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31 Oct 2009: Scary stories
Here's a spooky halloween tale for any booksellers out there. Do you know about Red Laser for the iPhone? You fire it up, scan a barcode, and it brings up the product's Amazon listing. And it works over the phone network - in other words, it works in your shop. When I talked about Dixons suggesting you buy TVs from them but use John Lewis's sales people first to pick it out for you, Vanessa worried that the same would happen for books. Well, with Red Laser, it's easy for shoppers to do just that. Go to the bookstore, ping anything interesting you find, and in a few days* it will turn up from Amazon cheaper than you're selling it. And not just on halloween.
I suppose I could see it happening in Borders or Waterstones - very occasionally - but not in much-beloved local independents. Because, really, do you need to leave the house to buy books from Amazon? Unless you enjoy browsing, you'd stay at home. It'd be like taking sandwiches to your favourite restaurant.
*maybe in ten or fifteen days. or more. if it's in stock. and unless the post is on strike. or they need a signature and you're out.
posted on October 31, 2009 08:16 AM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
29 Oct 2009: For the price of a Golf 1.4 TSi
I wish I had the guts to buy this. I wonder how it would change my life. Anyhow, if you want to beat me to it, it's available here.
posted on October 29, 2009 03:19 PM | link | Comments (5) | Leave a comment
29 Oct 2009: Another great review
Another great review here of Burning Out. I think it's about time one of our books won a literary award, don't you?
posted on October 29, 2009 10:49 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
28 Oct 2009: Stupido
I don't really like feeling stupid. I don't mind feeling comparatively stupid, if it's relative to smart people. But it seems I'm stumped by something that even the dimmest teenager can do. Something that millions of them manage. Probably pre-teens as well. I can't activate a mobile phone sim.
I've got a spare (Vodafone) phone. I've got a pack with a Vodafone PAYG sim in it. All I need to do is get to the stage where I can top up the sim and make/receive calls. The paperwork with the sim says call 17298 on the phone and you're away. I call that number and it says do the whole thing online instead. So I've tried. I've setup my account at Vodafone.co.uk. But there is no option to activate a new PAYG sim. I've searched. And no one on the internet seems to have had this problem. So I've tried registering that phone for 'Pay as you go talk services'. Maybe that's just a fancy way of saying they'll make the phone work. So I click on it, it asks for the phone number, it says it will send a security number to the phone as a text... but the text never arrives. I've even tried going out and buying another sim pack in case the first one was faulty. Dim thirteen-year-olds who get chewing-gum in their hair can do this while playing on their Nintendo DSs. Why can't I?
posted on October 28, 2009 01:37 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
28 Oct 2009: A lovely review
of The Blue Handbag here!
posted on October 28, 2009 10:29 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
26 Oct 2009: New Software
Windows 7 is out. 'They' say it's better than Vista. But a lot has happened since Vista was launched. For instance, I've tried Mac OS and decided that I like it better. The pain is that if you want to do businessy stuff, you really can't beat Microsoft Office. I'd probably be fine with a word processor other than Word - just about - but if I'm doing spreadsheets, I want Excel. And Access, if you happened to get really familiar with it - which I did - is darned handy. Especially if you team it with Excel. But that big ribbon thingie in Office 2007 (and 2010) knocks me back to being a beginner again. I know the program has the obscure function I want, but I can't find it. So I'm seriously considering having a little Windows XP simulation running on my Mac, and in it, running my favourite Office application so far: Office 2003. It's fast, it does everything, and I already know how it works. It has to be the way of the future. (Although I'm sticking with Outlook 2007: no ribbon, and it almost works, unlike previous versions.)
posted on October 26, 2009 02:40 PM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
23 Oct 2009: Event
A double whammy here - check out this flyer for an event next week where you can see not one but TWO SnowAuthors! Bargain. 30th October, 7pm, Waterstone's Canterbury.
posted on October 23, 2009 12:23 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
23 Oct 2009: Planets
The internet is funny. I don't know how I ended up on a site about new planets, but I did and it was brilliant. Here's a widget you can have on your desktop to keep count of the new ones!
posted on October 23, 2009 09:17 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
19 Oct 2009: Nice thing
Fiona Robyn's Thaw has had its first review and it's a corker! Goodreads writes
'I couldn't put this one down. Ruth is so real and tragic she made my heart hurt. Some books stay in your head and heart forever, and this is one of them. Profound.'
