TS Eliot got it wrong. April is not the cruellest month; January is, or at least it seems that way for booksellers. On January 2nd managers wearily slip their key in the door, disable the alarm, hit the lights and recoil in horror at the appalling vista that awaits them. Waste Land is not the half of it. The clamour of animated voices still echoes in the void, but Christmas is past; nobody will fight over the last copy of Brian O’Driscoll’s autobiography on this day, nobody will be yelling at the staff, jumping the queue, insisting on gift-wrapping for 10 books at 10 minutes to closing time. Because nobody will be there save the legions of the lost with nothing better to do. On January 2nd booksellers are left alone with the merchandise-returners, the chancers and the moody contemplation of how to start to return the shop to commercial vibrancy.
Where before Christmas the sleek hardbacks were piled high as the Manhattan skyline, now the displays replicate the ruins of Carthage. Skeins of ribbon wrap drift across the floor like tumbleweed. A stained wine glass skulks under the counter. Hung-over booksellers stare motionless, daring each other to start the work of converting Santa’s little grotto into a simulacrum of a Ben Dunne gym. Yes, folks, it’s detox season, and here comes the new-you campaign, that hardy annual of book promotions, replete with guilt-inducing how-to manuals on fighting the flab, kicking the bottle and quitting the cigarettes. I’ve never understood the logic of this thoroughly depressing charade. Barely anybody actually buys the wretched books – and those who do probably never open them.
But by far the most dispiriting New Year’s chore is packing the returns of unsold Christmas stock. Booksellers hate it because of the hard physical labour; managers resent revisiting the evidence of their reckless buying decisions. Lately, however, bookshops simply do what other retailers do: they slash prices and have a sale. Customers who bought Christmas hardbacks at €20 a pop now see the same books on sale at a third of the price, which must make them feel as if they’ve been played for fools.
An interesting question is why we bother with bound books at all at Christmas when, as everybody knows, digital technology has finally solved the “book problem”. Stocks of key titles no longer run out early, because the ebook is always available. How good does it feel, though, to give an electronic download to beloved Aunt Imelda? And how will Auntie fake her delight at being press-ganged into late adoption? Christmas is the big seasonal test for ebooks. Any wimp can look good in the summer, but looking good at Christmas is a job for a real book. At Christmas, more than ever, it becomes clear that ebooks are a lame solution to a nonexistent problem.
Bert Wright is curator of Mountains to Sea dlr Book Festival
