Michelle's corner

In case you don't know who J.R.Hartley is, he is a fictional character invented by advertising bods for British Telecom, back in the days of the Yellow Pages telephone directory.

He goes from book shop to book shop, asking if anyone has a copy of "Fly Fishing," by none other a person than J.R.Hartley himself. It seems to be long out of print. He eventually uses the Yellow Pages to expand his search, ringing around various book shops until one has a copy and his life is, thus, made complete.

The advert doesn't really explain what happened to the original book; did he manage to skewer it with one of his fishing hooks? Was it eaten by maggots? Who knows. (Yes, yes; I know you don't use maggots in fly fishing. I'm attempting to make a funny here; can you cut a girl a break?)

However, on Monday, I attempted to buy a copy of, "The Companion," from a book shop. A new title, I shouldn't suffer the same fate as Mr. Hartley, surely!

Oh, how wrong I was!!!

I don't count myself as an overly vain individual. My local Father wrote a book containing various country walks. He put a picture of himself on Twitter, holding his book, and the caption was literally, "Buy my book '----- ----- ---- ---- -----' on gaining O2 for the ------ via:" ... and the URL. I mean, not even so much as a, "please," or a gentle, "why not..." from a humble man of the cloth, no less!

However, the poor staff at Waterstones had to put up with my frustration.

In I walked, proud author with ISBN in hand. The book was on the web site; admittedly without a cover image because it was the second edition, recently released, but it where clearly there to order. I wasn't as dumb to expect it to be on the shelves; hell no. However, I should have been able to order the thing and pick it up in a fortnight, surely?

Apparently ... not.

It wasn't that I actually needed the book ... I have several copies of the second edition floating around the home office; but in marketing it is important that when you give someone an ISBN and tell them, "Sure. Just go down to the shop and order it," that this is exactly what they can do. If they then go to the effort only to be frustrated ... well, that's not good news.

At least Waterstones were a few steps ahead of W.H.Smith, who didn't even have the book on their system yet! ... and just to rub salt in the wound, I got home from work last night, to find the latest copy of the Yellow Pages on the mat. Gah!

*sigh* - Oh well, give it a few weeks and then try again, I suppose. "Excuse me; do you have a copy of Fly Fishing? Yes, it's by ... J ... R .. Hartley..."