Woohoo
Just got on the post a signed HB proof of the new Douglas Coupland book!

I saw one of these on my colleagues desk and emailed the guy at Harper Collins to see if they had just a normal proof, but he ended up sending me a signed (well on a bookplate) numbered proof.
yay

Mine is number 46 out of 150...


I wonder how long before some show up on ebay...


(i don't want to brag, just had to tell someone who would appreciate it (i hope))

what do you say when you email these people?

'Hi, can you send me a proof of the new Douglas Coupland book please?'

yeah, i say something like:

I was wondering if you have any spare proofs of XXXXXXXX by XXXXXX.
If you don't it's ok, I'll wait till publication.

Normally it works, but i don't like doing this too often, I do it just for books I really want. From Harper Collins I also want to see if I get the Clive Barker Abarat book 2... but no proofs are out yet...

I guess working for a bookshop helps... Don't think they'd take to kindly to members of the public asking..

yeah... i think the only way for members of the public to get proofs is wither buying them on ebay or in a charity shop... (we normally send a few boxes of proofs noone wants to charity, no idea which one)

I may try, see what results I get for being cheeky...

just done a search for 'douglas coupland' on the harpercollins website, and got the following response:

"Your search drew results.
Please try again. "

ok, it'd be nice if it actually *showed* the results...

hehehe

the new book is called Hey, Nostradamus! and is to be published in september.

I've sent them an email. We shall see...

Er... who is Douglas Coupland ? Apart from being an author that is. Afraid I don't seem to have heard of him (but then he's probably never heard of me)

He wrote Generation X.

Which isn't as good as it's made out to be. But Microserfs is a work of genius, and I like All Families Are Psychotic, too.

Ah, I've got Microserfs. Interesting book, although I think the pages of random stuff fed into the computer is frankly twaddle.

I'm glad I haven't made that statement - otherwise quite a few people may remind me of salient facts re: Colour of household implements



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Yeah, I tend to just ignore the random pages. But i love the hamsters (or gerbils, whatever) running round the office... though i never figured out how they got the tubes and stuff past the doorway, without going up far too high. Unless they put it under the floor, but then the hamsters (or gerbils) would just stay down there all the time. Yes, I've thought about this too much.

I had to read that twice, jut in case I was supposed to understand it. I've concluded I wasn't. but will have to track said book down...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Read what twice? Was it me being confusing? Not to worry...

Well, after id put in a random comment it read like you were answering that rather than Skiffle, which is what confused me. A complete lack of knowledge of the bok in question also helped me enter that state...



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

Ah, sorry about that. And I don't even use the "reply to this message" doodah, making threading useless.

Anyway, I was replying to skiffle, as you've guessed. (Just to clarify.)

And in the book, they build a huge Habitrail thing right round the office for the gerbils (i think), who run about while they're working. Hence the "doorway" problem.

What about removing a segment of door at the bottom opposite the hinges, so that the tube can run through but the door can still shut?



PSD

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This is the work of an Italian narco-anarchic collective. Don't bother insulting them, they can't read English anyway.

It wasn't really going through the door I was thinking of, but going past the doorway, still inside the room. Just circling the room. Even if the door itself opened outwards, you'd trip over the tubes every time you came in...