I’d assumed that Black Friday was all about beating (and occasionally, beating up) your fellow bargain-hunters for a discounted telly or laptop, or spending hours scouring the internet for the latest `must-have’ toy on the cheap.
Seems I was wrong. The good news, book lovers, is that books are also to be had more cheaply on Black Friday.
The bad news is that, on Amazon at least, the books they are prepared to reduce in price are not necessarily titles you’ll be rushing to add to your bookshelves.
In the interests of research (this posting will be my only contribution to Black Friday) rather than shopping, I headed off to Amazon to see what, if anything, they are offering under `Books’ for this day that seems to induce a form of hysteria in some quarters. PR departments, at least.
It’s fair to say I was surprised by the list, topped as it was by The Smoothie Recipe Book, down from £5.99 to £3. Next came a book for those wanting to learn to play a keyboard, then two similar titles aimed at Ukulele players.
Less surprising offerings in the top twenty included a book by chef Marcus Wareing as well as a box set of David Walliams titles. That will surely appear under many Christmas trees.
Doubtless the list changes according to the Amazon browsing history of the searcher (although I don’t ever recall looking for books about smoothies) and the time of day. If so, it would be fascinating to learn just how Amazon’s computers do all this.
There's a book for that 