Authors as performers

Nicolette Jones for Book Brunch

Nicola Morgan’s (pic left) upcoming Deathwatch Dash - by which she will set out to break the world record for the number of schools visited in one day - and Anthony Horowitz’s imminent virtual event, which will reach 9,000 children in 216 schools at once, make me think how much the life of a children’s author has become about personal contact with children as well as contact through books.

Michael Rosen (pic right) and Andrew Motion, in their discussion at the British Library, remarked that they never saw an author in school. In my youth, we had the extraordinary experience of meeting writers only at annual Puffin Club jamborees.

Yet plenty of children’s writers now, and not only Laureates, spend as much of their time on school visits as on writing - some, who notch up 300+ performances at schools a year, probably spend more, and earn the bulk of their income from their shows.

Retail Week tells Waterstone's to buck up

Nicholas Clee

Retail Week offers a tough verdict on Waterstone's, arguing that the chain should be outperforming the market rather than mirroring it.

Waterstone’s boasts of the fact that 50 per cent of its sales are books outside the top 5,000 bestsellers. Surely then, it should be able to continue to appeal to readers – recession or no recession.I am not sure that I follow that argument. Is it that sales of books outside the top 5,000 should be recession-proof? You could argue that spending on them is less discretionary than it is on the latest bestellers, I suppose.

But the evidence from the rest of the book market is contradictory.

The businesses that are outperforming the market are, on the one hand, supermarkets, with narrow ranges; and, on the other, Amazon, with a deep range. It is competition from both angles that is Waterstone's biggest headache.