What happens to old books…

I’ve been taking a break – and while on my hols, I found a bookshop in Granville Island market, Vancouver, Canada. Only it had moved premises. This is what they do with their old books:

There was I thinking that all old books end up in musty old secondhand bookshops (if they still exist), on sale for 20p if you’re lucky. But I had never thought there was a fate worse than that. Your book didn’t sell well. They couldn’t even give it away. So they send a warning to all writers out there: this is one cuts job you never want to see. (Is that the expression of the author?) And you thought getting an agent, publisher and finally to print was the battle. But now you know you could achieve all that, and still end up like this:

Oh yes, you see, there was more than one. Ha, but if you just publish an ebook, this could never happen to you: the photos of the end of your creativity, in turn the product of someone else’s creativity, could never be put on show like this! Something inside me makes me feel that this is a shame.

What do you think?

Advertisements