As well as online and by personal communication with me, my biography of George Calderon can now be bought at the following bookshops: Blackwell’s of Oxford, Daunts of Hampstead, Foyles of Charing Cross Road, Jarrolds of Norwich, the National Archives bookshop at Kew, and…Heffers of Cambridge.
Where Heffers (owned by Blackwell’s) is concerned, thereby hangs a tale. They took delivery of ten copies only yesterday:
The books are delivered.
Since it is Cambridge’s most famous bookshop after antiquarian David’s, I wrote to Heffers well before publication date (which was 7 September). In fact, I made out a strong case to them for staging my launch there, surrounded by their stock of Russian literary classics in translation (particularly Chekhov) and linked in with the University’s Slavonic Department. No response. A fortnight later, I wrote to the manager again, pointing out that Heffers’s parent company, Blackwell’s of Oxford, had not only bought ten copies outright but were going to mount a ‘promotional around Calderon, Russian Literature and Chekhov during University term’. No response.
Well, having after a visit rejected Toppings of Ely as a venue for the launch, we settled for Cambridge’s Polish Club, Polonia, where the vodka and food were ripping (forgive the Edwardianese) and we had a pretty uproarious time.
Once Blackwell’s had got their promotional underway, I emailed the only address I could find for Heffers, implying heavily that if Blackwell’s of Oxford could do this, why couldn’t Blackwell’s of Cambridge? No response. One has to accept that there are people who, extraordinary though it sounds, don’t buy books online but go to physical bookshops to browse and buy. Around this time, it was becoming increasingly embarrassing as about ten people I know in Cambridge asked me whether they could buy it at Heffers, or told me with a tone of affront: ‘I haven’t seen it in Heffers!’ It annoyed me too, because some of my friends or acquaintances are actually embarrassed to come to me to buy my book, and when they do I feel a similar pressure of embarrassment to give them a copy free…
I seriously considered how I could outwit the CCTV cameras in Heffers and plonk half a dozen copies in the middle of their front display desk. But then I wouldn’t have made anything from them. So there I let it lie. Until the other day I found myself on the website ‘Visit Cambridge’ and there was a different email address for Heffers. I saw red and thundered out, more to get it off my chest than anything:
I have had an email from Professor X of Y College this week complaining that he went into Heffers (Blackwell’s Cambridge) to buy a copy of my book GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS (see sam&sam.co.uk) and was told you don’t stock it. I have written and emailed you three times about this matter with no response whatsoever. If Blackwell’s Oxford, Daunts Hampstead, Foyles London, the National Archives bookshop and Jarrolds Norwich can take 6-10 copies on sale or return, why cannot my local bookshop Heffers that I have been patronising for 52 years?
Naturally I wasn’t expecting a response, but there must be something about the Visit Cambridge website that I don’t know, because I promptly received an apologetic response from the very manager of Heffers to whom I had written by Royal Mail twice in July. To cut the tale short, he agreed to take ten copies and display them as though the book had just been published — on their front display desk, I trust.
Naturally I do not recount all this out of demented Meldrewism, but simply to demonstrate that selling books as an independent publisher is not a doddle. However, there is another moral, I’m afraid: Never write emails whilst seeing red. I carelessly said ‘6-10 copies on sale or return’, when I should have said ‘outright like your Oxford shop’. The manager of Heffers has taken ten copies, but held me to sale or return.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
Related
Michel and Vera Fokine in “Scheherazade”, 1914 (The Music And Theatre Library of Sweden, creative commons)
George Calderon, 1912
Frontis piece by Frank Calderon
Monarch Butterfly Madeira
Patrick Miles in his summer house, 11 December 2016
Jean Ryckaert, May 1916.
Christmas 1901 Cartoon by George Calderon
A happy memory of Trinity College: undergraduates breakfast together in Downy V. Green, p. 77.
Captain of the 11
Unpublished watercolour by George Calderon, Tahiti 1906
Sir Richard Vincent Sutton c. 1913
The entrance to Fort Brockhurst (picture from Britain’s Past)
George and Kittie Calderon 1905
Figure from Gauguin’s 1899 painting ‘Tahitian Women with Mango Blossoms’ (left); George Calderon’s pencil sketch ‘Manu’ (right)
Colonel Sir Walter Coote Hedley c. 1920
George Calderon c.1901
Basic form of the Calderon coat of arms
K.N. Das Gupta and Margaret Mitchell in an Indian Dramatic Society production of The Maharani of Arakan, 1913?
Book sent to George Calderon in Russia by his mother, Christmas 1895.
