Back at the beginning of 2008 I made a bunch of predictions, some of them more serious than others.
How well did I do?
No high street book chain will make a profit during 2008. Well, that remains to be seen as they won't report their full year figures for a while yet but this could prove to be accurate.
But many independent book shops will. No way for me to know really, but the indies with blogs have been reporting good business. I certainly hope they have done well.
A publisher will sign up a debut novel for a £2m advance. Thankfully not, and hopefully we have seen the back of daft advances, at least for a while.
It won't sell very well. Rendered n/a by the previous outcome.
The Man Booker Prize shortlist will feature at least two books from independent publishers. I suppose Atlantic and Faber are technically independent so a bit of a flukey tick for this one.
Waterstone's new distribution centre will experience 'teething problems' (to be fair, all distribution centres experience teething problems) leading publishers to voice their 'concerns' to the trade press. Well, if not actually managing to open it can be considered a teething problem then point to me.
Limited edition copies of The Equivoque Principle by Darren Craske will be selling for £100 on eBay. There were copies on abebooks.com for over $100 but nothing for £100 I'm afraid. Maybe next year.
The independent books on the Man Booker shortlist will turn out to have been completely ignored by the broadsheet press when they were first published. The papers are then forced to review them and discover (surprise, surprise) that they are better than most of the stuff they review by default. Fair play to the newspapers, they had covered the two books quite widely, but then I was thinking of publishers such as Myrmidon, Snowbooks, Bluechrome and the like rather than Atlantic and Faber when I flippantly wrote this one.
Borders will radically overhaul its head office team following a review of Christmas. Yep, they did but whether it was because of Christmas, the need to cut costs or their head buyer walking out on them is open to debate.
Sebastian Beaumont's superb novel Thirteen will eventually be stocked by more than the current seven Waterstone's branches (I am betting on a final tally of 13, funnily enough). I am delighted to report that over 130 branches have it in stock at time of writing. Better late than never.
Kate Swann will leave WH Smith to head up HMV Group. I was joking.
The eventual Man Booker winner will be a huge commercial success, outselling the Richard & Judy titles for the year. Well, it has done very well but not that well.
Haruki Murakami will win the Nobel Prize for Literature. Nope, some bloke I've never heard of did.
An online retailer will offer weekly free book downloads for customers. No sign yet.
But Amazon Kindle will make no real difference to sales of e-books. Sales of eReaders are definitely strong but most publishers report only modest sales of eBooks so far.
Bloggers will overtake reviewers as the publishers' favoured tastemakers. I was joking again, but only a bit. I think this is inevitable and most of the bloggers I know have seen a huge increase in publisher interest in the past year.
Richard & Judy will divorce prompting a huge slump in all book-related share prices. Thankfully they are still very much married, although their split from Channel 4 looks like making a big dent in book sales linked to their show.
Marie Phillips will be signed up as TV columnist for The Guardian. Nope.
John Self will be signed up as a reviewer for the same paper. Nope.
I won't be signed up for anything. Oh yes, 100% accuracy there.
So, some right some wrong. Probably on a par with Mystic Meg.
Any predictions for the coming year, Scott?
Posted by: Chas N-B | January 05, 2009 at 09:53 AM
Er, no. I don't think I will.
Posted by: Scott Pack | January 05, 2009 at 10:38 AM
Hey, how is it going? Hope all is well!!!
Posted by: Leon | January 05, 2009 at 11:47 AM
"There were copies on abebooks.com for over $100 but nothing for £100 I'm afraid. Maybe next year."
Look on the bright side. If the pound keeps dropping, maybe next year $100 will be worth £100!
Posted by: John Self | January 05, 2009 at 12:26 PM
"But Amazon Kindle will make no real difference to sales of e-books. Sales of eReaders are definitely strong but most publishers report only modest sales of eBooks so far."
I think that Waterstones and Sony have a done a good job of getting the Sony Reader out with a bang. Though it might have fizzled a bit but at least it was a coordinated attack.
Hopefully Amazon will get the Kindle over here at some point but I'm praying that they'll go with an open standard for ebooks like epub rather than their own locked in Apple format.
I'm bubbling a bit about the Sony Reader as I've really fallen in love with mine.
Posted by: gav (Nextread) | January 05, 2009 at 07:03 PM
Why is the man reading, hand on chin, wearing a nice sweater, and that pretty window view and the flowers on the desk, (aka the photo of you) way the heck down, down, down? It should be the very first thing damn it!
Posted by: Isobella | January 06, 2009 at 12:38 AM
Just realised that an alternative title for this post could have been "How's My Divining?"
Posted by: John Self | January 07, 2009 at 01:25 PM