Bookseller on the Edge!

This is perhaps the strangest thing I’ve ever tried to do as a bookseller. I want to convince you to pre-order a book, but I don’t want to tell you anything about it. Not the title, not the author, nothing about the plot or premise. Nevertheless I want you to buy a copy. To explain this rather unusual desire I’ll have to tell you a story of my own.

A while ago I was handed a book. I’d never heard of it and didn’t recognise the author. It had no cover blurb, only a few quotes from people saying they liked it. I recognised those names so I put the book on my ‘to read’ pile.

A couple of weeks later I picked it up and began to read. I’d not thought about it since I put it on the pile and started it with no expectations. I was not far into it before I decided that this was a book I wanted to tell my customers about. But the further I read, the more it seemed to me that talking about it to people would diminish their experience, collapsing possibilities and inserting certainty, however subtle, like some cheeky quantum particle.

In short, I wanted other readers to have the chance to experience this remarkable book the way that I did. From that came the idea of blind pre-sales. It’s more than a little odd I admit, but I’m curious to see how it will fly. Does it sound like an adventure, a piece of dodgy marketing or just plain daft?  I guess I’ll find out.

The details: Pre-orders will cost $29.99 (it’s a trade paperback) and I’m expecting the book in about 4-6 weeks. The book will not be appearing on the shelf until after all the pre-order folks have had a chance to start theirs, and I’m working on some cool kind of way of presenting them in keeping with the spirit of the thing. I also won’t be writing about it or mentioning it either. If you decide to be part of this, even though I don’t think it’s likely that you’d stumble across it, I’d avoid book review sites too for a while just in case.

So who wants to play?  Email us here.