The Bookshop Coincidence!

Back in late 2023 I started writing something, and in early 2024 that something was a complete book, called The Bookshop Book. 

In this post in late 2024 I was offering folk on my Patreon access to it.

The book centres on a bookshop called ... Books.

The name is explained not as a lack of imagination on the owner's part but by the fact that the proprietor's surname is Books, and Books's Books felt rather too much for him.

All good so far.

Today a Facebook advert alerted me to a new TV series called Bookish about to drop 2 days from now. Here's a still from the trailer:

Eagle-eyed readers will notice that the bookshop (around which this series is set) is called Book's.

Moreover, it turns out that it bears this name because the proprietor (the star of the show) is a Mr Book...

So - I now expect that when The Bookshop Book hits the shelves in 2026, if Bookish turns out to be a popular show, I will be accused of copying from it.

And the point of this blogpost is simply to flag the coincidence at work here. 

Ironically, The Bookshop Book is tangentially related to The Library Trilogy, and in both works I talk about how the Library uses the currents of coincidence to bring interested parties together and manipulate the world. Coincidence?

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How empty is the glass?

 

No profundity on offer here, but I was once again struck by the backlash against GRRM, evidenced in every comment chain ever on posts about A Game of Thrones / A Song of Ice and Fire.

Yes, very likely he won't finish the series. Yes, even the ultimate delivery of The Winds of Winter is uncertain.

Yes, from the perspective of an eager reader this is difficult to understand.

But. And it's one of those big buts I cannot lie about: some of my greatest moments in many decades of reading fantasy have been down to Mr George RR Martin. Many of my greatest moments in many decades of watching fantasy have been down to that same GRRM and the people who brought his story to the screen.

The landscape of my imagination would be a flatter, less exciting one without the contributions from this one series of books, finished or unfinished. My glass may not be full to the brim, but what there is in the occupied section is of such quality that to complain about the open space above it would be churlish.

And you don't want to be a churl, do you?

It's a strange and wonderful thing to hand out packets of your imagination to strangers and see them enjoying it. It's traditionally a scary business because you might be found wanting - the reader might complain, or worse: yawn. But there's a flip side to that terror-coin. It's also scary when the readers go all in and invest emotionally, not just until the final page, but past that into their broader lives and identities. Some of them start to feel an ownership of the thing that the author created.

There are analogies to be made with the end of a lunch date being considered by the 'deserted' party as the author bailing on a love affair. Obviously, the vast majority of readers miffed at the failure to complete a series do not fall into this category. But some of those venting on GRRM comment chains are sure doing a good impression of it.

You might expect me to be smug because I have 1+ books a year published. Or jealous because GRRM's 10+ year old books sell way more than any of mine. But it's more like watching two people you really like lay into each other, with heavy words being thrown, and just wishing it didn't have to be like this.

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SPFBO Champions' League!

After 10 years we have 10 champions. So, the only logical thing to do is to line them up on a board and have a champions' league!

All 10 champions have been great sports and volunteered to take part.

The book that comes 10th in this contest will be 10th out of the 3,000 books to have entered the SPFBO. So don't feel bad for them. It's an extraordinary accomplishment.

Here they are in the order they won, from The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble's Braids (2015) to By Blood, By Salt (2025).

The judges / judging teams are shown and linked on the orderboard further down the page. 

They are free to work to any timescale within the 6 months alloted (June 1st - December 20th), and can review individually or in batches.

There will be no scores!

The only requirement is that as they review each book they must place it on the ordered list they're compiling and say where it fits among the books they have already placed.

The 10 orderings will be combined into an overall ordering and the book at the top of that ordering at the end of the contest will be the champion of champions!

There will be a trophy - possibly trophies - we're working on that.

For more about the contest in general and for info on SPFBO 11 - check the main page. 

 Ten Years!

The Matrix!

(click on any cover for the judge's review)

Fantasy-Faction	Fantasy Book Critic	The Weatherwax Report	Before We Go Blog	Queen's Book Asylum	Philip Chase	Captured in Words	Bookborn	Hello Future Me	2ToRamble

                   

The Current Order!

Initially Chronological

Updated as results come in.

This will be highly volatile - expect change!

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SPFBO 10 has a winner!

The 10th annual Self-Published Fantasy Blog-Off is over!  #SPFBO #SPFBOX

After 11 months of hard labour by ten wonderful blogs, 300 books were whittled down to 10 finalists and then to 1 champion. 

And here it is!

And here it is in with the Selfie-Stick award prior to shipping to J.L Odom in the States.

I've now read the book and it 5* all the way. You can read my review on Goodreads.

Do check it out. The book has had very few readers, so it's exactly what this contest was set up to find - a wonderful fantasy book that might well have been entirely overlooked without some way to focus attention on it and get the ball rolling!

Please check out the finalists' score-board. It was the tightest contest we've ever had and there will be something you'll enjoy here.

And if you have a self-published fantasy book of your own, the next contest - the 11th annual SPFBO (SPFBOXI), opens its doors to contestants in January 2026. Take a look!

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Best Bestseller?

I'm told that THE BOOK THAT HELD HER HEART will appear in 6th place on the upcoming Sunday Times bestseller list!

Which ain't bad on a partial week's sales and competing with books from subscription boxes.

Well done Harper Voyager UK for getting it out there.

The graphic shows my previous efforts. And whilst The Library Trilogy definitely isn't my bestselling work (that's The Broken Empire trilogy), it certainly has potential to do well.

The books don't have a tremendously high average score on Goodreads, but I feel that's because they're more literary than my previous work, and that always leads to lower scores. Moreover, as with The Broken Empire, the people who like these books REALLY LIKE these books. The storyline drew in a number of readers because of the romance elements, but these were never romance books and I hope they leave the readers with more enduring memories along with questions that they will return to.

If I had to guess which of my books people will still be talking about at some point a decade or two in the future, it would be these ones.

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The Locked Library

The Locked Library are a part of my UK editor, Voyager, that produces fancy editions to give away in subscription boxes. For the boxes, these will be book 1s if they are from series. But for my Library Trilogy, they made follow-ups for book 2 and book 3 that could be ordered from them (all sold out now).

Here they are, with the excellent covers and book end art by Tom Roberts.

The only thing not shown are the author letters in each.

 

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The Book That Held Her Heart is out!

 

Book 3 of The Library Trilogy is in the shops on both sides of the Atlantic now!

I've sent out the news letter, saturated my social media, signed a ton of books, don't The Big Idea on Scalzi.com - in short, I've pulled all the levers available to me, and it's in the gods hands now.

A lot of the burden of marketting falls on authors these days, but in the end there's only so much to be done. The publishers get it on bookshop shelves, and the primary engine of book sales after that initial push is readers recommending the book to readers. Readers talking about the book. Readers putting it on their social media.

Books need a ramp to take off - the best book in the world can die if it doesn't get that critical mass behind it to make the readership start taking notice. But after that, whether it will fly far depends entirely on the public.

I've launched the last of the trilogy, and I'm on to the next!

2026, 2027, and 2028 will see the release of the Academy of Kindness trilogy, starting with Daughter of Crows. A dark tale that veers closer to vibe of The Broken Empire than any of my trilogies since we waved Jorg a fond farewell.

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