Blog
Wednesday Cover Story: The Budd Schulberg Dilemma
14 November, 2012
In our office meeting this morning, we discussed the new covers for three Budd Schulberg titles we are republishing in April next year: boxing novel The Harder They Fall (also made into a movie starring Humphrey Bogart); The Disenchanted (the thinly disguised novel about Scott Fitzgerald’s stab at writing a script for Hollywood) and On […]
Why doesn’t everyone have a library card?
13 November, 2012
I adore my library. I really would be in financial straits if I’d actually purchased all the books I’ve read this past month alone. Which is why I was truly perplexed to read in the Guardian that visits by UK adults to libraries have dropped almost 10% in the past five years. Errr, hello people: […]
Start the Week with some Woman Power
12 November, 2012
Since my previous blog on Female Literary Legends, I’ve become aware of some real-life legendary women who I think deserve another blog post. Many of you have probably heard of Malala Yousafzai, the fifteen-year-old girl who was recently shot by the Taliban because she campaigned for women’s right to education. People around the world are […]
Learning London’s Tube Etiquette
9 November, 2012
My name is Sophie and I am the newest addition to the Allison & Busby team. I’ve been working here for precisely ten days and living in London for eleven days. Before I started this job I could count on two hands the amount of times I’d been into London. And on one hand the […]
What books would you choose from the 2013 World Book Night list?
8 November, 2012
Today, the 20 books to be given away on World Book Night 2013 has been announced. 23rd April 2013 will mark the third year for this innovative project. It is a diverse range of titles ranging from A Girl with the Pearl Earring, through Casino Royale, modern favourites including The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, new […]
Wednesday Cover Story: When the cover is better than the book…
7 November, 2012
About a month ago I bought the book The One-Hundred Year Old Man Who Climbed Out of the Window and Disappeared, by Jonas Jonasson purely on the basis that the cover jumped out at me (as did the title). I didn’t even read the back cover blurb (honestly I didn’t) but merely the 1st chapter […]
Incoherent notes from the past – what could this possibly mean?
6 November, 2012
Have you ever jotted down some notes on a piece of paper, which made perfect sense to you at the time, only to find, when you look at the notes at a later date, they’ve lost all meaning? I’m sure I’m not the only one. But usually, after wracking our brains (and memory) for a […]
Lunch at the House of Lords…
5 November, 2012
Today I was lucky enough to go along to a lunchtime reception at the House of Lords, celebrating the fact that Norwich has been named England’s first UNESCO City of Literature. Personally, I had no idea that Norwich had such a rich literary history, but this week I’ve discovered that it can lay claim to […]
Turn on, tune in, drop out.
2 November, 2012
It’s come to my attention that just the other week the last UK analogue signal was switched off in Northern Ireland. As I now rely on a certain satellite TV provide,r some of this passed me by, but what caught my eye in the news was that the digital switchover also entailed the end of an […]
We’re another kind of bookmakers today…
1 November, 2012
Yes, that’s right, we’re not talking about books and making them, we’re taking bets and the game starts NOW. As of Friday last week our server has been acting up, or, as the case currently may be, not acting at all. So, as I sit here working from home pondering the world’s biggest questions, including “How […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Moving Picture…
31 October, 2012
I am, if I may be frank, not the biggest fan of book trailers – or at least not the most common kind that feature a running stream of static images alternating with text about the book. So unless you make your book trailer look like the preview to Skyfall (ie. not look like a […]
Embrace the zombie this Halloween!
30 October, 2012
What with it being Halloween tomorrow and the weather getting steadily more wintry, we’re all in a spooky mood. And I think there’s one scary trend that might be getting steadily bigger – I mean, of course, zombies. Yes, the undead theme has been around for a while now, but I think it’s still going […]
Friday Fun: Beats David Attenborough’s voiceover…
26 October, 2012
It’s a miserably grey day, complete with intermittent spits of rain which means venturing outside the office walls for lunch is less than appealing. So lunch is at my desk today, but since our server is down at the moment, access to email and certain drives are off limit, restricting the scope for a hugely […]
Fly on the wall in the A&B meeting…
25 October, 2012
I’ve just come out of our inaugural A&B weekly meeting. As a small team, meetings have always been rather redundant as, previously working all together on one floor, there was never any real need for formal meetings, we all just knew what was happening and group discussions would take place in impromptu ways. Now, however, […]
Wednesday Cover Story: Our Maisie Dobbs e-books introduces a new favourite…
24 October, 2012
We’ve just released, exclusively in e-book format, two more titles in Jacqueline Winspear’s hugely acclaimed Maisie Dobbs mystery series: An Incomplete Revenge and Among the Mad. Now we’ve mentioned the Maisie Dobbs covers in our blog before (most recently here) in light of the images […]
Anyone for a soggy commute?
23 October, 2012
Since the move to our new offices, we’ve all been adjusting our commute morning and evening. Some of us have had to factor in a couple of extra minutes power-walking to make our train, some of us are negotiating new tube connections. None of us are Boris Bike users (I personally think being a pedestrian […]
A tribute to Sylvia Plath
22 October, 2012
Recently Stylist published an article on Sylvia Plath, pointing out that if she was still alive, she would have been eighty years old this month. Despite the preconceptions of her poetry being overly angst-ridden, I’m not ashamed to say I’m a big fan of Plath – it’s a difficult choice, but she might just be […]
We say goodbye to Lara Crisp…
19 October, 2012
After over 8 years at Allison & Busby (time does fly) today is Lara’s last day the office. We are, of course, still in denial, and will probably remain so for a little while. Seeing as in this new office, we are separated over two floors, at least Susie, Lesley and I (who sit on […]
What’s in a name?
18 October, 2012
I read a thought-provoking article the other day in Stylist, on a crime writing prize judged by grande dame herself Ruth Rendell. What was fascinating to me were the trends that evolved from the entries. Firstly, many of the protagonists were red-haired (or flame-coloured, crimson, ruby, scarlet, auburn, burgundy – depending on the thesaurus to hand.) […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Danish take on Mercenaries…
17 October, 2012
Whilst some cover designs get replicated across editions worldwide (as in the case of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which was sold in over 30 countries, most of which published their edition using the same cover image) every country tends to have its own style. So it’s always interesting to see how […]
What poems do you turn to for comfort?
16 October, 2012
Given the amount of time I spend trying to think of blog topics, I can’t believe I forgot National Poetry Day the other week. One of my favourite features was from The Guardian: a question and answer session entitled Poetry Prescriptions, where those writing in with the usual agony aunt complaints were prescribed some apt […]
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