the conspiracy of coincidence
Summary
Blogger: NiiRole: Senior Editor
Area: Fiction & Poetry
Original Career: Scientist
Editor of the main poetry imprints until 2007, now focussing on fiction. Editor since 2001 » »
Books
As Editor:14-2: twenty eight love poems
Dance the Guns to Silence (with Kadija Sesay)
x-24: unclassified (with Tash Aw) mouthmark series
waterways poetry
lubin & kleyner
As Author:
eyes of a boy, lips of a man (1999)
I’m sure no one’s in any doubt about the human brain’s ability to invent – I mean look at the industry we’re in! And this week I think have come to understand one of the ways in which conspiracies start. See, about a month ago we left INPRESS (the group that helps promote independent presses in the UK) because we found more people we’re coming directly to our site to buy books than through them. At the same time we signed up with HSBC to start taking processing credit cards ourselves. At the time we had a nice steady level of book orders which we had calculated would cover the monthly payments to HSBC while we figured out how to drive more online sales on our new shop site. But, somehow, Central Books (who distribute books on behalf of INPRESS members) went and told Nielsen (who provide book availability information to retailers) that EIGHT of our titles were out of print. That list included four of our bestselling titles. Of course we didn’t know about this until I started to look into why our daily orders had suddenly dried to one book a week – an unacceptable level considering that we have 30 odd titles now! and even worse with the monthly HSBC fee going out… When I found out, my first thought was CONSPIRACY! And I could have run with that thought but I realised that Central (even though that WAS a dastardly act!) had no idea we had just started this thing with HSBC so it really was just unfortunate coincidence… My priority next week is to get those titles back on line – not planned at all, but my new priority.
My only pleasure this week came from knowing that I got through three manuscript edits, received one amended manuscript back, and I’m looking forward to the US release of Truth Thomas’ A Day of Presence and Ainsley Burrows’ The Wolf Who Cried Boy »»
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