Britain’s biggest bookstore chain often gets a bit of a bashing in the blogosphere, but they do good stuff as well. My Google Alerts recently turned up a link to a science fiction and fantasy book club run by their main Liverpool store. Kudos to Glyn Morgan (no relation) who appears to be the driving force behind it. If only they would do something like that in Bath or Bristol as well. Both cities have big student populations that would keep such an event going, and we have a bunch of good local writers who I am sure would be happy to pop along. If book stores want to fight back against the likes of Amazon they need to do things like this to get people in through the doors.
4 thoughts on “Well Done Waterstones”
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Actually there did use to be a Bath SF group that ran in conjunction with Waterstones (I shoukld know, as I was one of the folk who ran it!).
I’m not sure if Steve Andrews (author of two recent Bloomsbury guides to SF and Fantasy) still works up at the Bath University branch or if Graham Bray is still at the town branch, but if they do, they would be a good person to contact to kick things off again.
Hey, thanks for the good press. I’ve been trying to encourage other stores to take up the book club call, unfortunatly not every store has a suitable member of staff to lead such a group (I’m also a part-time student studying alternate histories, and did the MA in speculative fiction at Liverpool Uni). Interestingly though, despite Liverpool’s MASSIVE student population – most of the members who turn up to the club are actually non-students of all ages. I do have a few students who read along at home or use the club’s blog as a guide for what to read next.
The club’s been so popular that I’m now launching a sister group to focus on graphic novels. In the meantime I’m happy to spend my time doing what I do and it’s a joy to discuss the books I love with some people of like-minds.
Hi Glyn, thanks for dropping by. I know what you mean about needing to have a keen member of staff to keep such a project going. If you do happen to hear anything through the company grapevine about events in Bath or Bristol, please let me know. I’d be happy to help out, as would Colin Harvey and the BristolCon committee. I’m sure SFX would be interested too.
You should tell Leah Moore and John Reppion about your graphic novel club. I’m sure they’d be happy to help.
That’s a good idea, thanks for the suggestion. Given their recent adaptation of Dracula they might even be interested in the horror readings I’m organising around Halloween:
http://sciencefictionfantasybookclub.blogspot.com/2010/09/event-twisted-tales-horror-readings.html
*cough*furthershamelessselfpromotion*cough*
I’m going down to London in a few weeks for the annual Waterstone’s conference, if I run into anyone from Bath/Bristol I’ll be sure to mention this conversation to them. Anything to give speculative fiction a boost, if nothing else I want to be an author some day and the more people out there reading it the better 😉