Blog
The Rise of the Fake Autobiography
19 October, 2010
Traditionally Christmas book promotions have been all about the celebrity memoir but over recent years their popularity seems to have waned. With a few notable exceptions – Peter Kay, Sharon Osbourne, Frankie Boyle etc – most big name autobiographies seem destined to bomb, hitting publishers extremely hard if you are to believe the insane advances […]
Brave new book world
18 October, 2010
You may already have spotted the news that Allison & Busby’s ebooks will very shortly be distributed by a new collaboration of independent publishers – The Faber Factory. It’s an exciting and fast moving time for publishing, but I stumbled upon the most intriguing recent example of this the other day with a mention of […]
Foodie forces at work today
15 October, 2010
Today has been a bit of a food-themed day. Granted, seeing as my mind is generally food-obsessed, that probably doesn’t differentiate it from any other day, but let’s just say there were more external factors feeding into this today. I spent my morning preparing extracts from The South African Illustrated Cookbook for House & Home […]
From knitting basics to yarn bombing
14 October, 2010
This past week I have been far too pleased with myself for finishing my first knitting project that is fit for human wardrobes. Granted, the recipient is about 11 weeks old, so she doesn’t have much of a voice yet in sartorial decisions regarding herself, but that hasn’t diminished my pleasure. However, a recent piece […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Finkler Question
13 October, 2010
So there you have it. The Finkler Question, by Howard Jacobson has just won the Man Booker Prize. (Congratulations!). And looking back at our earlier blogs this week, perhaps we should have seen this coming?? On Monday, Lara blogged about attending a recent Man Booker author-reading event, and whilst she said she had her money […]
Betting on the Booker
11 October, 2010
Is it me or has this year’s Man Booker prize had more publicity than usual? With controversial topics covered in Christos Tsolkias’s The Slap and Emma Donoghue’s Room, not to mention the drama last week when Ladbrokes ceased betting on the prize when it looked like Tom McCarthy’s C was getting all the attention, this […]
Publishing is a mad business
7 October, 2010
Publishers are a bit of a crazy bunch. And if proof was needed that this is indeed the case, take the following three exhibits: 1) The Bloomsbury hit video If you didn’t catch this the other week – shame on you for not following our Tweets! (If you wish to rectify this, follow us Twitter […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Affair of the Bloodstained Egg Cosy
6 October, 2010
As you can see on the right there, Georgina’s current read is A Handful of Dust, by Evelyn Waugh. Unlike our erudite Editorial Administrator, who, if you haven’t noticed yet, likes her classics, I can’t say I’m drawn to reading the book. But, I am drawn to the cover. Probably because it reminded me somewhat […]
Just When Stories
4 October, 2010
What a great idea. To tie in the with centenary of Rudyard Kipling’s classic Just So Stories, Beautiful Books have recently published a companion piece titled Just When Stories. With a raft of contributions from the likes of William Boyd, Hanif Kureishi and Michael Morpurgo the idea is to highlight the plight of many of […]
Pics from Death on the Marais Launch!
1 October, 2010
Last night we celebrated the launch of Death on the Marais – the first book in a brand new crime series, set in rural France in the 1960s, by the already much-acclaimed author Adrian Magson. The soiree was hosted by the the inimitable David Headley (who is also Adrian’s literary agent) at his equally inimitable […]
So, what’s on page 99?
30 September, 2010
You shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. And apparently not by its first few pages either. Most people when browsing in Waterstones or WH Smiths, will pick up a book that looks pretty or interesting, different to all the others or similar to the ones they usually buy, and then turn it over to […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The Apostle (The film that never was…)
29 September, 2010
When I came across the cover to The Apostle, by Brad Thor I was sure it was a film tie-in edition. The images look like stills from a movie (do they not?), so much so that I actually Googled IMDB to look it up, as I have a penchant for war and government action-thrillers. But […]
This year, Halloween is all about Zombies…
28 September, 2010
Oh dear, there is a Halloween-themed birthday party on the horizon and I am definitely without inspiration as to what to go as. Any thoughts as to simple, but of course clever and original, oh and easily constructed costumes, greatly appreciated (I’m not asking for much eh?). The trouble is, this year Halloween for me […]
And the operative word is: BIG
24 September, 2010
Yesterday I attended the monthly PPC Meeting at Foyles – where a room full of publicists congregate to listen to a few editors/producers/reviewers who come to talk about what kinds of authors they are interested in and how we might work together. These meetings are usually quite useful because programmes, book pages, contacts and remits […]
Wednesday Cover Story: The decision about delicious cover finishes…
22 September, 2010
In the office earlier today Christina (Art Editor) and I we were discussing the Ebury press publication Eat Me, by Xanthe Milton, and what finishes it had been printed with. It’s a regular conversation between Christina and I as we battle it out trying to decide on foils, embossing, spot uv and coloured end papers […]
Enter our Speech Bubble Competition
21 September, 2010
The Reading Festival of Crime Writing took place this past weekend, which saw almost two thousand crime enthusiasts flocking to Reading’s Town Hall and the Central Library over the fours days to hear from the top of the crop on the crime writing circuit. Our authors Rebecca Tope, Mike Ripley, Zoë Sharp, Richard Jay Parker […]
Go Greased Lightning!
20 September, 2010
Forget The Man Booker Prize, forget Newsnight, I’m sure I’m not alone in thinking that now and then our brains are in urgent need of a rest. To plagiarise my husband: ‘Rather than sitting down to the mental or cultural equivalent of a hearty, three course meal, sometimes all that we need is chewing gum […]
Remembering the sinking of the City of Benares
17 September, 2010
This year is the 70th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, which was fought between the RAF and the German Luftwaffe over the summer and autumn of 1940, and the Blitz and this month sees a plethora of commemorative events and exhibitions to mark this piece of history. Find out more about events around London […]
Wednesday Cover Story: V&A Book Cover Award Winner
15 September, 2010
Today’s confession: I judge a book by its cover. No, retract that; that’s not a confession. That’s a statement of the obvious. A book’s cover is (I have no need to tell you, rational blog-readers), what draws us to that particular book out of the hundreds of others flaunting their vibrant front faces in bookshops; […]
The Alternative TV Book Club Summer Reads List…
14 September, 2010
It’s an accepted fact that most (if not all) of the books picked for the Richard & Judy Book Clubs and now the new TV Book Clubs tend to come from the larger publishers. This isn’t a gripe, it’s just stating fact. We’ve been on the shortlist several times, but unfortunately not yet made it […]
Magnificent maps indeed!
13 September, 2010
Last weekend saw me traipsing into central London to look at maps at the British Library. Thrilling, no? I’ll be honest, geography has never been my strong point so my enthusiasm for the day was not at its highest levels. However, I’d been promised that the day would have a pub ending. I’m easily persuaded. […]
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