TWO authors left copies of their own book in a store after staff at Waterstones “never got back” to them to organise a launch event.
Livvy Rose, from Glastonbury, and Chrissie Lloyd, from Bristol, published ‘The Scandal of Sexit’ last year and approached several Waterstones stores in Somerset to hold a book launch and meet the public to speak about their work.
The authors said they were told by the bookstore’s staff that the event could not go ahead due to some distribution problems.
Livvy and Chrissie contacted the Wells store again in the new year in January and February to check whether the launch could be held then but said “they never got back to us”.
The two authors then decided to bring some copies of their book to the store themselves, to “make a point with humour”.
They said: “Basically our publisher contacted local Waterstones in Wells, Yeovil, Taunton… and Wells was the best one.
“They said ‘we have a distribution problem’. The publication of our book and Christmas happened at the same time so we thought, ‘fair enough’.
“But we are in July now and we didn’t get any communication for us to go in and talk about the book.
“They had a distribution problem so we decided to take the books in ourselves (July 12) to make a point.
“They didn’t notice us doing it. They said we can’t do it now [last year] but they never got back to us.
“We asked them again in January and February asking them if it was possible to do it.
“Waterstones is basically saying ‘we support local authors’, and we are saying ‘no, you are not’.
“It is possible to buy the book on their website, we just wanted to organise the launch of the book and talk about it.
“They are trying to make us invisible, and we are tired of it.”
A spokesperson for the Waterstones store in Wells said: “The shop and our bookselling team are very much part of their community and always open to hearing about local opportunities.
“Of course, we can’t stock every book and in the case of The Scandal of Sexit, after careful consideration, we decided that the book and an event are not the right addition for us at this point.
“We understand that this is disappointing for the authors, but they can be assured that their book continues to be available to order in our shops and on waterstones.com.”
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