Transcript of Episode 53: The Comeback (November 6th 2020).
BR: Hello, welcome back to What Page Are You On? It’s been a while, but I’m still me, Bethany Rutter, one of your co-hosts and you are –
AS: It me, Alice Slater, your other co-host.
BR: It’s been a while, hasn’t it, my friend?
AS: How long has it been?
BR: Well, I went to Japan in early March and we probably didn’t record one… Did one come out while I was in Japan? Basically, it’s been like nine months… about…
AS: We could have had a baby in this time!
BR: We could have literally created a human child. I stand by our decision to kind of… to pause for a bit.
AS: It just didn’t feel right. I felt like at the beginning of the pandemic… I wasn’t reading.
BR: I wasn’t reading, I had too much going on.
AS: And the thing with a books podcast is you really need to have read some fucking books.
BR: Yeah. Yeah. And my life has changed so much since the beginning of the pandemic. And how I read books has changed a lot as well for related reasons.
AS: So let’s start off with asking, how has your reading habits changed? What did it look like at the beginning of the pandemic and what does your reading look like now?
BR: So pre-pandemic, I would read mostly on my commute. I would mostly read Kindle books or proofs that I was sent by our good friends at publishers. I would, you know, get through maybe one audio book a month on my Audible subscription. But now I don’t commute at all because *singing* I lost my job!
AS: Oohh noooo
BR: Yeah, I now permanently work from home, but as a result of being made redundant, I started my “wizness” – my woman-owned business as we like to call it – which is making polymer clay earrings –
and that has meant that I just listen to so many audiobooks while I work. So that’s really changed. Like I get through so many more audiobooks than I used to. I basically have, like no books that are unlistened to…
AS: Wow
BR: I used to have a big stack in my in my Audible account waiting for me to listen to them. But yeah, I really don’t read a lot of Kindle or physical books like. Yeah.
AS: You’re an audio gal now.
BR: Which is, you know, nice because it means I still get to consume books. But yeah, it just… my life has just changed in a way that means that I don’t really make time for reading in the way that I had it kind of baked into my schedule. How about you, my friend?
AS: Well, kind of a similar story. I still have my day job, so I work from home four days a week. I’ve had to lose one day, that was my sacrifice to Covid. So I’m working like four days a week instead of a full five days a week. I’m no longer commuting. And I didn’t realise how much of my reading was just based around convenience. So I did most of my reading on the tube. I was travelling from East London to West London, so forty minutes on the tube every day, twice a day, so I would tear through books like that. And then also in my office job, I would read in my lunch breaks more often than not, so I would easily clock in like two and a half hours of reading every day. And that would just be part of my daily routine. I didn’t even have to think about it.
BR: And also we were actively reading stuff for the pod. So by –
AS: Exactly
BR: – virtue of not doing the pod there wasn’t that kind of…
AS: No sense of urgency. I definitely ended up… I always found it quite difficult to read at home anyway, I’m very distracted by my phone, my husband, I have – well, I had quite busy social life so I would go out quite often during the week to meet friends, go to book events, that kind of thing. I’ve definitely had to like retrain my brain to read in a different way. I’ve always split my reading between physical books, probably 70% physical and 30% Kindle and audio. I think that that split has kind of changed as well. I’m listening to more audio just because I’m in my house more so I’m more likely to put an audiobook on than music if I’m alone whereas I’ll listen to music if I’m hanging out with my husband. And then I’m also finding that I’m reading more late into the night and then I’m more likely to read a Kindle just because I could do that without the light being switched on.
BR: Yeah, that’s a true plus of reading on your phone. And obviously we haven’t addressed a new reality of the pod, which is for the first time ever, we are not in the same place.
AS: And I’m finding this weird. I feel like I’m on a little business Skype call, except I’m in what I’m going to call the dream chamber. I’m in my bed with a blanket over my head to try and give a good audio sound. So lmk if the audio is good for you guys.
BR: Yeah, this is about as good as we’re probably going to get it without having to spend quite a bit of money. So hopefully the sounds, you know, listenable, no worse than usual.
AS: I would definitely be prepared to spend money on a microphone if it meant I didn’t have to sit under a blanket. Maybe I’ll make a little nest somewhere. I’ll make a nest in a cupboard and just staple blankets to the wall.
BR: So we thought when we brought back this pod, we would kind of go down a slightly different route to what we have done in the past. Alice, would you like to tell our good friends listening at home what the new vibe is, what the new vibe is? The new Renaissance vibe?
