Despite the official publication of the UK edition of William Gibson's Spook Country on Thursday 2nd August, several days ahead of the official release of the US edition, there are disappointingly few British media reviews of the novel.
Let me re-phrase that there have been zero reviews published so far by the mainstream newspapers or broadcast media.
There has been:
- a piece about the Second Life virtual reality marketing experiment in the Technology Gadgets and Gaming section of The Times: "William Gibson brings Spook Country to Second Life" by Michael Parsons
- A surprisingly good review concentrating on the global real world and cyberspace societal aspects of the book on her blog, by an ultra left wing art historian and critic on her blog: "Freerunning through cyberspace" by Corrina Lotz
There has been no book promotion approaching even a fraction of that lavished on the Harry Potter books in any of the UK high street book store chains, and even the big central London bookstores have been treating Spook Country as if it were the deliberately self effacing and anti-publicity Node magazine which forms part of the plot.
Forbidden Planet Megastore has finally, after a month or so, confirmed that they will have a signing on Wednesday 29th August and have printed up their usual in house posters and leaflets, but they had no copies of the book on display on Friday.
Blackwell's bookshop is sponsoring the "Evening with William Gibson" on Tuesday 28th August at the TUC conference centre, but it literally seems to have only had two copies of the book (one of which I managed to purchase), and, on last Friday 3rd August, had no copies on display and no publicity material.
Foyles bookshop, to its credit, did, on Friday, have a dozen or so copies on display in the New Books and New Hardbacks sections, but none in their Science Fiction section, and no publicity material.
Borders did not have any copies or any publicity material either.
Waterstones seem to have had some copies for sale in Glasgow, but there are none in, for example the London suburbs like Wimbledon.
[UPDATE Monday 6th August] - suburban WImbledon does now have copies of the book on sale at Waterstones and at Books etc., but they are obscurely hidden away and have to be hunted for, with no promotional material.
Is Penguin UK having production difficulties with Spook Country or are they just unwilling to spend any money on marketing ? Even if that explains the lack of books in the shops,
why is there no "buzz" being generated in the mainstream media ahead of William Gibson's book tour in the UK in 3 weeks time ?
Surely they cannot be waiting until William Gibson's event at the Edinburgh Book Festival on August 27th, before they try to influence the UK mainstream media to take notice of Spook Country ?
Are the UK mainstream media going to wait until after the Spook Country appears on the US bestseller charts, before, reluctantly, giving it a review ?
No wonder newspaper sales and tv viewing figures are in decline in the UK - they are simply not providing people like me with either the raw data or with decent analysis of the information which we crave.
Despite William Gibson's stature as an author, there is a tremendous amount of competition from other good authors, and other types of entertainment and mental stimulation media which is vying for a share of the public's attention span and money.
I want Spook Country to be a bestseller in the UK and elsewhere, so that William Gibson will write some more novels.
Ideally, his next novel should also be available in downloadable electronic form, ahead of the publication of the paper or audio versions.
If Spook Country does well,then perhaps some
of the "in development" film projects will get decent financial backing, and perhaps also, a lot of people will think seriously about the surveillance police state issues and potential misapplication of technologies, which William Gibson's writings stimulate discussion of.
I guess that I shall have to write my own review ofSpook Country of the sort which I would be willing to pay money to read, which I shall publish here sometime after August 7th and before William Gibson's arrival in the UK in 3 weeks time.
