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Feature in the Camden New Journal
We were recently delighted to find ourselves featured in the Camden New Journal. For those of you who didn't catch it, the article is reproduced below.
I left a bookshop in West Hampstead on Saturday with a spring in my step.
l couldn’t help feeling this after an assistant in the shop told me that 300,000 copies of Hilary Mantel’s historical novel about Thomas Cromwell had been sold in the past few weeks.
Wow! Imagine that in this day and age when people appear to be enslaved by the internet there are still so many people willing to spend nearly £19 for a book!
What a victory for the human mind, I thought as I walked along West End Lane.
I had also been told by Danielle Van Emden, an assistant at the independent West End Lane bookshop, that Ian McEwan's latest novel, Solar, had already sold 14,000 copies.
McEwan, who lives in Bloomsbury, is one of those effortlessly gifted writers who moved seamlessly on a conveyor belt from university to prize-winning novelist.
But who, in the name of books, cannot be delighted that he is being bought in such large number.
Partly this is due, I was told to the geared-up marketing machine behind McEwan. To help independent bookshops, like the West End Lane shop, McEwan, apparently, signed hundreds of copies specially for them.
I did wonder for a moment how many hours he must have spent signing them, but that fades into insignificance when set against the vibrant life still found in the book world.
And despite undercutting by the big chains, as well as the looming e-book revolution, there still appears to be life in local bookshops after all.
In fact, the West End Lane bookshop, is doing so well—it already has a successful twin in Queen’s Park—that it is preparing to launch another shop in the Hampstead area.
Its success is obviously linked to the number of local authors invited to talk about their latest books.
Emma Thompson will read from her new book, Nanny McPhee, on April 28, while local author Antony McGowan reads from his hilarious children's book, Einstein's Underpants, on May 6. More power to the small shops!