AS: Okay, so what we’re going to try to do is produce more episodes more frequently, but make them shorter. That does mean we’re not going to be working so hard to create book pairings. We’re going to be reading more naturally and then discussing what we read, whatever that may be. So sometimes our books may be totally different. Sometimes we may not have read each other’s book. Sometimes we may have both read the same thing. And then we’re also going to do more like book world conversation as well. So, like, if there’s something buzzy happening, we might give our little take on it, whether that’s a prize long list or a new website that’s launched or, you know, just a bit of goss, a bit of drama. Yeah, because I live for book goss, because I fucking love it and I love having a platform to talk about it…
BR: That isn’t in the DMS with Jordan Taylor-Jones?
AS: Exactly. Although I’ll still be doing that as well.
BR: That’s as good an outlet as any. So what are you reading right now Alice? Or what have you read recently? What’s your reading status right now?
AS: OKay, so I literally just this morning finished reading a thriller by Ruth Ware called The Turn of the Key –
BR: Like the Turn of the Screw?
AS: Exactly. So it’s a retelling of The Turn of the Screw, which I also read this year and I hated by the way… I found The Turn of the Screw just very verbose. Henry James loves super long sentences and he packs loads of clauses in them, and even though The Turn of the Screw is so short, it took six days to plough through
BR: You might as well just watch the film, watch The Innocence.
AS: *laughs* Well, I read the book because I was like, oh, I’m going to read the book ahead of watching The Haunting of Bly Manor, because I’m a big horror movie fan and I loved The Haunting of Hill House. Unfortunately, everyone hated The Haunting of Bly Manor so I was kind of turned off watching it anyway and I ploughed through this book for nothing. But it did mean that I had a better idea of what Ruth Ware is doing with The Turn of the Key, which was just a coincidental read that I picked up next.
So The Turn of the Key is about a woman who is hired to be a nanny in like a small house in a remote area of Scotland. So this house is in the middle of nowhere. It’s a really old building that’s been zhuzhed up with this app called the Happy App. And like, it sounds like my worst nightmare. Every single function in the house revolves around this app from like turning lights on to checking where the children are to doing the shopping and stuff. And basically, while she’s in this house, the children are really difficult, the parents have gone on a business trip almost immediately, so she’s alone with them and with this nightmare app that she can’t work… and then she starts hearing footsteps at night.
BR: *small ghost noise*
AS: And it’s so fucking creepy. I read it all exclusively late at night with my husband sleeping beside me. And it was chilling me out so much.. not chilling me out, the opposite… giving me chills! *laughs* So yeah, I really recommend it, although it’s a little… it’s very commercial, so like don’t go in there expecting a good literary ghost story. It’s like a super commercial quick read, but it’s great.
BR: As long as those are good, I do not begrudge their existence. In fact, all I really want is to read something that’s readable and also good.
AS: Exactly. And I do find that Ruth Ware can be a little bit hit or miss, like I thought –
BR: Yeah, I was gonna say! I feel like I read maybe her first one and then her subsequent one didn’t seem like such a hit. So I fell off the wagon and didn’t read anything.
AS: I think In the Dark Dark Word was her first one and it was a really great whodunit about a hen party in a cabin in the woods –
BR: Ye-es…
AS: – and it was just a good fun, quick read. And then The Woman in Cabin 10, I just thought sucked so hard. And I don’t normally go like negative on the pod. Like normally we skirt around books we don’t like, but I thought it was a real miss and I don’t want anyone to pick it up off the basis of me discussing it right now.
BR: So what is what is an unforgivable sin in thriller narrative?
AS: A coincidence!
BR: We hate when the resolution hinges on coincidences.
AS: You’re allowed to have a coincidence in which it brings two unlikely characters together, like, you know, that moment of… ‘someone spots someone from their past that they recognise’, that kind of coincidence is chill because that’s what can happen and that’s what gets the action going. But I think if a plot point hinges on a coincidence. I’m going to be disappointed in that. If more than one hinges on a coincidence, I just think you can’t plot novels.
BR: You shouldn’t have written this novel.
AS: YEAH.
BR: And it shouldn’t have been published.
AS: Yeah, cos it’s like – who are you? Charles Dickens? Like just because Great Expectations hinges on a coincidence, it doesn’t mean that it’s the better for it. I hated that about Great Expectations. So yeah fuck coincidences.