You should buy it.
posted on October 19, 2009 05:13 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
16 Oct 2009: More Marketing
Actually, while I'm on the subject of dodgy marketing, have you seen the Dixons ads on the tube? In case you can't read that poster image, it says "Step into middle England’s best loved department store, stroll through haberdashery to the audiovisual department where an awfully well brought up young man will bend over backwards to find the right TV for you." It concludes, "Then go to dixons.co.uk and buy it"
Continue reading "More Marketing" »
posted on October 16, 2009 03:40 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
16 Oct 2009: Marketing
Just pondering marketing this morning, and some of its more curious manifestations. For instance, Carpet Right sponsor a couple of high-profile TV shows in the UK which means they have their colour-saturated, cheesy, Seventies-feel ads bracketing gritty drama full of edgy camerawork and grey/blue palettes. The lack of fit is jarring. But they've just switched to a new thing: at the start of an act the Carpet Right ad shows a snake crawling across a carpet, at the end, they show a tarantula emerging from a pair of slippers. Edgier for sure. But I hate watching the tarantula and I know my next-door neighbour is terrified of snakes, so that's two viewers who now flinch whenever they see the Carpet Right logo. Who suggested to them that triggering phobias would endear them to the world at large?
Continue reading "Marketing" »
posted on October 16, 2009 07:42 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
14 Oct 2009: Most amusing
Welcoming new authors in the New Yorker
posted on October 14, 2009 09:26 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
06 Oct 2009: Quarry
We went blackberrying at Kirtlington quarry on my birthday. It was just about the most perfect way to spend an afternoon. Ro ate about 15, straight from the bush, and spilling nary a berry [proud emoticon]. The view from the top was amazing. Then we walked down the Oxford canal.
If I had been in any way sensibly prepared for such an outing I'd now share photos with you of the berries, the canal in the sun, the impressive quarry hacked out of the Cotswold stone, the way Ro keeps his little finger cocked whilst delicately biting down on a berry. But I didn't take my camera, so all those photos are in my head. Sorry about that.
Thanks for all the happy birthday wishes! Borders also sent me a bunch of returns (on the Friday but I picked up the email on Saturday) but not the happy birthday kind, bless them.
Coming soon: news on how our Xmas books are doing. Very nicely on the whole, is the summary.
posted on October 6, 2009 10:53 AM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
03 Oct 2009: Happy returns
Do you see what I did there? With the title of this post? Because, heh, the funny joke is that returns aren't happy, are they, they're never a happy event, but it's my birthday today, so I did a clever play on... oh, never mind.
Yep, 35 today. That didn't sound so bad until someone pointed out that it promotes me to the 35-44 demographic. Still, 35 with a glorious nearly one-year-old, a glorious husband, lovely friends and family, a wonderful company, another wonderful company, two cats, living in the country and eating bagels covered with seville marmalade isn't too bad, is it. No it is not. Although Ro did wee on my foot this morning.
Anyway, many happy returns to me. (That one doesn't get old, does it?)
posted on October 3, 2009 09:08 AM | link | Comments (12) | Leave a comment
02 Oct 2009: Front
Supposedly this list from the Guardian is the ten 'best' places to browse for secondhand books in the UK, but I'm rather liking it as a collection of (largely) beautiful shopfronts.
posted on October 2, 2009 09:23 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
01 Oct 2009: Things I would advise
Things I would advise do not include: switching from a PC to a Mac without thinking it all through VERY carefully.
Continue reading "Things I would advise" »
posted on October 1, 2009 07:35 PM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment