Hmm PR company says don’t blog this and our offices aren’t that orange. Temptation is too much after a comment like that and frankly you’d make Stelios proud (last time promise).

Actually our media training was excellent - both Will (IT Director) and myself (Will feel free to reply if you think otherwise) completely changed character when a Dictaphone was produced and started to talk gibberish, despite being relatively normal up to then. Good to know such a basic piece of technology can defeat us.

Armed with the knowledge of our incoherence we now can try to work out how to talk to journalists, and tell them what we’re up to. This kicks off with the trade again in a couple of weeks.

It’s all getting quite close and a bit too real now, we’re visiting the venue on Monday too, which will bring home the rather nerveracking truth that we have to present our site to the real (albeit publishing & bookselling) World on the 19th.

What is v v cool (sorry Bridget moment) is that I’m getting e-mailed directly by people now asking for beta invites, I’ll be even more happy if some make it to eBay. I’ll be able to tick the secret list I have of new meeja things you must achieve.

+ a few extra invites available. If you want access to the beta BookRabbit get your name down now - will be very restricted! We have the venue booked for the trade presentation that happens on the same day, invites were signed off yesterday using our carrot theme, which is clean and bold - just have to see if how many we can press gang to turn up now!

Be interesting to finally launch and see people’s reactions, we’ve kept the whole thing pretty much under wraps and dished out Non Disclosure Agreements to everyone we have even breathed near. Makes us sound a bit paranoid but at least gives us some surprises for day one, even if everyone thinks we’re a bit touched!

I was told Bill Gates only speaks for 20 minutes at events today - so that’s my benchmark apparently.

A brief quote from the introductory note by Thomas Joy:

“It is necessary for a bookseller to be abreast of the times not only with his buying of stock, but with the systems of successful retailing. He must get rid of old-fashioned methods which inhibit his business, but hold fast to that which is good in the old methods. I believe a main reason for the demise of bookshops over the years, especially in the sixties, was largely their failure to move with the times…Above all, some old-established booksellers fail to appreciate that with the loss of the ‘carriage trade’ people must be attracted into bookshops by improved window and interior displays.”

“Bookselling is more than a trade - it is a vocation. Few booksellers regard their shops as simply money-making enterprises…”

(1973)

How many booksellers today have even heard of the Net Book Agreement?

The catalogue has increased from the 240,000 titles from 5,600 publishers listed by British Books in Print in 1971 to 3.4 million active ISBNs (1.9m unique titles) and at least 12,700 publishers in 2006.

The internet has forced a much greater change on the industry than ever seen before - and the fundamental changes being forced aren’t yet fully apparent.

I still remember microfiche and manual ordering (yes it was dire) and don’t get me wrong I’m not bemoaning these changes, just hinting that, actually, booksellers are rather good at coping with change - we just need to put our minds to how to harness them best.

The Internet definitely isn’t going away. The decisions made six or so years ago, at the end of the dotcom boom are now being rolled back, Waterstone’s parting from Amazon, Borders finally forging ahead with its stand alone e-commerce site, even WHSmith seems to have discovered it still owns a web site.

I wrote a piece for The Bookseller in early 2002 bemoaning what I saw as a missed opportunity for the trade. A trade that I see as unique in its love of literature and desire to delight customers with books – potentially meeting its perfect match in the internet, in enabling it to deliver the vast range of titles and the connection to every conceivable reader.

However even with the renewed vigour and enthusiasm seen within the business for the web, I feel we’re still letting Amazon define the terms. For Amazon it was always about the catalogue not the book.

Potentially the Internet really could offer what Jorge Luis Borges saw as the utopian dream of the Total Library - or at least a window onto it.

Good meeting with our new PR agency today. They have a very orange office, which actually adds a gloss to ours (with no natural light), so now if anyone complains at least I can reply - well it’s not orange!

We have media training booked for the week after next. Bit like lion taming but more dangerous (sorry obviously a lie) reminds me that The Fourth Hand was an excellent book though - read it!