"Slightly Lower Than Expected" Demand For "Serialisation of the Year"

Newsagents the length and breadth of the West Country have reported "steady but slightly disappointing" sales for today's edition of the Alton Pancras Sunday Mercury: the Threadbone Magazine and Newspaper stable's flagship Sunday paper which won the rights to serialise Controversial author Shelley-Lulette Sizemore's hemi-demi-semi-autobiographical "crime" novel Scene of the Crime, excerpts of which it began publishing today.

Parent company Threadbone Newspapers Inc (a subdivision of The Threadbone Press which will publish the novel in full next Friday) printed "several dozen" extra copies of the popular Sunday paper in anticipation of much higher sales. However, despite queues of "up to 3 or 4 people" (many of whom it was suggested were panic buying Hoola-Hoops after reports of a Drexit-induced price-hike) newsagent chain Edna's reported "plenty of stock and few riots". Shown photographs of random news outlets, a spokesperson for Threadbone Newspapers - Hype Erbole - said "these are in no way representative of the near hysteria our representatives are reporting across the Dorset region and beyond. Representations to us suggest that far more representative is the two mile queue of traffic just outside Chilfrome close to where the water main burst and flooded the road". Asked if the floods themselves might not be instrumental in creating the queues, she added: "Don't be ridiculous: people patiently queueing to buy a copy of the newspaper are simply opportunistically rubbernecking the road works." The true level of sales is hard to judge though the wholly independent East Dorset Newspaper Sales Authority will return an audited figure at the end of the month, reporters were told by EDNSA Chair Mrs Amanda J Threadbone.

Despite a major publicity campaign including railway station posters, several newsagents reported smaller than anticipated sales of the Alton Pancras Sunday Mercury which

features in today's edition a pullout supplement of the first extract from

Shelley-Lulette Sizemore's sensational Scene of the Crime.