Opinionated TV personality and journalist Piers Morgan is no stranger to making enemies both on and off social media, and will be used to wading through droves of notifications every time he logs in to his Twitter account. However, an independent North London bookstore is giving him even more to sift through and ensuring he brushes up on popular fiction at the same time.
Morgan got involved in one of his frequent Twitter quarrels last weekend, this time locking horns with J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books. In tweets that must have stung the author of the 500 million-selling series hard, Morgan revealed that he had never, and would never, read a Harry Potter book.
#StillNeverGoingToReadYourDrivel https://t.co/H8l7sKZsCh
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) February 11, 2017
However, thanks to the efforts of Simon Key, owner of Big Green Bookshop, Morgan may have little choice in the matter.
.@piersmorgan Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say
that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much.— Big Green Bookshop (@Biggreenbooks) February 11, 2017
This tweet, at 2:40pm on Saturday afternoon, was the start of a planned set of more than 32,500 tweets aimed at Morgan, breaking down the entire novel ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ into 140-character microblogs. As of mid-afternoon yesterday, it was 330 down, 32,237 to go.
Despite Morgan’s insistence that “everyone’s bored” of the stunt now, it seems the bookshop has no plans to rein it in.
Not bored yet. https://t.co/GABkHhtl6c
— Big Green Bookshop (@Biggreenbooks) February 14, 2017
In addition to giving the public a bit of a giggle at Morgan’s expense, and reminding him that however wealthy and famous he might be, he has a habit of making a fool of himself, the exercise is certainly not bad publicity for Mr. Key, with the story being picked up on by the likes of Sky News, The Independent and The Huffington Post, all of which amounts to healthy exposure in these days when the humble independent bookstore has to compete with online retail giants like Amazon.
Another social media campaign often run by the shop is a competition to guess the number of books it sells in a day. With this increased coverage, it’s likely to be more than the 45 sold last Saturday next time it takes place.
Big Green Bookshop is currently tweeting snippets of the book to Morgan at a rate of about 100 tweets a day. If this pace is maintained, it means that the current editor at large of the Mail Online will have the full first Harry Potter book in his account by January 3rd or 4th, next year. Perhaps he could make it his 2018 New Year’s resolution to read it?
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