Waterstones windowshopping

[julesjones]

Ventured forth from the office at lunchtime just to have a quick wander around the neighbourhood, and decided that I would go to Waterstones, which is all of three minutes' walk from the office. Wherein I was most amused to discover that

a) it has a romance section tucked away behind the stairs in the general fiction section, even though they don't admit to its existence on the directory board

b) said romance section contained desperance's "Bridge of Dreams" and "River of the World", one being face-out. I didn't have time to go upstairs and check whether there were copies in the sf&f section, which is where I would have *expected* to find them.

Adding to my unseemly joy, the other side of this nook was occupied by the erotica section, which happened to contain one of my rare dead tree credits, and thus I had the experience of seeing a book with my name in the ToC on the shelves in a high street bookstore. I think it's the first time for me in a high street bookstore, even though I've seen my anthology credits in specialist shops.

Comments

[desperance.livejournal.com]

I told them that cover looked like a formula '70s Mills & Boon harem romance...!

[julesjones]

It was, nevertheless, somewhat bizarre to be scanning the shelves and realise, "Hang on, I know that cover, and it doesn't belong *here*!" :-)

[sallymn.livejournal.com]

Hey, in at least two big bookshops in Sydney, much of the comes up on their computer as in the 'romance' section'... they are situated next to each other in the store, but still...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Oooo! I know a lot of people by ebooks these days, but that must have been a lovely feeling to actually see a story of yours out in the wild in its native habitat. :)

[julesjones]

Yep. I don't have the fetish for print as a way of saying "really published with a real book" that a lot of epub authors have. I'm not terribly interested in doing signing or waving copies at friends (and certainly not giving copies to my family, given what I write). But the one thing I do miss is being able to go into a bookshop and see the book in the wild.