The Bookshop Blogger #13

Tuesday, 18 May 2010, 11:28 PM

So we’ve all learned a new term over the last couple of weeks: “Hung Parliament.”   It seemed to take ages for the three political parties to decide who should join up with whom and what goes best with what. It seemed so obvious at the start; tradition says that the Liberals form pacts with the Labour party - but apparently that’s all so 20th Century.

The thing is that people fall in to different types when making choices, and I see this most clearly when people are browsing the 3 for 2 selections in our shop.

At the top you have the two tribes. Broadly speaking, these are the fiction versus non fiction book buyers. Of course, there are people who, like Romeo and Juliet, buy across this divide; as I look at my own bookcase I have 19th century novels sitting next to books on astrology - but I am a book lover.

Generally, people buy books to gather information (the non fiction tribe) or for recreation or distraction (the fictionistas) but the great thing about 3 for 2 is that it allows you to experiment.

Of course, there’s a rhyme and a reason to how 3 for 2 books are chosen: when a writer brings out a book, previous works by the same person find their way into the promotion; sometimes it’s chosen thematically, eg travel or sport or any genre. Recently, we had a 3 for 2 offer looking at American Literature, and a pretty eclectic mix it was too.

In case you hadn’t noticed, I’m a fan of this idea. To me it’s a win/win. If you see a book you like and nothing else takes your eye then so be it, come in, get your book and go. But if you see a couple of titles, well then, we’re in business!

I’m not a fool, obviously I can see the business side of it - it’s a way of coercing people into buying more than they intended. I know also that it means less money for the writer, in the short run anyway, but by the same token it’s a way for a young writer’s work finding its way into someone’s shopping basket that might not have happened if it was full price and stuck on a shelf!

All I’m saying is that in the early days of the Labour party, they rode on the coat tails of the Whigs, but it all ended in disaster for the Liberals as the Labour party grew and ousted the Liberals from the nest, and, as a result we, the Electorate, found ourselves with less choice, but if we use 3 for 2 promotions as a way of trying something different, that new young writer or that book from across the fiction/non fiction divide gets bought as the one that makes up the trio and suddenly our choices grow.

So go into your local bookshop and buy the two books you want and then throw something you’ve never even heard of into the mix - what’s the worst that can happen? You didn’t like something you didn’t pay for. It’s not like you voted Liberal and ended up with a Conservative.