Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea (Tomes & Tea, volume 1) by Rebecca Thorne

[james_davis_nicoll]

An underappreciated bodyguard casts her current career aside in favour of romance and small-town entrepreneurship, thus earning the incandescent fury of her absolute monarch ex-boss.

Can’t Spell Treason Without Tea  (Tomes & Tea, volume 1) by Rebecca Thorne 

Comments

[scott_sanford]

You were exactly correct; my first thought when seeing this cover was to check if it were another volume in the Legends & Lattes story.

As for bookstores and angry vengeance seeking queens, I imagine many people are aware that there also exists Bookshops & Bonedust, another book by Travis Baldree.

I feel it may be unfair to Rebecca Thorne for me to compare her work to Baldree's... but I'm only now discovering that it exists and the comparison is already done.

[mecurtin]

hold on hold on hold on -- the books they're selling aren't *printed*?!?!! The cover image would be of a famous library, before print. Each book is approximately the value of a *car*.

Ann Swinfen's The Bookseller's Tale and others in her series of Oxford medieval mysteries give a good idea of what pre-print bookselling involved. There were very few locations it was feasible, a bookseller also ran a scriptorium, and you couldn't afford to have much in the way of stock because each small volume took so much time to make.

My disbelief can't be suspended for this one, it's flown out the window like a dandelion puff.

[mikeda]

Most of the books ARE printed. They're just printed in a place that DOES have the printed press.

[mecurtin]

That's a *little* better, in that books are now as expensive as a *used* car.

[oursin]

It might actually make more sense to set up a circulating library?

[ba_munronoe]

Books normally kept chained to the shelves to make sure nobody walks off with them.

[jsburbidge]

That's sort of my thought. There were certainly bookstores before the late 19th Century - Hello, St. Paul's Churchyard - but the financial and social model when they are printed via formes set with movable type is emphatically not that of the modern-day bookstore where many middle-income buyers come in regularly to browse and pick up a new read. That's why Jane Austen's heroines use circulating libraries. (But Mr. Bennett, a gentleman with a respectable income and less popular tastes, buys his books ... probably from booksellers in London.)

Not having read the reviewed book, I am only guessing that it assumes a very mid-20th century model for the bookstore at a social level. Victoria Goddard's Greenwing and Dart series certainly does, in an otherwise Regency world, and it sets my teeth on edge.

[oursin]

Yes, people buying books depended a) on changes in paper and print technology in the C19th and b) a new marketing model of cheap reprints (not new books) for railway travellers initiated by WH Smith, sold alongside newspapers and periodicals on station bookstalls.

[jsburbidge]

Whence the (almost unreadable) British Railway Shakespeare, set in something like two-point type...

[(Anonymous)]

Two-point type. Okay ... now I've gone blind ...

-Awesome Aud

[(Anonymous)]

... and the typesetter went blind too ....

[roseembolism]

It occurs to me that book selling in the 18th century style would be interesting, given that they would be luxury products. Things like negotiating with fussy customers, meeting with other booksellers in fact coffee shops to set prices, racing to estate sales and defunct private libraries to acquire trigger of books- in order to destroy them to maintain high prices....

In fact, translating James Lackington and "The Temple of the Muses (the predecessor to modern bookstores(, who scandalized his letters by offering *gasp* fixed prices for books would make for a fine cozy fantasy. Pity this book isn't it.

[ba_munronoe]

How large was the market for European books in 18th century Egypt?

[mikeda]

It's not that scale of distance. Basically one of the neighboring kingdoms has printing presses.

[ba_munronoe]

I was thinking in terms of cultural, rather than geographic distance. Weren't a lot of European works circulating in the Ottomans empire of the time, AFAIK, in spite of common borders with central Europe. On the other hand, if this neighboring nation shares a culture (and a language?) with the one they're in, it's odd printing hasn't spread already - it certainly spread quickly throughout Europe. (Unless the Evil Queen has made printing illegal for the usual autocratic reasons - in which case the bookstore would be highly illegal).

[james_davis_nicoll]

It's a recent(ish) development:

“How old is the technology?”

“New enough to be exciting to a Queendom citizen, apparently. Old enough that printed books in Shepara are cheaper than handwritten ones.”

And the Queendom is notorious for being backward:

“[...] the Queendom snubs progress, innovation, and entertainment of any sort.

[(Anonymous)]

In such a setting, I fear there wouldn't be sufficient literacy in a small town to support a bookstore.

-Awesome Aud