Our Best Attention is due for publication early in 2016.
Comely Bank Publishing is delighted to announce its latest recruit, Jane Tulloch. Jane's background is in the National Health Service, but her debut novel, Our Best Attention is set in 1970s Edinburgh and focuses on life inside a fictional Princes Street department store – its life, its dramas, its tragedies and its comedies – as it tries to adapt to a changing way of life.
Our Best Attention is due for publication early in 2016.
1 Comment
Want some quick entertainment - check out our sister site FridayFlashFiction for some 100-word stories and more...
Started up almost two years ago by Comely Bank Publisher Gordon Lawrie, the Friday Flash Fiction website brings together the creative efforts of writers from all over the globe. There are 100-word stories, six-word stories, longer efforts, poetry and more, and the site is always on the look-out for fresh input. Join in the fun or read some of the fabulous contributions - and let us know what you think. Harper Lee’s long-awaited second novel, Go Set a Watchman, sold more than 746,000 copies in its first week on sale at outlets that report to Nielsen BookScan.
Publishers Weekly reports that the book outsold Grey by E.L. James in print format, although publishers for both Watchman and Grey reported that the books each sold a total of 1.1 million copies across all formats in their first week on sale. Nielsen BookScan tracks sales for about 80 percent of the print market. Go Set A Watchman has triggered further interest in Lee’s first novel, To Kill a Mocking Bird, with sales up during the week since Watchman was published. Federation of Writers Scotland member and Edinburgh’s Makar or Poet Laureate Christine de Luca will be performing in Gatehouse of Fleet on Saturday 25 July.
De Luca, who writes in both English and Shetlandic will be presenting One Head, Two Tongues at The Bakehouse, Gatehouse of Fleet DG7 2HP. Her latest poetry collection, Dat Trickster Sun (Mariscat 2014) was short-listed for the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet Prize. Her poetry has won her award sin her native Shetland and her poems have been selected three times for he Best Scottish Poems of the Year (2006, 2010 and 2013). Tickets cost £5 and to book, phone 01557 814175 or email [email protected] The world rights to a self-published memoir has been acquired by a publishing house.
Michael Volpe’s Noisy at the Wrong Times was chosen as an independent author pick by The Bookseller magazine in April and named by the Sunday Times as one its 100 biographies to love. World rights to the book have been bought by Kate Hewson, senior editor at John Murray Press imprint Two Roads. Talking to The Bookseller, she described the book as an “absolute joy of a memoir”. Volpe and his brothers were raised by his mother on a council estate in west London. He attended the boarding school Woolverstone Hall, a prestigious state boarding school that aimed to give brighter inner city children the opportunity of a private school education. Volpe said he was very pleased with what had happened to the book and excited to know that it would now be able to reach a wider audience. Two Roads will publish in the book in paperback on 17 September 2015. Publishers should band together to insist on a non-returnable model for book ordering by retailers, according to a recent article in the Huffington Post.
Brooke Warner, publisher of She Writes Press, says returns are an important piece of the book publishing industry that too few authors and readers understand. Retailers she reckons, have little incentive to order what they realistically think they can sell. She quotes an example of a book she worked on that the superstore Target ordered 30,000 copies of at a 60 percent discount – 25,000 copies of the book were returned. This kind of scenario, Warner says, can sink a small publisher and is devastating for an author. Mentioning Barnes & Noble, Warner says most authors want their books to be in Barnes & Noble, but their returns are often higher than 50 percent. Publishers, she says, are also frustrated by the lack of accountability from bookstores, wholesalers and distributors when it comes to damaged books that are returned. The industry is slewed massively in favour of bookstores, wholesalers and distributors, allowing them to return what they can’t sell. Her articles says: “When B&N goes out of business, I desperately hope that book publishers will rally together to say no more to returns. Being a returns-based business is bad from every angle, and the damage to the environment should not be understated. “We're printing more than we need. While books sit in warehouses not moving, inventory must be available to fulfil actual orders that are moving. This forces publishers to overprint, even publishers that are using print-on-demand technology… We need to stop putting up with this. The cost is not just on a publisher/author level; it's global.” Author Jackie Copleton's début novel, A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding, is published today, 16 July, 2015 by Hutchinson in the UK. When a badly scarred man knocks on the door of Amaterasu Takahashi’s retirement home near Philadelphia and says that he is her grandson, she doesn't believe him. She knows her grandson and her daughter died on the day the Americans dropped the atomic bomb on Nagasaki. She searched the ruined city for weeks. They vanished. But the arrival of the stranger forces her to relive her memories of 9 August, 1945, the hurt and humiliation that came before, and the pain and guilt that followed. A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding is about grief, regret and forgiveness as one woman searches for peace in the wreckage of her life. The identities of the mystery authors of articles short stories and poems published in a 19th century literary magazine have been revealed, according to an article in today’s Independent.
