Playing the guessing game...

Hmmmmm. Looks like some of our newspaper-type-friends have been getting carried away with stories that Peter Hain’s Outside In is failing to sell as well as we might have hoped...

Have you ever been to a village-fête where you’re asked to guess the number of sweets in a jar, to be in with a chance of taking those sweets home with you? I have. I never guessed the correct amount; long did those Lemon Bon Bons evade my reach. I’m just not very good at guessing games.

Seems like I’m not the only one deprived of Drumsticks. If Biteback was a slightly musty hall with beige curtains, newspaper journalists were village-fête goers with a particular interest in Cola Cubes, and that jar of sweets represented books sales and, for the prize, our eternal love and joy, those journalists would be sorely lacking in a sugar rush right now.  

It seems that Ephraim Hardcastle, over at the Daily Mail, and Tim Walker, over at the Daily Telegraph, have been playing the guessing game all wrong.

Ephraim Hardcastle was the first to approach our daintily decorated stall, pointing that finger of his, and saying:

‘The £20 memoir of shadow Welsh Secretary Peter Hain – Outside In, published in mid-January – has sold a modest 500 copies’.

A little while later Tim Walker came over and said:

'Publishers do not have a big appetite for political memoirs after Peter Hain managed to sell only around 500 copies of his book.’

So they’ve entered the game, guessing 500 each. With that guess there’ll be no Sherbet Lemons for them. For the real number is closer to 4000. That’s right. 4000. And we’re considering filling the jar up again, now that it’s close to empty. We attend many village-fêtes at Biteback, and the demand for our sweets has been so much that our stocks are running low.

Do you get what I’m trying to say? I’ll come out of sugar speak for a second and we’ll get down to business. Peter Hain’s Outside In has sold many more than 500 copies, with sales far from modest, and we’re even considering a reprint! As Peter said on Twitter this morning:

@PeterHain Amazon sold out and restocked, Waterstone's have reordered and publishers having to consider reprint!

Now, we don't mean to be precious about it. But we're very pleased with the way the book has sold, and we wouldn't want that to be misrepresented, especially not to this extent. The claims have been refuted by Peter and ourselves, yet they continue to be published.

So I say to those entering the guessing game. Don’t deny yourselves those Flumps any longer, the way I did. Do not be so overeager to win the sweets as to make a rash guess. Take your time and play the game correctly...