Heffers surrenders after 7-month siege
As well as online and by personal communication with me, my biography of George Calderon can now be bought at the following bookshops: Blackwell’s of Oxford, Daunts of Hampstead, Foyles of Charing Cross Road, Jarrolds of Norwich, the National Archives bookshop at Kew, and…Heffers of Cambridge.
Where Heffers (owned by Blackwell’s) is concerned, thereby hangs a tale. They took delivery of ten copies only yesterday:
The books are delivered.
Since it is Cambridge’s most famous bookshop after antiquarian David’s, I wrote to Heffers well before publication date (which was 7 September). In fact, I made out a strong case to them for staging my launch there, surrounded by their stock of Russian literary classics in translation (particularly Chekhov) and linked in with the University’s Slavonic Department. No response. A fortnight later, I wrote to the manager again, pointing out that Heffers’s parent company, Blackwell’s of Oxford, had not only bought ten copies outright but were going to mount a ‘promotional around Calderon, Russian Literature and Chekhov during University term’. No response.
Well, having after a visit rejected Toppings of Ely as a venue for the launch, we settled for Cambridge’s Polish Club, Polonia, where the vodka and food were ripping (forgive the Edwardianese) and we had a pretty uproarious time.
Once Blackwell’s had got their promotional underway, I emailed the only address I could find for Heffers, implying heavily that if Blackwell’s of Oxford could do this, why couldn’t Blackwell’s of Cambridge? No response. One has to accept that there are people who, extraordinary though it sounds, don’t buy books online but go to physical bookshops to browse and buy. Around this time, it was becoming increasingly embarrassing as about ten people I know in Cambridge asked me whether they could buy it at Heffers, or told me with a tone of affront: ‘I haven’t seen it in Heffers!’ It annoyed me too, because some of my friends or acquaintances are actually embarrassed to come to me to buy my book, and when they do I feel a similar pressure of embarrassment to give them a copy free…
I seriously considered how I could outwit the CCTV cameras in Heffers and plonk half a dozen copies in the middle of their front display desk. But then I wouldn’t have made anything from them. So there I let it lie. Until the other day I found myself on the website ‘Visit Cambridge’ and there was a different email address for Heffers. I saw red and thundered out, more to get it off my chest than anything:
I have had an email from Professor X of Y College this week complaining that he went into Heffers (Blackwell’s Cambridge) to buy a copy of my book GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS (see sam&sam.co.uk) and was told you don’t stock it. I have written and emailed you three times about this matter with no response whatsoever. If Blackwell’s Oxford, Daunts Hampstead, Foyles London, the National Archives bookshop and Jarrolds Norwich can take 6-10 copies on sale or return, why cannot my local bookshop Heffers that I have been patronising for 52 years?
Naturally I wasn’t expecting a response, but there must be something about the Visit Cambridge website that I don’t know, because I promptly received an apologetic response from the very manager of Heffers to whom I had written by Royal Mail twice in July. To cut the tale short, he agreed to take ten copies and display them as though the book had just been published — on their front display desk, I trust.
Naturally I do not recount all this out of demented Meldrewism, but simply to demonstrate that selling books as an independent publisher is not a doddle. However, there is another moral, I’m afraid: Never write emails whilst seeing red. I carelessly said ‘6-10 copies on sale or return’, when I should have said ‘outright like your Oxford shop’. The manager of Heffers has taken ten copies, but held me to sale or return.
SOME RESPONSES TO GEORGE CALDERON: EDWARDIAN GENIUS
‘The book is written with great assurance and the reader always feels in safe hands. I liked the idea of it being a story and I read it the same way I would read a novel.’ Harvey Pitcher, writer
‘It is a masterly synthesis of your own approach with scholarship and very judicious discussion of the evidence.’ Emeritus Professor Catherine Andreyev, historian
‘A monumental scholarly masterpiece that gives real insight into how the Edwardians viewed the world.’ Arch Tait, Translator of Natalya Rzhevskaya’s Memoirs of a Wartime Interpreter
‘This comprehensive, meticulously researched and highly readable biography, which the author describes as a “story” rather than an academic biography…’ Michael Pursglove, East-West Review
‘It is bound to remain the definitive account.’ Laurence Senelick, Fletcher Professor of Drama, Tufts University
‘Presents the Edwardian age, and Calderon in particular, as new and forward-looking.‘ Emeritus Professor Michael Alexander, in Trinity College, Oxford, Report 2017-18
A review by DAMIAN GRANT appears in the comments to Calderonia’s 7 September post.
A review by JOHN DEWEY appears on Amazon UK.
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