When writing a book there are two things you dread. The first is that people will post bad reviews on Amazon. The second is the moment you find your work for sale at a discount book store. Both of these things are inevitable, which sometimes helps a little with the anxiety, but neither are pleasant prospects on the whole.

So here’s a photo I took in the very excellent Bargain Computer Books in Reading, UK. Centre stage is Dreamweaver MX Web Development by some chap called McLellan. Although it’s not as an uncomfortable feeling as I thought it would be (it helps that the book is 18 months old and is based on a now outdate piece of software), I guess this does downgrade me from being “the author of a book” to “someone who once wrote a book”. I guess I can also take heart in the fact that there was only a single copy – better for one to languish on the shelf than ten – and as I say, it’s an inevitable fate for any book based on a particular version of any piece of software.

The total flip side to the situation is more important to me, and affirms one of the main reasons I wrote the book in the first place. Being on discount in a small book store means that the information within is even more accessible to those who need it. I didn’t look at the price on the cover, perhaps I should have, but it would have been significantly more affordable than the full retail value. Libraries don’t stock books like this – not quick enough for them to be worthwhile, at least, so being able to pick up decent computer books and low prices is a real boon for a heck of a lot of people. So I’m cool with being on discount.