BR: Okay, well I’m glad that I now know what you’ve been reading cos I had literally no idea that that book existed. I had never heard of The Turn of the Key or whatever.. is that what it’s called?
AS: Yea, The Turn of the Key.
BR: I had not heard of that at all. I feel like maybe I’m slightly disconnected from the thriller scene now.
AS: We’ll dive back into that but first of all I want to know what you’re reading.
BR: So I’m not really reading anything with my eyeballs at the moment. The last book I read was by the dude who runs the bloody creative writing programme at UEA, your alma mater.
AS: Andrew Cowan!
BR: Yeah so I have a buddy who I hope is listening, my friend John Cudby, we live quite close to Each other and he’s been one of my pandemic friends who I go for a walk with and, you know, eat a pizza in Dulwich Park with, and he let me this book and was like “I really enjoyed this” and so I started reading it and I really enjoyed it too and it’s really yeah […] I can’t think of a book that I would compare it to. It’s basically the story of a childhood, told from the perspective of the child, in that kind of weird memory way… I don’t know, someone who kind of doesn’t fully understand what’s going on but also written as an adult with some understanding of what was going on…
AS: Yeah like a retrospective narrative…
BR: Yeah but it’s just got this weird veil over it, of darkness and… yeah, I really liked it and it was published by Salt Publishing who are some good indie people.
AS: I like Salt, I think Salt do some good stuff
BR: I agree
AS: What was that one called, sorry?
BR: It’s called Your Fault by Andrew Cowan
AS: Your Fault
BR: Yep so that was the last book I read with my eyeballs but as I said, I’ve been really on the old audiobook lifestyle so the last book I listened to – which, you know, they basically become the same thing: me reading books is just something I now do with my ears – was Marisha Pessl’s Calamity Physics… what’s it called?
AS: I don’t know it!
BR: Special Topics in Calamity Physics and I think it was her debut… because I went wild on the Internet earlier this summer when I listen to Marisha Pessl’s Night Film which I loved so much, like I think it is flawed and I don’t think everyone will love it as much as I did but me listening to Night Film was like the highlight of my life. It’s so dark and yeah, I loved it. I loved how dark it was, I love the plot, I loved how your perception of things really changes
AS: One thing about Night Film…
BR: It’s very very very long
AS: I made it through halfway on audio cos I tend to listen to audio in quite short bursts cos I mainly do it when I do housework and I hate housework and yeah I found after maybe six weeks I was still only halfway and I was like, “I have to knock this on the head, I can’t continue listening to this epic in like bite size pieces… it’s killing me.”
BR: Whereas, I think because I tend to listen to things in quite long stretches like I’ll spend four or five hours in one go listening to something yeah while I’m making play or if I’m home alone or whatever. So it was like ideal for listening to Night Film because I was just so into it, I was listening to it all the time and then yeah I started listening to Special Topics in Calamity Physics and wasn’t as into it. The world of Night Film is much juicier to me… it’s based around a kind of reclusive cult horror film/snuff film director and then Special Topics in Calamity Physics is told from the point of view of a very precocious teenage girl with a very annoying dad who’s an academic and so I wasn’t really on board with – especially with – the narrator of Special Topics in Calamity Physics but then once I got going I was like, “Yes, yes, yes, this is this is good shit!” I’m not as enthusiastic about it as Night Film but I did really enjoy it. That’s the last thing I listened to.
AS: What am I listening to right now? I’ve got an audiobook on the go… it’s… do you know Grady Hendrix? He he’s a horror writer and he did My Best Friend’s Exorcism, which is a very fun super ‘80s Jennifer’s Body-esque novel, and he’s written a companion piece to that because in My Best Friend’s Exorcism parents are mostly absent, like it’s very much focused on the teenagers, so he’s written this book about Southern moms and it’s called the Southern Bookclub’s Guide to Slaying Vampires.
BR: This sounds right up your street.
AS: Yeah, I’m like “I don’t know if I would necessarily say it’s blowing my mind? Like, it’s a very cosy horror novel but then it has like the cosiness of a Southern mom who’s baking pies and going to book clubs and raising their children and then when it’s violent, it is so incredibly gross… like it’s really strange, it’s got a really strange tone, but I’m quite enjoying it. We’ll see how I feel by the time I finish it but right now I’m having a good time.
BR: I am delighted for you.
