They’ve shaped our world and we still couldn’t do without them – so why on earth are books so hard to sell, asks Sam Leith
It was a book about mountain climbing, I think. Anyway, one among the 300 or so review copies of books that get sent to me every week in my role as literary editor of the Spectator. Mostly, the drill is straightforward: jiffy bag, book, press release. All easily opened and binned or, if they look specially promising, set aside to be sent out for review.
But then there are the special ones. The ones that have gone the extra mile in the hope of being noticed. Mostly these are slightly annoying: the book inside wrapped with hard-to-undo ribbon, say. Or a bunch of confetti tumbling out of the padded envelope and spilling all over the floor. Anyway, along with this forgettable – see! It didn’t work! – book about mountain-climbing, or something, was enclosed a small packet of Kendal mint cake.
Had I been an MP, I’d have had to solemnly enter the Kendal mint cake into the register of members’ interests. But I’m a book reviewer, and our ethical framework is looser. So I ate it, or half of it, and chucked the other half away, because who likes Kendal mint cake all that much anyway? Still, it got me to thinking. Perhaps this sounds ungrateful, but what I was thinking was: the book world must have the crappest bribes of any industry.
I think, for instance, about those friends who write about clothes, or make-up, or food and drink, and whose postbags groan with valuable sequinned objects, or pots and potions, or bottles of something delicious and intoxicating, and who are invited frequently to what the gossip columns call ‘glittering launches’. I think, or try not to think, of those who report on cars, luxury watches, holidays. Or those who junket regularly to New York or LA for launches of films and video games. And, readers, the Kendal mint cake is ashes in my mouth.
This is not, I should hasten to add, a plea for more extravagant bribery. Rather, it’s a reflection that the lameass-to-nonexistent bribery in the book world is reflective of the terrible way in which books are undervalued in modern civilisation. Bribes are no more than the canary in the coal mine.
The case in their favour is pretty clear. Leave aside, for a moment, the fact that without books there would pretty much be no modern civilisation. Books are our collective memory and without them, and the ability of each new generation to learn from them, we’d all still be telling each other campfire stories, scratching our furry parts and worshipping stones.....MORE
No, leave that aside (but note it all the same). Consider the present-tense case for books. They are the most incredible value for money....
