Curious. Down again today, and this time the scale didn’t do that odd thing of giving me four wildly different weights before settling down.

The picture of the day is from my visit to Sunderland last November[1]. It’s a detail of Shadows in another light which is a lovely bit of modern sculpture on the banks of the Wear.

Shadows in Another Light

[1] Yes, I really do need to get out and take more pictures

Once upon a time, book prices in the UK were controlled by something called The Net Book Agreement. This didn’t have anything to do with fishing, but was a thingy that ensured that books (unless they’d been remaindered and sent off to clearance shops) could only be sold at the price printed on the cover. No “Three for Twos” in Waterstones, no “Half Price” stickers, and no mind-boggling Amazonian discounts.

There was much weeping and wailing over this[1] – larger retailers wanted to be able to sell books at a discount, but it was argued that this would put smaller bookshops out of business, and quite likely cause plagues of locusts to darken the land[2].

Anyway, commerce won out, the agreement was scrapped, and Amazon and Waterstones went on to rule the bookselling market in the UK, though the supermarkets are now taking a growing share.

And yes, the smaller bookshops have nearly all gone – either closed or taken over by larger chains. How much of that was due to being unable to compete on price, and how much to being unable to compete on the convenience and near infinite stock of Amazon[3] is one of those things that will no doubt be argued about by future historians.

But overall, speaking as someone who pays actual money for books, I’d say the removal of price controls has led to me buying a lot more of them.

So it’s with some alarm that I have to report an Evil Plot by some publishers. Yes, price controls are back! Not on printed books, of course, that wouldn’t do at all. No, it’s on eBooks, where they’re playing a different game. Some of the larger publishers are operating on what seems to be called the “agency” plan. Under this, sellers like Amazon, Waterstones and Apple are not buying the eBooks at whatever price they negotiate then selling them at whatever price they think will work best for them, but acting as agents who sell the eBooks at a price set by the publisher and keeping whatever proportion of the price has been agreed.

This is probably a Good Thing if you’re a publisher, but I’m not entirely convinced that it’s as good for customers. For instance, that Jasper Fforde book was actually more expensive in the Kindle edition than in hardback on the day it was published, and that doesn’t seem quite right somehow. I’ve noticed this with a number of recent releases – Amazon are still applying their usual discounts to new hardback and paperback books, but the Kindle versions are at a price the publisher has set. How this will affect eBook sales generally remains to be seen.

I expect some arguments between publishers and sellers to happen… 

[1] Gnashing of teeth optional
[2] It was something like twenty years ago, so I may be vague on the details
[3] I remember needing to order a book from a shop. Waiting time was measured in weeks rather than the day or two we expect now…

After his last book, Shades of Grey took us into another strange world, it was a moderate surprise to me to see Jasper Fforde return to his earlier creation – the world of Fiction and of Thursday Next, last seen in First Among Sequels. Except this time it’s different. The, err, real Thursday Next, Jurisfiction agent and inhabitant of a physical world almost, but not entirely unlike our own[1] is missing, and this is a problem as she’s needed for some negotiations to avoid a nasty war between genres.

So it’s the written Thursday who has to take over in this story. That’s the Thursday who plays Thursday in the books[2], who last time we saw her was a bit wet and ineffectual[3], and totally failed to impress Thursday[4], and indeed to qualify as a Jurisfiction agent.

And from then on, it’s pretty much what you’d expect – shameless wordplay, extreme silliness, and all the usual stuff you’d expect from Jasper. Will the written Thursday live up to the standard of the real one and maybe even find out what’s happened to her? Will a messy inter-genre war be averted? And will she end up being unread?[5]

Good stuff, as always.

[1] The dodos are nice
[2] Though it’s important to note that these are the books as published in Thursday’s real world, not ours, and have important differences
[3] This is actually Thursday’s[4] fault, as she objected to the previous versions of the books about her, which were more violent
[4] The, err, real one
[5] Not a happy fate for a fictional person