The malaise at Waterstone's hasn't deterred a new entrant into the bookselling scene: Andrew Malcolm, the scourge of OUP (see Eyes passim), who has leased a shop in a prime site opposite Blackwell's in Broad Street, Oxford.
Trading as AKME EXPRESSION, he stocks only two books: Making Names, the philosophy text accepted and then rejected by OUP and which led to a six-year legal battle in which Malcolm sued for breach of contract; and The Remedy, his account of the whole affair.
Part of the original settlement was a commitment on the part of OUP not to make "any derogatory statements" about Malcolm or his work. Last year Henry Hardy, the editor who commissioned the book, wrote a laudatory review of The Remedy in The Times Higher Education Supplement, eliciting a letter from Dr Alan Ryan, the academic who first backed, then rejected, Making Names, describing the book as "coarse and jeering".
Whatever the merits of the work, Malcolm took this to be a breach of the agreement and sued Oxford. The University claimed "freedom of expression" and argued that Ryan was not a "servant or agent" of the University - a curious position for the Warden of New College - and could thus say whatever he liked. The high court found in favour of OUP and Malcolm was ordered to pay £12,500 costs.
Initially he offered the money on condition that it was used to set up a chair in publishing law; but this was rebuffed by Oxford's lawyers. So he is now selling his books and a host of spoof qualifications, as well as offering vast window displays explaining OUP's many transgressions - not least its spurious charitable status and tax exemption.
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