AS: So yeah, earlier you said that you don’t feel like you’re keeping up particularly in the world of thrillers. That is something else that I have found in terms of my reading in the pandemic is that I definitely am not reading as much front list as I normally would? So frontless being books that are brand new and have just come out. I’m definitely just mooching through what I already have, I’ve read some classics, I’m reading books and I’ve had for a long time. I just haven’t got to like… I definitely don’t feel as pressured to keep up with super contemporary publishing.
BR: Yes I would agree with that, like there’s things that you’re personally interested in and it’s nice to kind of keep up with that but yeah I would agree that I feel less kind of like I’ve kind of dropped out of some kind of race somehow.
AS: Yeah, it’s nice… it’s nice to be going at my own pace and reading my own things
BR: We’ve discussed this, but we miss the event lifestyle.
AS: I miss events. I loved, every year publishers – twice a year – publishers do showcases where they kind of introduced their debuts authors and then discuss their titles that are coming out over the next six months and there’s readings and there’s wine and snacks and you get to like gossip with all the people that you know there and you do really miss those. I fucking love a good showcase.
BR: Yeah and without that I kind of feel a bit like, I’m not as in tune with not only what the hyped books are but also what the hyped books are that I personally like the sound of. Cos obviously like I’m not gonna like every book that every publisher is pushing as like a lead title but through those kinds of showcases I had more of a sense of like “Is this my vibe?”
AS: Yeah, because I find that there’s often more at play than just recognising a genre that looks good or like, you know I like books by women – debut writers in their 20s and 30s are always going to turn my head, anything that’s a bit spooky or witchy is going to turn my head but it doesn’t mean I’m going to read it. There’s always other factors that will determine whether or not it’s actually going to be a book that’s for me.
BR: Yeah and sometimes something surprises you and something that you wouldn’t have thought was like your thing, you’ll be really sold on like an author or a reading or something.
AS: Yeah definitely, the readings can make such a big difference.
BR: Tue. So what’s the goss in the book world right now?
AS: Well I feel the biggest thing right now is bookshop.org…
BR: Me too!
AS: …which I have a lot to say about!
BR: I’m really glad you’re here because I feel like it would have taken me a lot longer to figure out the vibe with bookshop.org if you were not my bud.
AS: So, for those listening, I assume if you’re listening to this podcast you would have already come across bookshop.org online, but in a nutshell it’s a website that was launched last year in the US to great fanfare and success and it launched here in the UK on Monday… Tuesday the 2nd of November? Monday the 2nd? Whatever… Monday the 2nd of November, and the idea of it is that it provides a digital shop front for indie bookshops. So, as an indie bookshop, you can sign up with this website and then they will fulfil book orders for you so you don’t have to worry about ordering or delivering, you don’t have to go into your store to fulfil orders. People can just go to bookstore.org, they pick your bookshop… so for example, Phlox Books is my local store. I could go onto the Phlox page on bookshop.org, I could order my books, bookshop.org will then place my order with the distributor, the distributor will send me my books and bookshop.org will give Phlox – my chosen bookshop – 30% of that sale. 50% of that sale goes to the publisher (which is standard, and that’s where the author’s payment etc. comes from) and then that remaining 20% bookshop.org spend on their own outgoings – so it’s like the cost of keeping the supply chain running, the cost of delivery…
BR: Hosting the website…
AS: Yeah all of those expenses. So bookshop.org pay individual bookshops more than Hive do per sale.
BR: Previously, Hive was kind of seen as the ethical alternative to Amazon
AS: Exactly. With Hive, I think indies get something like 5% of the sale so it’s a really significant bump in how much profit they get. The other thing with Hive is that I think the cost of… I’m not quite sure how it works but I know that for a lot of indies, fulfilling Hive orders actually ends up costing them money… like Hive is not very popular with indies, but no one’s going to turn their noses up at a sale! So that’s the skinny. And obviously, superficially, it sounds really great but…
BR: If you dig deeper…
AS: So I started digging because I was really surprised to see people posting affiliate links and I was like, “That’s strange, I wonder how that works” so I looked into it and basically every single listing for a book will have a link saying like “Earn money by recommending books.” So they really want users – they want the consumer – to sign up as affiliates and that’s obviously very simply to help spread word of mouth about this new website’s existence. The thing with the affiliate links, if Bethany sets up an affiliate account and she posts her shop front, she creates lists. Which is a really great feature which I really like but obviously… if all the stocks the same, the way that shops can differentiate from one another is that they can tailor their own lists of the kinds of books that they recommend. So, say I go on Bethany’s affiliate page and she’s got a list called Banging Books of 2020. I go on there, I pick Year of the Monkey by Patti Smith. I buy it. Bethany would get 10% of that sale, straight into her affiliate account. She can only cash that out when it reaches a certain point – I think it’s £20, happy to be corrected on that but that’s just from memory, but Bethany gets 10%. 10% goes into a pot which is divided equally between every indie bookshop that signed up to the website.
