Confessions of an out-turner. (Or is it turner-out?)

Yeah, sure, I've done it. I've been in bookshops, found my book on the shelves, spine-out, and turned it round so the cover's showing. I'm not proud of it. But you do what you've got to do. I did it in Waterstones in Manchester. And I did it in Borders on Charing Cross Road. I've only got another 3,898 retail outlets in the country to go.

Actually, I won't have to do it in Foyles, because they have a lovely big display unit proudly flaunting the Macmillan New Writing titles near one of the doors. It's a three-sided unit, which we share with a display devoted to Samuel Beckett and another headed 'BESTSELLERS'. If you approach it from a certain direction, you could be forgiven for thinking that the latter heading refers to all the books on the unit. Who knows? Maybe it does. I've no idea how many copies you have to sell to be considered a bestseller in hardback these days.

By the way, I couldn't resist going back into Borders to see if they'd pushed my turned-out copy back in. My heart sank, as I couldn't see the cover - or the spines - on the shelf where I'd found them. I could only imagine that they'd decided to remove the books altogether to punish me for my cheek. But then I spotted the cover on another shelf. They'd rearranged the shelves, presumably to fit in new books, and moved me along a bit. In the process, they'd turned all my books out (there were about 6 copies, I think). It seemed that whoever had stacked the books liked the cover enough to put it on permanent display. My cunning ploy worked!

Now, where did I put my list of UK book shops.