Buying Just One Book

Independent, and all round excellent, publisher, Salt have been tweeting about #JustOneBook this month. If all their followers bought just one book directly from Them in September, or indeed in October, it would be enough to keep them on track for the year.

I vividly remember the first training day I had about sales, I was working for Oddbins at the time, and it was explained to us what a difference getting every customer to spend a pound more would make to the company. It stuck in my mind because it was such a small amount, and that's the difference between being comfortably profitable, or not.

Salt have a really interesting list, my personal recommendation would be for Meike Ziervogel's 'The Photographer' which is easily one of my favourite books of the year, and Ziervogel's best so far, but there's a lot of great stuff to choose from.

Good quality independent publishers are something to be grateful for, cherished, and supported, as are good bookshops - independent or otherwise. Sometimes it makes more sense to use Amazon (though that's rarely because of price these days, unless it's a headlining sort of release, they're just not that cheap anymore) but I much prefer not to, purely because when I spend my money elsewhere I know it's helping keeping my local booksellers in business. The same is true ordering directly from the publisher.

So at that point in the year when I start thinking that I need to start thinking about Christmas (followed by the more panicky realisation in about a months time that actually it's almost November, work is crazy, only going to get crazier, and I need to do more than start thinking about it), I'm getting in my traditional 'think about where you spend your money' bit. It doesn't take much to make a difference to smaller (or even larger) businesses, but having them around is good for all of us. To borrow another phrase from that long ago training day, show them the love (I know it's a cheesy, corporate, thing to say - but there you have it).