So maybe we should look to our own lives and the decisions we make and the fact that the choices we make can have a huge cumulative impact on society and especially our local communities.  This ties in with the new Indiebound initiative from the Booksellers Assocation.  Imported from the American Booksellers Association (all members are independent booksellers unlike the BA where my fellow members include Tesco and Waterstone’s) where Indiebound has been running for a couple of years as a grass-roots movement inspiring people to use their local independent businesses.  Our Indiebound pack arrived on Friday and both our shops now have the ‘Eat, Sleep, Read’ posters up.

And the Indiebound movement exemplifies what I was saying about how our personal choices can have a political impact, in some ways far more than waving a placard on a anti-globalisation march.  How many people  have ever ordered a book or CD from Amazon or bought a cheap t-shirt from one of the bargain-basement fashion retailers (who could sell it that cheaply because it was quite probably made in a sweatshop)?  We are seduced by cheapness into buying more than we need, often at the price of exploiting poorer communities.  Sometimes we are seduced by global branding and advertising into paying more than we need for products – Starbucks became fashionable in the UK at least partly because we were lured by the ‘Friends’ image – as though sipping an over-priced macchiato in a cafe with sofas would suddenly make us beautiful and interesting and surrounded by similarly hip friends.  We all do it – I’m as guilty of falling prey to the lures of imported out-of-season veg as anyone else.

Meanwhile, independent businesses – cafes, greengrocers, fishmongers, hardware shops, and – of course – bookshops are disappearing from our communities.  In terms of bookshops, when you shop with us you might not benefit from the loss-leader discounting seen on-line and in supermarkets (which is why you won’t see the new Jamie O or Nigella on our shelves – it isn’t worth wasting the space on them and we’d rather find you original and reliable alternatives) but you will benefit from our expertise; our knowledge of local titles and those most likely to be of interest to our customers, the quirky titles and lesser known authors that we search out and the events we run from bookgroups to author events.  You contributed to your community indirectly because local businesses donate to local causes in a way that major retailers don’t and you enabled us to create local jobs and pay local taxes.

In brief, shopping local and shopping independent whenever you can shows that you care about your community and that you don’t want to live in a homogeneous world where everything is bland and the decisions about what you wear, drink, eat and read are made by national or even international companies.

Voting is important but sometimes we send out a political message as much by the choices we make on a day to day basis just as much as we do at the ballot box every four or five years.  Sometimes it’s our personal decisions which are the most significant political statements.

But one thing leapt out. In the Observer print edition, accompanying that second article about the Lutyens and Rubinstein bookshop in West London was a sidebar in which Julie Myerson was quoted as saying:

“I buy all books on Amaz*n now because of the huge price difference. But I still use bookshops as places to go to first – to remind me of what’s out there and to look at and touch the books.”

This is Julie Myerson - Guardian columnist of the ‘all about me’ type, Newsnight Review contributor – writer of lit-fic novels which generally don’t get masses of attention beyond positive broadsheet reviews and being long-listed for various awards.  Not that a Booker long-listing is to be sneered at, but it doesn’t usually translate into masses of sales.  No, Myerson’s books are the type which usually rely on word-of-mouth and hand-selling by booksellers who are passionate about them.

Until her last book.  The Lost Child is a lightly fictionalised account of her son’s drug-taking and subsequent ejection from the family home aged 17 and garnered many column inches (accompanied by pics of JM looking meaningful and some interviews with her understandably pissed off son) due to the dubious morality of exploiting one’s family situation for financial gain – is it really any different to Katie Price’s apparent inability to conduct her life without a film crew on hand?  This publicity meant a huge increase in sales and Myerson probably feels that she doesn’t need to concern herself with independent bookshops any more.

I don’t mind people buying books from Amazon if they’re cheaper – it’s one of the reasons why we don’t waste space on glossy sleb chef cookbooks and we skip on much best-selling hardback fiction with its over-inflated RRP (to allow for the massive discounting that goes on), but I do object to people using us as Amazon’s shop window as Myerson is advocating.  Come, browse, pick up the new Dan Brown on-line or in Asda if you wish (because they’ll be selling it for less than we can buy it in for), but spend some money with us and don’t just pay lip service to the fluffy, romantic idea of having a local independent bookshop.  Especially if you’re a writer of less than entirely commercial fiction such as Myerson’s because you really should appreciate what the word of mouth of booksellers can do for sales – not for nothing is Per Petterson’s Out Stealing Horses our best-selling fiction title. 

Myerson would have done well to remember is that when she’s no longer able to promote her books by prostituting her family circumstances she’ll be hoping that us indies are going to support her and embrace her efforts.  Right.  Think you might have shot yourself in the foot on that one Jules.