Books and Spikes

If you want a detailed report on how UK publishers are doing, then check out "Review of 2014" by Philip Jones in the Bookseller 20 January, 2015.

Here's a swift gloss -

"e-book sales outpaced print sales during the year."

Domestic e-book sales for Penguin Random House, Hachette, HarperCollins and Pan Macmillan totalled 49m units in 2014, a 15.3% rise on 2013. There was an 18% rise in 2012, and a huge 105% gain in 2012 (on 2011).

There are and probably always will be, spikes. The e-book market rate of growth was exaggerated in 2012 by the Fifty Shades trilogy, Spikes like this can play havoc with a companies figures, skew general trends and drive analysts crazy.

Independently published titles are growing, but no one has a way of tracking the rate of growth.

HarperCollins UK chief executive Charlie Redmayne says the traditional Christmas sales spike has "all but" disappeared. Waterstones m.d. James Daunt said virtually the same thing two weeks ago.

The other thing of interest is what everyone is calling the "print renaissance." The book trade has "rekindled its love affair with the physical book." 

Has digital helped revive and reinvent print?

The shift to tablet reading and the rise of subscription services, will likely change the narrative again. As Kindle's Russ Grandinetti suggested at Digital Book World last week, nothing is stable. Let's hope the book business is doing better than we all thought.

Reading for pleasure or stimulation?

Carlisle Castle

There are various schools of thought on books and reading. Some say that in order to be good, a fiction book must make its reader think, give intellectual satisfaction, perhaps even educate.

Others think that if a book entertains its reader, stirs the imagination, engages the mind, that is enough. Certainly a book of any kind is a God send during a sleepless night or a boring journey. I'm of the school that says reading anything sharpens judgement and thus enriches the experience of life. Stories can provide a feast of the senses without being intellectually stimulating - Fifty Shades of Grey may qualify for this - and it is possible to read it, enjoy it and almost  automatically critique it at the same time. The book is of its time, and perhaps that is all we need say of it in these sex saturated times. Perhaps poetry provides the richest sensory feast. Kathleen Raine's has stayed with me since I read it in my twenties and still gives me pleasure.

I sometimes wonder why certain stories become classics. I read The Woman in White not long ago and found it overlong, wordy and decidedly strange. The premise is fine and perhaps in a time without radio, television and film, such lengthy, slow-moving books were acceptable, even desirable. In today's world, with our eyes, ears and brains attuned to faster rhythms, I flicked through pages positively aching for the story to move on. I never finished The Moonstone because I lost my grip on the story and turned to something more modern.

 Some readers adore detail, facts, arcane theories and lucsious descriptions while others plunder the book for the story. Writers these days are warned to avoid the dreaded info dump for fear of boring the reader. Yet we are all encouraged to read the classics, where info dumps abound. Who is to say which style is right and which is wrong? Easier by far and more gracious to agree that different tastes abound and that every book will find a reader. Yes, even The Moonstone!

Literary Taste and Bondi

Bondi Beach

I found a copy of Chocolat by Joanne Harris on someone's shelves this week and couldn't resist re-reading it. I enjoyed it more than I did the first time around because I’ve now read The Lollipop Shoes and Peaches for Monsieur le Cure. Beautiful writing in all three, each with an intricate story that takes its own time to unfold on the page and in the reader’s mind. Enhanced, for me, by the memory of the beautiful actress who played Vianne in the film version of Chocolat.

How Fifty Shades of Grey will stand up to the comparison, I’m not sure, for they are poles apart in genre, style and almost everything else. I gained a copy as a gift, a copy going spare, so I was told, because they were not allowed to use it as a raffle prize! Never one to look a gift horse in the mouth, I am reading it even though I freely admit I would never have bought it. So, how do I find it?

Bondi, looking north

I was led to believe the writing is poor, and in some places it is, but not everywhere. There’s a certain breathlessness about the style that seems to catche how 20-somethings think these days, and no doubt that is appealing to 20-and 30-somethings. It also taps into the fairy tale/myth/fantasy of the pretty but poor virgin meeting the handsome, sexy billionaire and discovering how much he fancies her. Sex is wonderful for them, and the graphic description is better than many I’ve read, plus which it has the big plus that it is not the usual run of the mill sex. The twist in the tale concerns the devilishly handsome hero being a control freak who requires her to be totally submissive to his wish to inflict pain. He is so nice with it that the heroine is tempted to consider and sign his pseudo-legal Agreement. When he describes the kind of action he envisages, which involves whips and canes, it taps into a very basic tantalising-fear cum desire to be dominated that lurks in the heroine's psyche and also deep down in many a female bosom.

I found myself grinning at the couple's witty e-mail exchanges, (which reminded me of typewritten notes addressed to Dear Big-Eyes which came to me through the ICI internal mail system in some long ago universe) and her asides to her inner goddess were a treat. Yes, I can see why it has been a runaway success.