‘Tis the season for book buying, as we all know, and while some are preparing their “best of” lists — every 2 seconds, it seems — others are hopping on the bandwagon of finding the worst in everything. Which explains why, at least in the UK, the “Crap X” series is selling like gangbusters:
Shit sells. Put something scatological in the title of your book and the bestseller lists beckon.
The trend began with Crap Towns, which spawned Crap Jobs and Crap Cars before a spate of titles, often spoofs, incorporating shit or shite. An online sales surge this week sent Is It Just Me or Is Everything Shit?: The Encyclopaedia of Modern Life, by Alan McArthur and Steve Lowe, to the top of the Amazon charts.
The witty rant against contemporary culture has seen sales double in the past couple of weeks. It has already sold 16,000 copies since publication in October. Only Jeremy Clarkson is selling more in the humour section at Waterstone’s.
Not surprisingly, the whole thing started out as a big joke, but hey, if it sells…it ain’t a joke anymore, right?
Scott Pack, head buyer for Waterstone’s, said the titles seemed to appeal to a broad section of the public. “This is the third year of them. They have almost become a Christmas tradition, which is a bit of an odd tradition, I grant you. Every Christmas you look for what the next one is going to be and there is usually a spoof of a trend,” he said.
As for their popularity: “With gift purchases in humour, it’s very much on impulse. If someone picks a book up and it makes them laugh it gets bought,” he said.
Unless it makes them wince, but then, one person’s crap is another person’s gospel…