Independent Booksellers - query!

Hey there blogland. Two items here, and a shout out for help! I know I'm hardly coming down in visitors here, but if anyone can hear me...

I recently read a feature in one of the UK national papers about a group of independent bookshops who banded together to start a collective website. The idea was that punters order a book online, decide which of their local independent bookshops they wanted it to be delivered to, got an email when it arrived, and then walked in and bought it. The idea, of course, is to redirect some A*$zon users back into the physical bookshop, while offering the convenience of 24-hour internet searching.

Any thoughts, lads? I can't remember the name of this scheme, and I'd love to start sending you their way by way of click-thrus.

Meanwhile, Irish readers, get moving! The Guardian is taking nominations for good independent bookellers in Ireland for their database. I say the Exchange Bookshop in Dalkey and Readers in Dun Laoghaire- both south County Dublin, narf narf. Natch.

Freelance aspirations

So in a recent e-ponder at my understandably none-too-impressed mother, I wondered exactly how much freelance reviewing and writing one would have to get before giving up the day job. This is, of course, a very naive train of thought, but Hell, that's what blogs are for.

I have found that freelancers spend so much time having to promote themselves and their abilities that they become unreliable narrators of how they spend their time, or alternately, they've been doing it for so long that they started in a time when things were very different. I would love to know more about the harsh realities of freelance features journalism and how one makes the leap. If you've already got a national broadsheet and a few major literary outlets under your belt, what's next? How do you up the ante from £40 or £60 pieces without ending up making coffee in a newsroom somewhere? Need it necessarily be a one-way ticket to the poorhouse and 60-hour weeks alone on your laptop? Will you always be faced with people asking if you never wanted a 'real career'? Will you cease to care? Ponder ponder.