Later on Pub Day

Now here's a curiosity for you, though I discovered it too late to fully enjoy it: a site called BookkooB. It compares prices for a book between different online retailers (yawn), but for lovers of trivia, coincidence, or synchronicity (pick one depending on your philosophic orientation) it also tells you what books are being published on a particular date.

Unfortunately, it isn't archival, and the entries appear to be writ in water. As far as I can tell, tomorrow we will no longer be able to access information about September 7th, 2007. So I hasten to inform you that 66 books were published in the UK on the 7th. In addition to the most important book--Shock and Awe, that is--this was also the pub date for:

The Pan paperback version of North by Brian Martin (congrats, Brian--I always liked that book)

The Late Hector Kipling by David Thewlis (yes, that David Thewlis)

The Gruffalo's Child by Julia Donaldson (yes, that Gruffalo)

The Boss's Wife for a Week by Anne McAllister (you guessed it, Harlequin Mills & Boon)

The Oxford Handbook of Systematic Theology (no author listed--maybe God wrote it?)

You can look forward easily enough by using the little calendars on the sidebar, so you can see who shares pub dates with LC Tyler (The Herring Seller's Apprentice), Faye L. Booth (Cover the Mirrors), or Peter Anthony (A Town Called Immaculate). Three months seems to be the limit, though; I don't find Alis Hawkins (January) or Aliya Whitely (February--is she prolific, or what?) in the opening months of 2008. Yet.

Meanwhile, a friend has received the following e-mail from Amazon UK:

Dear Customer,

We wanted to give you an update on the status of your order. We are sorry to report that the following items have been delayed:

David Isaak (Author) "Shock and Awe" [Hardcover]

Estimated arrival date: 15/10/07 - 31/10/07

We are sorry for any inconvenience this causes.

If I recall, something like this happened to Eliza Graham back in June. One can only hope that the astonishingly heavy orders caught them off guard. Yeah...that must be it.

And apparently the short supply is bidding up the price--although the Amazon UK website insists the book is "in stock", the price has jumped from £9.89 to £10.49. I guess I'd better hang on to my copies. Guess there's a run on the market.