Dept of It's An Ill Wind?

[oursin]

Or rumoured return of the Real Book to bookshop shelves... Maybe.
Waterstone's, Britain's biggest book store, has warned it could be left with piles of unsold celebrity autobiographies and cook books in the new year unless sales pick up sharply in the next two weeks

Comments

[oursin]

It's a bit like public libraries - I'm all 'hey, why aren't you addressing your core constituency and its needs rather than whoring after some entirely imaginary other audience?' when I read of some of the stuff they get up to.

[drasecretcampus]

Bring back Albion and Methvens, I say. Although Oxfam has its (often pricey) moments.

[ankaret]

This would be me crying them a river. *pokes shrivelled tear duct* No, nothing yet.

[oursin]

Waterstones - the misery memoir... (Trying to think of a suitable title)

[ankaret]

'So Little Sold: The Heartbreaking True Story Of A Bookshop Betrayed'.

[fox_in_sand]

According to Newsnight review last night, sales of misery memoirs are down by a third in the last 6 months (yay!). I hope this means I'll be able to get lots of good cookbooks on the cheap in January...

[oursin]

I saw an article recently suggesting that the whole mm thing had peaked and was on the downslide. It's probably waiting for the Big Hoax Misery Memoir to come along and blow the entire genre to smithereens.

[ankaret]

I have a dim memory of a woman who turned out not to have been rescued from Nazis by wolves, or possibly the other way round - ah, here's her Wikipedia page, but possibly that wasn't quite the same thing.

[drasecretcampus]

It survived a courtcase (um - Constance Bristow? Ugly) and several frauds (a couple of holocaust ones, an aboriginal one, the catholic laundry one, the one Oprah had to say sorry for, and the running with scissors bloke's brother remembers things differently). I don't get the schaudenwotsit, the prurience or the allowing in cruelty as entertainment