We're just heard about a great series of events at Blacks and wanted to tell you about it. The series is called "Off the Shelf at Blacks" and the next event is on 10th June, here are some more details:
'Off the Shelf at Blacks' is a series of events for writers organised by the Writers Guild of Great Britain, chaired by Jan Woolf of the WGGB Books Committee.
Salt Special at Blacks 67 Dean Street Soho, London W1D 4QH Monday, 10th June 2013 10.30am-4pm
Hosted by Jay Merill Cast: Charles Boyle, Jay Merill, Simon Okotie, Jonathan Taylor, Meike Ziervoge.
Tickets £25 - include morning coffee and 2 course lunch with vegetarian option.
To book tickets e-mail:janwoolf@hotmail.com
Byte the Book has been running for a little over a year now. Our first event was on 14th March 2012. I brought together eight people and we sat in a very quiet Loft at the Ivy Club and discussed ways we could help each other. The following month we had around thirty people and a speaker, David Gettman, founder of Online Originals. The attendees all sat round in a circle and we had a debate about the future of e-books.
Since then Byte the Book has grown in popularity, we regularly fill the Ivy Loft to its hundred and twenty people capacity. Attendees are a combination of regulars that have been with us since the beginning and lots of new people curious to find out about what all the fuss is about, (during one of our events #bytethebook was the highest trend on twitter in London). Not only have we had some amazing panelists: Feargal Sharkey (Undertones, British Music), Anna Rafferty (Digital MD at Penguin), Jay Rayner (Observer), Richard Mollet (CEO of the Publishers Association), Chris Maples (MD of Spotity), Jamie Byng (Publisher at Canongate), Dan Franklin (Random House) the list goes on and on. But the real magic, or "fireworks" as one of our members described them, is that as a direct result of ideas shared and connections forged at Byte the Book some brilliant things have happened. Over the last year, new publishing companies have formed, writers have found agents, radio shows have been produced, people have secured publishing deals, investors have found opportunities to invest, numerous companies have found new clients, and people have found full time work.
I set Byte the Book up as commercial venture to try and make a living in the publishing industry but there was always a primary focus for me to help people within the network do well. I’ve loved it so far, and although it’s been challenging at times, every month I am lifted by the amazing events and the reactions both on the night and afterwards, not to mention the great things that I hear about in-between events. Here's an e-mail that one of our members wrote to me after our January event:
I just had to drop you a note to say that tonight’s event was by far the most amazing I’ve attended.
I not only met some of the most amazing people, but left feeling completely inspired and validated by what I’m doing.
Keep doing what you’re doing, you have a gift for bringing people together.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has attended our events over the last year and also thank all those that have become members. If you've not done so already please do sign up for an event or join Byte the Book here. The bigger the events, and the larger the network grows, the more fantastic opportunities they'll be for everyone.
We were really excited to hear about one of our sponsors, Book Industy Communication's 1st Open Day on Wednesday 15 May 2013 at RIBA from 1:30 - 5pm. It's free for members and non-members of BIC and is the first event of its kind. They tell us that BIC's new biannual Open Days will offer members and non-members alike the opportunity to see what BIC has been up to, offer feedback, and network with their current membership. The Open Day is being held on the sixth floor of RIBA in the lovely Wren Room. To see the programme and find out more visit Eventbrite
.Review by Julia Newhouse.
There are books that hit that you, because they are emotionally heavy. They move, they provoke, they touch you. These are the very adjectives that describe The View on the Way Down by Rebecca Wait: it is moving, provocative, and above all touching. The book’s prologue opens with a young family enjoying a day out at the beach. Baby Emma bounces on her mother’s knee, and Mum and Dad watch sons Kit and Jamie play along the shoreline. This is, in many ways a cookie cutter family, and the kind of scene of domestic happiness that many of us hope to share with those we love.
Part One of the novel, however, sets a very different scene. Picking the family up some years later, we slowly learn how this family was torn apart by the death of eldest son Kit, and the impact that this loss, and everything leading up to it has had on his younger brother Jamie, baby sister Emma and perpetually grief-stricken parents Rose and Joe. With the slow unveiling of how happy family A could morph into broken and sad family B, we learn about each of the characters, and the angle at which they are viewing this family tragedy. There is no one way people grieve, and beyond the singular fact of their loss, Kit’s death and the circumstances around it, have thrown a variety of extraneous factors into the mix. In The View on the Way Down, we see how the choices we make impact those around us, and ripple out over time. And as with all things emotional, it is impossible to know how this will happen once the deed is done.