BR: And they have this kind of quite cute running total on the homepage which shows you how much money has been made for indie bookshops.
AS: Is that the pot or is that in total?
BR: Yeah I don’t know, maybe it’s in total?
AS: That’s the thing with that figure… it doesn’t make it clear. I think that’s the total, I think that includes sales in which the bookshops get 30% but I might be wrong. Happy to be corrected on that but anyway. So with an affiliate link, Bethany gets 10% all in, all indies get 150th of 10%. 50% goes to the publisher, the remaining 30% – 20%, we know bookshop.org spend on their expenses, so then 10% is profit for bookshop.org. So if you have an affiliate link, whilst you are technically supporting indie bookshops, really what you’re doing is supporting yourself. You’re going to get a bigger share than your local bookshop would and whilst that’s fine – I mean there’s a fucking pandemic, loads of people have lost their jobs, booksellers, people in publishing, authors, so many people in the book world earn fuck all, and an affiliate programme like this is fucking great. I’m just… I’m not so sure about positioning it as something that is supporting independent bookshops though.
BR: Yeah, something that’s inherently good for indies which it kind of isn’t always.
AS: Yeah like I just feel that the maths is not necessarily made as clear as it could be? When I’ve talked about this a little bit online, a lot of people have said “Oh really? Wait, I didn’t think I made any profit” or “No no, 10% goes to a bookshop of my choice”… none of which is true. If you read the FAQ, it’s all there in black and white, but it’s literally one of the last questions on a very long FAQ. I have read the whole thing, that is my investigative journalism at work.
BR: This is why I do the pod with you, for your knowledge.
AS: My nosiness.
BR: So obviously bookshop.org is good if you buy through an indie on bookshop.org and otherwise you would have probably ordered from Amazon that’s when it’s good…
AS: …but that’s the dream model as if it’s removing sales from Amazon to bookshop.org
BR: But…
AS: Let’s just be really clear about that… the website is nowhere near as functional as Amazon’s website which is unsurprising!
BR: We’ve talked about this but for example if you look up my name – I’ve published three books that you could search. If you search my name on another bookshop’s website, those three titles would come up as the first three results, whereas only my most recent book comes up as the first result on bookshop.org and the others are scattered somewhere through the next kind of six or seven listings which is a bit silly because I feel like a search function is one of the easier things to optimise.
AS: Yeah and like it’s not just you, I’ve tried it with loads of different books like with Boy Parts by Eliza Clark. If you search the title, Eliza’s book appears like somewhere like the 8th or 9th listing. If you search the name Eliza Clark, Boy Parts is the first listing. If you search Kirsty Logan, only three of her books appear on the first page. There’s just so much other guff that gets in the way, so I think it… well, it’s actively designed to be shoppable via these lists. I don’t think that they necessarily have put much money into that kind of function, the functionality of just searching and browsing, which if you’re trying to take a slice of Amazon’s pie, that’s what you’re competing with.
BR: Which they kind of explicitly are, like Amazon gets brought up every time, in every article about them.
AS: Yeah.
BR: It’s positioned as a rival to Amazon so yeah obviously if you go onto bookshop.org and buy a book from a shop – not from a person, not from an affiliate, but from an indie shop – that is better than buying off Amazon, but the best thing you can do is still to buy directly from an indie. Like that hasn’t changed.
AS: And that’s the thing, I’m not sure who bookshop.org is really aimed at? Because people in the book world who are follow bookshops on Twitter and all kind of more aware of the bookshop landscape, already know this. We know that’s the best way and it’s not always necessarily as easy…
BR: …or as cheap…
AS: But you know the bookshop.org discount is like 40p per book. It’s basically a nominal amount. But we already know the best thing to do is to DM your favourite bookshop and say “Hey could you order these books for me, I’ll PayPal you the money, jobs a good’un.” We know that’s the best way to do it.
