Sunday 29 November 2020

Posting books since 2007


I first posted CBe books from this post office in November 2007. Between then and now, I’ve made more than 1,700 trips to the same post office.

The books posted are those ordered by individual readers from the website. Orders from bookshops are despatched from the distributor, Central Books, but I’m not good at getting the books into bookshops: out of 72 titles published since 2007, 23 – almost a third – have sold fewer than a hundred copies out of Central Books (and 14 of those, fewer than 50).

Postage costs have increased, year on year; the cover price of the books (most of them are £8.99) has not. CBe gets no Arts Council funding. I’m not quite sure how CBe is still alive: something to do, perhaps, with the momentum generated by walking to the post office. I commend to you the Lockdown Subscription offer, available from the website: 10 books of your choice for £65, free UK delivery. Every subscription keeps me posting.

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