It is surprising that The View on the Way Down is a debut novel. Rebecca Wait writes well, and has an ear for empathy, you can be mad at Rose, because of the way she fails her daughter, and yet hold no malice toward her as you also feel her plight as a mother who has lost a child. Families are a messy business, and never more so than when tragedy strikes. ‘If they could go back a few years - if they could undo everything that had happened, and start afresh - then that would be a miracle. Picking up the pieces afterwards wasn’t,’ observes Emma. This is a book about what happens after a tragedy, and how one tragedy can have a thousand splintered after-effects. This books reads easily, but isn’t so easy to digest. I have been ruminating on the passage that the title is taken from for days now, and am likely to keep on thinking of it for some time to come.
Review by Justine Solomons.
I really enjoyed the Human Script and since reading it a while have found myself reflecting on it often.
Chris Putnam is a young scientist working on the Human Genome Project in the spring of 2000, mapping the chromosomal code that makes us human. A series of events turns his world upside-down: his estranged and deeply religious father passes away, his twin brother goes missing and he falls in love for the first time. Chris is left questioning everything he once believed in.
The Human Script is a book of many levels. On first glance it is a poignant love story, but as the reader peels away the layers it becomes a book about belief, faith, science and the nature of reality. It asks whether we are masters of our own fate or pawns in a greater game, with our futures mapped out within our very biology. Johnny Rich is a lover of literature and this is clear in his clever use of motifs and themes within The Human Script. His writing is reminiscent of Tom McCarthy and David Mitchell; readers may find that upon reading the last page they will want to start all over again. Intelligent, thought-provoking and profoundly moving, The Human Script is a book that will start conversations and will linger in your mind for a long time.
Buy this book here.
Review by Tracey Sinclair.
The discovery of the long-lost skeleton of Richard III in a Leicester carpark has reignited interest in this most controversial of monarchs, but those looking for a balanced history of the man and his reign may struggle to find an impartial commentator. Even after all this time, Richard inspires strong feelings, whether from those who see him as an evil murderer of children, or those who believe him the much-maligned victim of a Tudor propaganda campaign.
David Baldwin’s book – with an updated epilogue to reflect recent developments – seeks to tread a middle path, and as such it’s a great starting point for anyone with an interest in this fascinating character. Coming at his subject with no fierce conviction either way, he seeks to identify the good and the bad in Richard’s character, and set his actions – whatever they were – firmly in context of the times he lived in.
I must admit that, while I’m not particularly pro- or anti-Richard, he’s a king who has long fascinated me, so I went into this book already with a fairly clear idea of what it would say. But Baldwin’s thorough research, even-handed approach and healthy scepticism makes it a brisk, fascinating read that would suit either a complete novice to the subject, or someone who has read the conflicting biographies and is looking for a more reasonable and balanced history.
Review by Caroline Goldsmith.
Buy this book here
Back in 2012 Tracey Sinclair introduced us to the world of “Dark Dates”, a London inhabited by vampires and home to feisty heroine and “sensitive” Cassandra Bick.
At the start of Wolf Night, the second book in the series, Cassandra is putting her life and her dating agency business back together again after thwarting a vampire coup with the help of her friends, new-age witch Medea and shapeshifter, Katie. Long-time on-off lover, Cain is conspicuous by his absence from London whilst seductive vampire Laclos is proving difficult for her to resist. And there is a new presence in the city. Ferocious and bloody attacks on innocents can only be the result of a pack of vicious werewolves. When the pack threatens her friends, Cain makes his welcome return and Cassandra must once again work to save the city she loves.
I am an unashamed fan of this series and have been pleased to design the cover artwork for both titles in the series as well as the short stories that Sinclair has published to keep her loyal fans happy between novels. Sinclair’s characters are made of the same stuff as cult favourites Anita Blake and Sookie Stackhouse but with a fresh, British flavour. Sinclair’s ability to write great action scenes is put to good use in this fast-moving adventure which builds on the pace set by the first book. Fans of urban fantasy will find an original and exciting voice in Tracey Sinclair and will no doubt be clamouring for more Cassandra Bick very soon.
