Sam Leith tells us what it’s like to get your first book actually onto the shelves.

‘It’s in the shops! I’ve just seen it in
Waterstone’s," says my agent. "Ten copies! Pristine! Unsold!" I become
extremely overexcited. My first book is published this week, and my
thoughts have turned to the petty, vainglorious, devious, egomaniacal
and fruitless things that all right-thinking people sneer at authors
for doing.

These are as follows: sneaking into the
shop and rearranging the display so your book is on top of Lynne
Truss’s; sneaking into the shop and placing your book in the window
while an accomplice distracts the shop assistant with a complicated
inquiry about Lynne Truss; walking boldly into the shop and engaging
the bookseller in animated conversation about this fantastic new book
you’ve heard about, and suggesting that they might like to order in,
say, 20 copies, because you are planning to come and do all your
Christmas shopping this week; reverse shoplifting (the object being to
get objects into the shop, rather than out of it); or signing every
copy you can get your hands on, with or without the consent of the
bookseller.

If you would like to do your bit to make sure that I do not act in a similarly strange manner you can help out by pre-ordering my book from the Amazon link at the top right.

No, I won’t note that "2005 Blogged, Dispatches from the Blogosphere" is at 6,000 ish on the Amazon ranking while Sam Leith’s "Dead Pets" is at 60,000 ish. Sam is, after all, the books editor of the Torygraph (no, no, nothing so despicable as angling for a decent review) so instead I’ll just point you to the game, Dead Pets, which is part of the viral marketing strategy. I’m told that the parrot works best and the distance to beat is 313 metres.