BR: So who is the actual target market?
AS: Are they taking sales from Waterstones, Foyles, Blackwell’s? Like how many people who are shopping with bookshop.org are delighted because now they can finally support their local bookshop in a way that suits them versus people who are supporting it because they like the idea in general and feel like it’s generally a good thing and therefore it’s generally a more moral place to shop.
BR: Yeah, I’m just… I think I am struggling a bit with why I would order through bookshop.org… like why would I, rather than just going to DM Kirkdale Books in Sydenham and saying “Can you order this for me?”
AS: And I also feel like a lot of people, when I’ve questioned this, I’ve had four people so far tell me that with the money they earn through their affiliate link, they’re intending to spend it with their local indie bookshop directly.
BR: So why not give that sale to the indie bookshop in the first place?
AS: Or more to the point, if you’re not going to use the service yourself, why are you promoting it?
BR: Yeah!
AS: Why aren’t you putting the money back into bookshop.org? And the answer is because they know that it’s not as good for bookshops. And obviously – obviously – it’s fine to set up an affiliate link. I’m pro affiliate links.
BR: Me too, I love making a lil bit of money.
AS: I think they’re a really good thing. As I said like, there’s a fucking pandemic, people need to earn money, cool. But I think that we need to be a little bit more honest, if you’re shopping with their affiliate link you’re supporting the person who has set up the affiliate link first and foremost. That’s fine, but just be aware that that’s what you’re doing. If you want to support indie bookshops as a kind of amorphous conglomerate thing – which they aren’t, that’s why we love indies, because they are all individual – but if you want to support them, then shopping via an affiliate link is probably the best way to throw less than a penny per shop. I think the last time I did this maths, it works out at like 0.007p per £7.99 paperback would go to every indie bookshop and that number is now going to be lower because more bookshops have signed up.
BR: That’s so absurd.
AS: It’s just an absurdly small amount and like, obviously the jury is out – we will see. I think they cash out every six months, [every six months] the pot gets divided, so let’s see how big the pot is. Maybe I’m going to completely eat my hat and you’ll know if I do cause I’ll fucking set up an affiliate link… but I can’t see myself doing that because I can’t see this as being preferable for indie bookshops.
BR: Yeah, like I set up an affiliate account before I kind of fully understood what was going on, I was like “Oh cool, I’m an author maybe I’ll set up an account on this make a list with my books so that I can link to that if ever someone wants to buy from somewhere that isn’t Amazon” but yeah, I think I didn’t fully realise that that meant I would get money instead of the indie.
AS: Well it’s as well as, but you can’t nominate a specific indie. The best way to do that – if you’re an author and you’re not worried about earning commission on book sales through your own shop, the best thing you could do is to reach out to your local bookstore and say “Hey, are you on bookstore.org?” (because they aren’t all on there) and say, “I’m a local author… here’s my books… would you be interested in hosting a book list for me? I will link to it whenever I’m talking about my books and you can take 30% of the sales.” That’s the best way as an author to support your local bookshop, if you’re not interested in earning commission. Also, there’s no shame in wanting to earn commission! Like if you want to set up an affiliate link as an author and fill it with your books and books you recommend, that’s chill, do that, but make sure that shoppers know that by shopping there, they’re supporting you as well.
BR: Yeah, I know it’s “as well” but it does kind of feel like “instead of.”
AS: Yeah, I just don’t rate the affiliate programme as a way to support indie bookshops. I’ve said it. I think that’s totally clear *laughs*
BR: It’s very interesting because yeah, I feel like it’s one of those things that the first time you hear about it, you’re like “Wow, what a great idea!” and then the more you find out about it, it’s like this isn’t an inherently good thing for indies. If what you want to do is support indie bookshops, nothing has really changed because if what you were doing before was buying direct from them, you should still buy direct from them.
AS: Yeah and also like, obviously think about where you were shopping previously. So I would probably buy most of my physical books from Waterstones, from Daunts cos there was a branch near my office I frequented, Waterstones, Foyles occasionally, and the indie bookshop on my street. If I ever went to an event at an indie I would probably buy a book from them, but I think it would be disingenuous for me to pretend that I usually prop up loads of indie bookstores in London. I prop up one indie bookstore in London, occasionally. I’d also question like, do you want to divert your book buying habits away from your local – even if your local is part of a bookshop chain like Waterstones or Blackwell’s, do you not want to support them? Cos they will go.
