 comment:

  1. Guess who is never now going to win the Richard and Judy book prize or be nominated to the Daily Mail Book Club? (The latter of which would look particularly hideous on my red cover.) ;-)

    When Gods Behaving Badly was released in hardback, it came with its own specially-designed price sticker that used one of the images from inside the jacket, which if you are going to have a sticker is the best of all evils. Of course, that means that when I did a bunch of signed ones for Waterstones they had real trouble finding room on the cover for the additional 'money off' and 'signed by the author' stickers. What's that sound I hear - the kerching of the cash drawer as I sell out? It'll serve me right when the only place for the 3-for-2 stickers on the paperback is right over my own name.

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