Waterstones The Author’s Friend

29th December 2006

For a writer to get a book published is only half the battle. The other half is getting it into the bookshops. My books Dear Air 2000 and Football Crazy are now available from all the main book wholesalers so now I have to make book retailers aware of this. With this in mind I called in at my nearest branch of Waterstones in Stockport this morning with a view to getting the name and address of the person at their head office who is in charge of buying books. I shouldn’t have bothered.
I asked the girl behind the counter for the required information but as luck would have it the manager was nearby and overheard me.
“What do you want to know for?” he asked.
“I’m an author.”
“We don’t do local books.” This said with a snotty expression and a disdainful tone of voice. I could have hit him but we authors know that the pen is mightier than the sword so I exercised restraint.
“So if Stephen King or John Grisham lived in Stockport you wouldn’t stock their books,” I said.
“I meant books of local interest.”
“My books aren’t local interest books. It’s me that’s local, not the books.”
He went on: “Anyway if you wanted to get them into Waterstones you’d have to approach the manager of each branch.”
“Are you telling me that Peter Kay dragged his carcass round every branch of Waterstones that you are now selling his book in?”
“It’s different for big names.”
I produced my books from my pocket. “Well would you be interested in stocking these two books from a little name. Who may one day be a big name should you deign to take pity on him and stock his books.” I offered him the books but he didn’t take them.
“It depends. On the deal. Whether we can sell them sale or return, what our discount is, if we get a bigger discount for quantity, all sorts of things. But I’m far too busy to go into that right now, try me in the new year.”
“Fuck off,” I said. Some times the mouth too is mightier than the sword.

Ignore this if you have already read it. My books are priced at £8.99 each and are available from Amazon, but readers of my blog can buy them direct from me for £7.50 including p & p. Just send me a cheque and I will send the book/books by return.

My address is –

Terry Ravenscroft, 19 Ventura Court, Ollersett Avenue, New Mills, High Peak, SK22 4LL

Dear Air 2000

Football Crazy

Published by

Razzamatazz

Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things. Hi. I’m Terry Ravenscroft, I’m aged 67 and…..whoooah, come back, I’m not ready to have the lid nailed down on my coffin just yet. Anyway I’m a very young 67. (About five years ago I went to see Pulp at the Manchester Evening News Arena. I was older than everyone else by at least 35 years. The eighteen-year-old next to me asked me if I’d ever been to the venue before. I replied ‘Yes I saw George Formby here once’. She’d never heard of him.) This blog is going to be about my life and the way I see things. Before I retired I was a comedy scriptwriter for Les Dawson and Smith and Jones amongst others so there’s a sporting chance that some of the things I write will be funny. One of the reasons I’m writing this blog, although by no means the only reason, is because I have a website www.topcomedy.co.uk which I hope you will log on to occasionally. I have yet to meet anybody who doesn’t like Dear Air 2000…. My hobbies are walking, playing crown green bowls, watching football, birdwatching , cooking, and, according to The Trouble, moaning. Oh, and I have a thing about Kristen Scott Thomas. A couple of people I will be mentioning from time to time are The Trouble and Atkins Down The Road. The Trouble is my wife. I don’t call her The Trouble because it’s cockney rhyming slang for ‘wife, trouble and strife’, but because she has the habit of starting sentences, especially to me, with the words ‘The trouble with you is….’ Then goes on to complete the rest of the sentence with words like ‘you never listen when I’m talking to you’ or ‘you never see the other person’s point of view’ or some such other frivolous complaint. Atkins Down The Road is my best friend and lives, not surprisingly, down the road. I started a weblog a couple of years ago but stopped doing it to write a novel about golf called ‘A Good Walk Spoiled.’ If you want to read the weblog it can be found on my website, if you want to read the novel it can be found on my other website, Razzamatazz, at www.razza.fsnet.co.uk along with lots of other things.

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