When Judith Summers got in touch to tell us about her story of the self-publishing an old novel we were intrigued. Here's what she told us:
Where do old novels go when they die? The answer used to be the remainder bin – or, in my case, the graveyard of the garden shed, where the few remaining hard copies of my first published novel, Dear Sister have now been decaying for a quarter of a century.
Published way back in 1985, Dear Sister is a saga of two sisters caught up in the dramatic events of the early twentieth century. Swept apart by an accident of fate on their way to America, they end up on opposite sides of the Atlantic, and are destined not to see each other for sixty years. Originally published in the UK by Muller, Blond and White and Arrow, and in the USA by St Martin’s Press, the novel sold respectably by the standards of the time, but that probably amounted to no more than a few thousand copies in all.
Nine published books later, I presumed Dear Sister was beyond resurrection, until a friend persuaded me to self-publish it as an e-book. All I had to do, he said, was upload it to Amazon and wait for the money to roll in.
But unless you’re tech- and internet- savvy, cutting out the middleman and going straight to the reader can be a daunting business. How to scan in a physical book that was written on a defunct BBC Acorn in a computer language that has long been extinct? How to price it? Most perplexing of all, how to publicise it? Blogging, Twitter and Facebook are the obvious channels, but if, like me, you can’t cope with them, there’s nothing to stop your book from sinking into the electronic abyss.
Since I lacked the skill, the technology and, above all, the patience to scan the book myself, I ended up paying someone else to do it for me page by painful page. Then, using Amazon’s self-publishing tool, I posted it online. And, as my friend suggested, waited for the money to roll in.
Nothing happened.
After a few months of zero sales, I decided to enlist the help of an online self-publishing house, Acorn Independent Press. And last month they secured Dear Sister a place in one of Amazon’s monthly Kindle promotions.
Eureka! In the past fortnight sales have suddenly taken off. Twenty-eight years after it was first published, Dear Sister is currently no.16 in the UK Kindle bestseller chart, and the No 1 bestseller in Historical Fiction – and no one is more amazed than I am. Though it has yet to emulate the phenomenal success of Hilary Boyd’s tale of oldie love, Thursdays in the Park, I’ve clocked up around 4000 sales in the past few weeks – that’s 4000 more than in the past quarter century, and probably more than the book originally sold.
The money I’ll earn from this will amount to a few thousand pounds, but the real thrill is knowing that Rosa and Esther, the characters I sweated blood to create when I was an aspiring young author, are no longer gathering dust between the pages of a few mildewed tomes, but are coming to life again on screen for a whole new generations of e-readers.
It’s almost enough to make me buy a Kindle myself.
You can buy Dear Sister here.
We were very pleased to hear that the Publishers Association launched a brand new section of their website entitled "Working in Publishing," at this years London Book Fair.
This new area of The PA’s website will serve as a vital resource to people looking to work in publishing – whether they are graduates or working in other companies and sectors. It provides information on publishing courses, links to recruitment agencies for job searches and career advice, an RSS feed to The Bookseller job adverts, as well as information about networking events and seminars. Those already working in publishing will also find it a useful resource.
The site also highlights a number of individual career profiles, featuring interviews with a diverse range of professionals working in publishing describing how they came to join the industry and why. These profiles illustrate the different, sometimes unconventional career paths and broad range of skills relevant to the publishing industry, including that of one publisher who came to the industry having originally studied palaeontology.
City University are running a session on: How to Get Ahead in Digital Media, on Saturday 8th June 2013.
The course is a two-hour masterclass taught by two top digital industry experts:
Natasha McNamara (GLAMOUR.com’s digital editor, and also executive editor for the Easy Living website, both Conde Naste publications) and Mark Sandford (Head of Digital Sales for Shortlist/Stylist).
Subjects covered will include
- writing for digital;
- breaking news online;
- social media;
- visual story-telling;
- Search engine optimisation (SEO);
- and how to make money from websites.
This is a unique opportunity for anyone looking to break into the digital publishing industry as well as those wanting to improve their digital skills. Places can be booked here.
