I have  a saying which makes the family yawn. It goes 'there are too many sofas in the world.' (Well, have you see the number of sofa adverts on television and in the colour supps ? )

Now, at the risk of being like a turkey voting for Christmas, I am adopting another saying. There are too many BOOKSHOPS in the world.  In the UK anyway.

Consider. Every city and large town has at least 1 and often, now, 2 Waterstones. It may have one or more independents. It may have a Borders. It may have a Blackwells or a Methvens. In addition it will have at least one W.H.Smith which is not a proper bookseller but it does sell quite a lot of books. There will also be one or two or more supermarkets which also sell books.

At this time of year, every publisher, no matter what they may say, is grappling with Returns.. hundreds and hundreds of returns. The reason the books are being returned is that they did not sell and they did not sell because there were too many of them out there. Some books, like  those by Jamie Oliver and Peter Kay, went on and on and on selling. The rest - well, they didn`t. They are now  being returned.  Returns, as I have said so often here that I bore myself, are a WASTE. Waste of time, money, energy, paper, petrol, carbon footfalls.. everything. If there were fewer bookshops there would be fewer returns. QED. There simply cannot be room on the high street for them all - al those rent, rates, staffing, lighting, heating. There just are not the book buyers to go round.

When I am dictator I am going to do two things. The first and most important will be to make people who carry umbrellas pass a test and have a licence. Then I will cut the number of bookshops. In half.