Friday, October 13, 2006
Cat o' nine tales

I mainly resist using this blog to promote individual titles or authors. That's not what blogs are for IMHO but a comment here a couple of days ago has tempted me to write about Cat o' nine tales by Jeffrey Archer. The comment from an excellent independent bookseller said how pleased he is NOT to be selling books by Archer. I've never worked in a bookshop but I reckon I'd be pleased to be selling books by anyone.

Of course there are many people who have decided that Jeffrey Archer's prison sentence (one of the longest ever handed down for perjury) was not enough of a punishment for his crime (no violence involved, no theft, no damage to an individual apart from himself). This is probably because people simply don't like success combined with a lack of shyness but that's not justification for unrelenting vilification and censorship.

Outside Britain people see Jeffrey simply as a writer and his popularity is growing with every book he publishes. His latest book of short stories augmented by the world's greatest illustrator Ronald Searle is a case in point. I notice on Jeffrey's blog someone asking when he could buy a copy here in Mumbai. Here in India they care not a jot for British Archer-baiting. They just want good books from a brilliant story-teller. Try it out for yourself before sounding off, my bookseller friends.

 

#    |  Comments [5]  | 
10/13/2006 8:07:37 AM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
JA, blimey guv'nor what a hoot.

>>Try it out for yourself before sounding off, my bookseller friends.<<

Er, what are we talking about here ??...cat on'nine tails...a little flagellation perhaps...oh no my darlings, please not at this hour of the day.
Clive Keeble
10/13/2006 12:03:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Another successful writer - albeit with integrity intact - and a lack of shyness: Michael Crick. I can heartily recommend one of his, Jeffrey Archer: Stranger than Fiction.
Mancunian Mick
10/13/2006 4:57:44 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
Richard,

I can be accused of many things, but having spent a great deal of my working life selling books in south London - Streatham, Clapham, Camberwell, the Walworth rd and now Crystal Palace - where certainly no chain has a feared to tread, I don't really think elitism is one of them.

As we say 'round these parts: You're 'avin' a laugh.

I didn't say I was pleased not to be selling books by Jeffrey Archer, I said - for the reasons outlined in the original comment - I was pleased I no longer had to stock them. It's not snobbery, censorship or vilification just simple economics and the fact that I retain the right to assert my critical faculties in my shop. And yes, like you correctly say, I am pleased to be selling any book that sells.
Jonathan Main
10/14/2006 12:15:05 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
At risk of being sued for whatever I was always under the perhaps misguided illusion that er, Jeffrey's input into his own books was er, minimal and that editors had to do a great deal of sorting and re-writing, but of course I could be entirely wrong and it was all scurrilous rumour which we like a lot in Devon.
dovegreyreader
10/14/2006 1:05:12 PM (GMT Standard Time, UTC+00:00)
As far as I know Jeffrey Archer's books are edited no more than many other authors. I can, but won't , name several big names who need at least as much editorial work. There's nothing wrong with having a professional editor tidy up a manuscript an dthat's exactly what happens. It happens to most authors and it was interesting to note that John Sutherland felt that Kiran Desai's book could have done with a decent editor. Don't believe evrything you hear in the bitchy world of publishing.
richard charkin