Q. A couple of weeks ago, on a Sunday morning, the Idler Academy arranged that there would be a ‘signing’ for my book. The Idler emailed the thousand idlers on their list and the headmaster’s mother came up from Oxford to help control the crowds. Two people turned up, both of whom were old friends. Mary, what do you advise?
—D.B., London W2
A. Do not take the apparent mass snubbing as significant. Since your book (‘Among Booksellers, Tales Told in Letters to Howard Hodgkin’, by David Batterham) contains the modest musings of a gentleman and scholar as he goes about his business in the world of rare books, it is likely that most potential purchasers would also be unpushy types and disinclined to consider the cornering of its author on a Sunday morning. Instead they would quietly buy the book from Amazon (at £8.95).
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