First.Edition: Oktober

by Martin Amis

For five years, between 2004 and 2009, I edited the monthly Ottakar’s Fiction microsite, First.Edition, a means of pooling and sharing information and opinions about newly published fiction to the thousands of booksellers throughout the company, in order to help them steer the right customers towards the right books. In 2006, after the “merger”, this became the Waterstone’s Fiction Microsite.

I led a team of vociferous contributors, tastemakers and critics, and between us we tried our best to keep abreast of a healthy number of genres, and shared our thoughts on the highlights of the next month’s publishing: not the obvious blockbusters or bestsellers (a stack of new hardbacks by a famous name piled high at the front of the store somewhat tended to sell themselves) but rather we tried to champion those titles which stood out to us for reasons of quality, originality, and brilliance.

I’m not a bookseller any more (although of course I am, we never truly stop championing and recommending things, do we, and in my current role as a Press Director my professional life is dedicated to making books appear in bookshops) and I thankfully no longer have to read an average of ten new novels a month. Nowadays I can read what I want, when I want, and so I have revived First.Edition (a title which, I suspect, remains morally the IP of my first editor, Greg Eden) to talk about… well, fiction. Not necessarily new fiction, not always fiction I love, and not always novels, either. Novellas are welcome here, as are short stories. First.Edition 2.0 is not written with a view to selling books, either. So let’s kick off by considering …a short story… that was published ten years ago… in a magazine.