A long old journey down from Manchester to Hampshire today, most of it in freezing fog. Three things made it more bearable: fully charged tablets with new games downloaded for kids in back seats broke journey with one of my oldest bestest friends near Oxford – panettone, coffee, good conversation and a nice clean loo […]
Continue readingI’m a big fan of Reedsy, the publishing professionals online marketplace. I was on the panel of judges that awarded them the 2016 Quantum Innovation Award (against some VERY stiff competition) – we were impressed by the way they serve both the new indie author community and traditional publishers so effectively, a neat trick which […]
Continue reading2016 will surely go down as one of the most dismal years of all time for untimely celebrity deaths. As someone on my Facebook feed pointed out this morning: ‘I’m scared to switch on the internet. Every time I do someone dies.’ There have been two deaths over this Christmas period that struck me particularly […]
Continue reading…and what are you doing? Here are my plans for these glorious unstructured days between Christmas and New Year: 1. run and blog every day (the normal rules of life may not apply, but the streak continues) 2. do a jigsaw. I’m not even quite sure why, but every year at around this time the […]
Continue readingOne of the first episodes of The Extraordinary Business Book Club podcast featured an interview with Michael E. Gerber talking about one of the most extraordinary business books of all time – The E-Myth Revisited. So it feels very appropriate that we end 2016 with Michael talking about his new book, Beyond the E-Myth: The Evolution of an Enterprise: From […]
Continue readingI only recently discovered this Christmas prayer by Robert Louis Stevenson – now seems a good time to share it. Happy Christmas, blog readers, and thanks for being here. I hope your Christmas is merry and bright. Loving Father, Help us remember the birth of Jesus, that we may share in the song of angels, […]
Continue reading‘It was really useful. I came away with two or three ideas for a book and I’m clearer now about which one I’m going to pursue first and how it fits with my business.’ That was Glenda Shawley, speaking after the Year of the Book workshop back in January. She’d just spent an afternoon with […]
Continue readingMy kids still love being read to. Even the 13-year-old. They’re perfectly capable of reading books for themselves these days – and do, voraciously – but there’s still something wonderful about the ritual of reading together. Picture books are designed to be read aloud, and the best, like Julia Donaldson’s, have a music and rhythm […]
Continue readingWhen I interviewed Michael E. Gerber for the podcast on Tuesday, I went into the conversation better prepared than almost any other interview I’ve ever done. Not only had I read the book (it’s a short, readable book, my favourite kind) but I’d listened to an audio trailer while I was fixing lunch the day […]
Continue readingIt’s the season of dreadful cracker jokes, so in the spirit of ‘When is a door not a door?’* here’s a festive riddle for you: Q: When is a book not a book? A: When it’s a series. OK it’s a rubbish joke, but the point is very serious. One huge mistake that first-time authors […]
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