Edited by Charles Dickens, All the Year Round was a weekly magazine published between 1859 and 1895. The magazine was edited by Dickens’ eldest son after his death. An antiquarian book dealer discovered a bound collection of the periodicals annotated by Dickens and it is thought that the annotated volumes were Dickens’ way of keeping a personal record of who wrote what. Academic and bookdealer Jeremy Parrott ordered a 20-bvolume bound collection of All the Year Round from an online bookseller. When he opened the box of books and saw the notes, he described the revelation as “all my Christmases at once”. Among the biggest revelations were works by Elizabeth Gaskell, Lewis Carroll and Wilkie Collins, as well as two articles co-written by Dickens. The find also showed that Dickens had used the magazine to publish three works by his then teenage sons, Frank and Sydney. Dr Parrot and other academics examined the pencil notes in detail and confirmed that the collection was almost certainly annotated by Dickens himself. The discovery, they say, solves the mystery of which Victorian writers were commissioned by Dickens – some 300-400 authors have been identified as responsible for about 2,500 contributions. You can read the story in full here. Self-publishing continues to expand its presence in the book world, according to an article in the Kirkus Reviews.
The review highlights the recent BookExpo America, the largest publishing event in North America – where self-publishing events have increased year on year. The Next Generation Indie Book Awards held at the Harvard Club have witnessed an 20 percent increase in author entries, and the Indie Reader Discovery Awards were also part of the event. Brittany Turner from Amazon.com said self-publishing authors were “energised” by the news that the indie publishing space was continuing to grow and evolve. She also said that self-published authors were branching out into different genres, and that they were becoming increasingly better at marketing themselves. An author who self-published a book on picnics is on course to sell more than 4,000 books.
Gina Hyams’ book The Tanglewood Picnic: Music and Outdoor Feasts in the Berkshires was originally part of a book about the food culture of Berkshire County, USA. Her literary agent thought picnics on the lawn of Tanglewood, the summer home of the Boston Symphony Orchestra was too niche. However, Hyams followed her instincts and set up her own publishing house, Muddy Puppy Media. She did a first run of 2,000 books earlier this year in time of the Tanglewood season and has since ordered another print run of 2,500 books. She attributed her success to the willingness of local shopkeepers to stock the book, favourable reviews in the media and readers who have connected with the book and its subject matter. The book contains multiple photogrpahs of picnics on the Tanglewood lawn, recipes and a checklist of items to take on a Tanglewood picnic. A best-selling author has teamed up with an augmented reality company to offer readers a new experience.
Jodi Picoult and her daughter Samantha Van Leer’s new book Off the Page – romantic fiction aimed at the teenage audience - offers augmented reality content, promising that the reader’s experience will come off the page from the outset. Readers will receive the free to download Zappar app so that they can watch the characters come to life on the page. In addition to the character animation on the cover’s front page, a photo share feature is also included which allows users to pose with the paper characters from the cover’s artwork and there will be a chance to win retail vouchers. Speaking to whatsnewinpublishing, Max Dawes, partnerships director at Zappar, said: “We’re so pleased to be working with Jodi and Samantha on their new book. Augmented reality is a brilliant way to add a new dimension to storytelling. We hope our technology will help readers get something more from the fantastic story Jodi and Samantha tell.” A literary editor has argued that the new Amazon rules for royalties will penalise many writers, including the authors of children’s fiction, cookery book writers and those penning erotica.
In an article in today’s Guardian, Casey Lucas, a literary editor who works with self-published authors, said she had lost six clients as a result of the move. Authors, she said, did not feel it was worth their while continuing with books in light of the new arrangements. Amazon emailed authors on Wednesday, saying that writers who make their work available through the Kindle Owners Lending Library and Kindle Unlimited would no longer be paid per copy downloaded – payments instead will be based on how many pages have actually been read. Longer books, therefore, have the potential to receive higher payments. The Guardian says the payment per page could be as low as $0.006 – and that authors will need to write a 220-page book and have every reader who downloads the book read every page to make the same $1.30 they currently receive from a book being downloaded. Lucas said her clients had decided to stop writing after estimating a 60 to 80 percent reduction in royalties. She said many self-published romance authors were disabled or stay-at-home mums for whom a regular job and income wasn’t possible. The Amazon changes are thought to benefit writers of longer books that are read in full. Lucas argues that those writing shorter books, such as children’s fiction and cookery books will be hard hit by the change. A young author who self-published a book on bullying has had her work picked up by publishers.
Ajia Mayrock self-published The Survival Guide to Bullying as an e-book to coincide with National Bullying Prevention Awareness Month in the US, feeling that she didn't want to wait the minimum of 18 months for a publisher to publish her book. However, The Survival Guide to Bullying, filled with “roems” (rap poems), quizzes, and strategies on how to combat common teenage issues such as anxiety and cyber-bullying, not only attracted the attention of kids across America, but of publishers as well. On the back of media interviews and visits to libraries and schools to promote the book, Mayrock got herself an agent just in case. She then sent the book directly to Scholastic. The revised e-book was published on 30 June along with a paperback edition, newly vetted by an expert on bullying. The new book contains most of the original poems and anti-bullying quotes – but also new elements such as an epilogue and Q&As relating to the questions Mayrock received in schools. Speaking to Publishers Weekly, Mayrock said: “It’s been a weird, exciting, busy and wonderful few months. Quite the journey!” |
NewsLatest news from ARCHIVED PostsPLEASE NOTE That links in archived posts may no longer be valid
October 2023
proud sponsors of
Friday Flash Fiction |