BR: Yeah.
AS: If we don’t continue shopping with the chains, they will also go and however you may feel about the hierarchy of evil in your mind about capitalism and bookshops, Waterstones has the ability to put stores in places that don’t current otherwise have them. So if you normally would shop in your high street Waterstones actually maybe the best thing you can do to support the industry is to continue shopping with Waterstones.
BR: So that your high street still has a bookshop.
AS: Yeah, like maybe that’s an unsexy thing to say, but at the end of the day the book buying landscape is completely different than it ever has been in the history of bookshops. Like, the bookshops are closing in England this week, they will be closing from Thursday, so you really have to think about what you want your high street to look like when we come out of the pandemic. when we come out the other side, what do you still want to be there? I’m not that fussed about supporting a terfy bookshop in a town I’ve never been to. I’m interested in supporting the bookshops that are run by people who I’m passionate about, who support publishers that I’m passionate about, authors that I’m passionate about. Like, I don’t think that independent businesses are automatically a good thing.
BR: Yeah, just because it’s independent. You’re so right my friend.
AS: I’m curious to know how our listeners feel. Please, if you have any corrections about anything that we’ve said –
BR: OR any takes of your own!
AS: Exactly, very happy to hear but if you’re going to issue a correction please do your homework and read the FAQ cos there’s a lot of information in there.
BR: And Alice is rarely wrong about these things.
AS: I am wrong all the fucking time.
BR: Noooo.
AS: I have to apologise by the way, I’ve just realised that normally before recording Bethany would remind me to remove the various silver bangles on my wrists…
BR: But because we’re not in the same place I couldn’t see them.
AS: She wasn’t there to tell me off and I do have a habit, when I’m concentrating, I absentmindedly fiddle with them so there may have been some little bell-like noises. Think of it as my brrrrain turning over, the cogs whirling, as I discuss bookshop.org.
BR: I’m very glad that we have covered this because I think it’s been a real thing that we can we can have a productive conversation about on this pod and it might, you know, make a difference to someone who’s listening.
AS: And also, don’t take our word for it. If you care about indie bookshops, follow some on Twitter and see what they’re saying. Like there’s a store called Storytellers Inc. who I really like, I have shopped with them during the pandemic to support them because I think they have a good vibe. Katie has been talking very transparently about their figures and obviously for someone like Storytellers Inc., they don’t have a functional website. All of her sales come through her work on Twitter, recommending books, supporting authors, retweeting publishers… like, she’s really earning every fucking sale she gets.
BR: Yep.
AS: So for her, the shop front angle is great and like had a reasonably good first day of sales. I think she said the figure was something around £37 from 11 sales which is not to be sniffed at, you know it’s good shit, and obviously those are sales that she doesn’t have to do anything else. Once the sale is bagged, she doesn’t have to place it, she doesn’t have to chase it, she doesn’t have to pack it and deliver it, like that’s all just money in their pocket. So you know, obviously some people are making it work and so I don’t want to be just trashing it for no reason but I think it’s good to ask some questions, keep an open mind.
BR: I agree.
AS: Let’s keep an eye on the bookshops that we love, see how much money they actually make and also let’s find out whether bookshop.org pay tax in the UK as it is an American company. I’m seeing people talking about Amazon as tax dodges – let’s see if bookshop.org…
BR: … are also tax dodgers!
AS: Yeah! *laughs*
BR: You know, I feel like we very comprehensively covered the bookshop.org situation and with that we will take our leave.
AS: Yeah I guess we were talking for quite a long time.
BR: Once we get going, it takes a lot to stop us.
AS: Listen, I am happy as a clam to be back in the driving seat of the good ship What Page Pod. Do ships have driving seats?
BR: Yeah. Ohh, Below Deck is back tonight, speaking of ships and driving seats, so that’s something for me to look forward to in my life.
AS: *chuckles warmly* I’m happy for you.
BR: So this has been me, Bethany Rutter and this has been you.
AS: Alice Slater
BR: ….and we wiill be back next week, I guess! I wonder what weird stuff is going to happen between now and then.
AS: Please DM us any goss. You can follow the pod at @WhatPagePod on Instagram and Twitter. You can follow me at @alicemjslater on Instagram and Twitter
BR: and me at @BethanyRutter on Twitter and @Bethany_Rutter on Instagram and we’ll see you next time!
BOTH: BYEEEEEEEE
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