It's not often that I see poetry collections on the most prominent display table of a bookshop but at Blackwell's Bookshop on Edinburgh's South Bridge, you'll find both my 'The Opposite of Cabbage' and Andy Philip's 'The Ambulance Box' sharing space with novels and non-fiction, just as you enter the main door.
Of course, Blackwell's might begin to think there's real mileage in displaying poetry if these piles of books start disappearing. So, if you're in Edinburgh and want a book to read, Blackwell's is the place to buy it, and those '£2 Off' stickers mean what they say - for a limted time.
I've always had a theory that, if poetry books had a higher profile in bookshops, people would pick them up and buy them, not in numbers similar to Dan Brown or Katie Price, but in similar numbers to an average literary novel. I'm now hoping that really is the case!
3 comments:
I'm sure you're right, Rob, about more poetry books being sold if they were on the tables near the checkout counter. But then again publishers pay bookshops a lot of money to get their books on those tables ... how many poetry publishers have the cashflow to bid for the top table?
None, I guess. You've certainly hit on the problem for small literary publishers.
I should point out that Salt didn't pay anything for this display. It's Blackwell's giving a high profile to authors who took part in a series of readings in the bookshop during the festival.
Isn't it wonderful when this happens. Usually I walk into a bookshop with a sinking feeling that my books won't even be on the shelves, let alone prominently displayed. Invisible. But then sometimes, life is full of surprises!
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