Two new novels to add to my expanding Christmas wish list! It's all books and pens at the moment. But is there anything else in life?

That is depressing news. Although I suppose it at least means that those indies have guaranteed themselves 'turkeys' for Christmas...

After waiting for over a year and a half from one indie, who picked up THE WOODEN MAN from the slush pile and are still mulling, I've decided to go independent myself. It seems that a unique selling point as a literary thriller is a marketing paradox. With the help of an ex literary agent, it's a confusion I intend to clear up. If you have a moment I'd love you to cast your eye over this challenge: www.myspace.com/rabritton.

Love the blog.

R.A. Britton

A year and a half is far too long. Even a half is too long.
Good luck with it.

I want to know how angels write. One often sees the phrase "writes like an angel" on blurbs, and I never know what I'm supposed to think.

Thought you'd like a bookseller's perspective -

We've joined this 1 off independent buying group for 2 reasons. 1) Because it's a good thing that publishers and a major wholesaler have shown willing with this project even if it's not ideal and it should be supported; 2) Because despite the fact that some of the titles are no good for our market (in our case, I won't sell many Jeremy Clarksons or Dick Francises), there's enough quality/inevitable gift titles in there to warrant it and the terms are such that it's easy to do well/push particularly hard on those ones and return those that don't do well.

I suppose it all depends how the indies involve use the books. Any bookshop should sell 10 copies of "Dangerous Book for Boys" or the new "QI" book or the "Penguin freezey" book this Christmas. Many of my regulars (whatever eclectic stuff they look for all year round) are bound to need a copy as a gift for someone. So I want them to buy it from me and to be able to give them at least some kind of discount on those "mainstream gifts" whilst they're in here shopping for more eclectic/intriguing gifts. I don't want them buying the eclectic stuff from me and then naffing off round the corner to take advantage of 50% discounts on the mainstream titles....but I can understand why they would so this enables me to at least give them some incentive from one-stop shopping.

Just because we're doing offers on these titles, doesn't mean we're not still displaying our usual mix of interesting stuff on the tables and not using parts of our window for our "country of the month" feature and "independent publisher of the month" feature.

In fact I'm glad they didn't go for more unusual titles - customers expect us to spot these for them/recommend them/take punts on them. I want that side of the business to be in our control and I'm sure other independents feel the same, so I don't think the buying group would work on that kind of title. No-one would want to take the same risks.

Apologies for typos...written in haste...awaiting arrival of Jeremy Bowen for the biggest event of our very short life. Eeek.