The Hedonist Joint Stock Co.

Pdf of this story here - a bit big at 13.7Mb but I think thats because two acts of parliament are reproduced in it at enough detail to read and print out.
(It has been typset to print onto A4 pages and fold into an A5 booklet. Hassle to do, but you end up with a book at the end of it.)

Books. That's what we make here at Hedonist Press. It's all fine, everything's great, and thanks to the super folk at w.a.s.t.e. we can sell them to people - especially- people on the internet, people sitting at home or in the office at computers.

But sometimes that is not enough. Blimfield, that eccentiric M.D. of ours, reckons a book is not a book until its on sale in a bookshop. The only reason he's making books in the first place is because he's quite old fashioned and he still thinks its more comfortable to read bits of paper than computer screens. (Some people will never catch on to the modern world, huh?) So old Blimfield sets out with a sales team and an armfiull of books to visit his local bookshops in Bath, that oasis of culture, famed for it's literary associations (even a Jane Austen Museum, no less).

But guess what - not one bookshop in Bath was prepared to stock any of our books. When our charming head of sales paid a visit to Waterstones clutching a copy of Catacombs Of Terror!, they said they didn't have anyone on the premises who was authorised to make decicions on which books to stock.

How d'ya like that? There's our sales manager at Waterstones in Bath with a book about Bath, published by a Bath publisher, written by a Bath author. It was typset in Bath and the furthest any of these words have been before they reach your yes in Chippeham, where the book was printed. On the counter is a copy of Bristol magazine Venue which containes a two page spread about the book. Waterstones have even got a special section of local interest books, but if you want your material included on it, you've gotta get hold of someone in London. Or Edinburgh.

Our sales team was so depressed it nearly gave up the publishing business altogether in favour of a life of farming. But fortunately our sales team didn't give up totally. They said "Bollocks to the buggers, let's just sell them ourselves! Direct to the public! Hurrah for private enterprise!"

And so the Struggling Retailer was concieved. A mobile market stall errected on a Dutch bok-fiets (box-bike) operating on a Pedlar's Certificate. It seemed like a great idea, and the Hedonist sales department got the train to Bristol to buy a pedlar's certificate from the Police .

Then we did a poster offering out retailing service to other artists, who are finding it as difficult to sell their art as Hedonist Press is. The poster looks like this:

Everything's groovy. Bath is a shopper's paradise, and The Struggling Retailer is going to be selling all the best gear in Bath; Baka Beyond CDs, Walcot Nation T-shirts and loads of other stuff. All directly to the our charming cousins from abroad who come here especially to get a slice of our culture.

The Hedonist Joint Stock Company.

Catacombs Of Terror!

Slowly Downward