It’s a big day for Practical Inspiration Publishing: the publication of the first book on the list to have come out of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge. Thriving Abroad: The definitive guide to professional and personal relocation success by Louise Wiles and Evelyn Simpson was joint winner of the very first Challenge almost exactly […]
Continue reading…check it out online. We’re doing titles today in the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge (yes, I know it’s Day 4, but the title has to fall out of the thinking we do on reader and summary, so although the title may be at the top of the proposal document, it’s not the starting point […]
Continue readingIt’s Day 2 of the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge, and we’re focusing on defining and evidencing the target market. This is a tough job, one of the chewiest of the whole challenge (and that’s saying something….) but it’s also one of the most valuable. The typical mistake most non-fiction authors make is to keep […]
Continue readingAfter the colouring books for grown-ups trend there have been a few attempts to find the Next Big Thing that could be smuggled in under the ‘mindfulness’ banner: dot-to-dot was one of the most dismal, in my opinion, but I’m more cheerful about a new title in the works from Pan Macmillan’s Bluebird imprint: Scriptorium: Healing […]
Continue readingHow many times have you said that over the last year/month/week/day? If your life is like mine, saying yes to one thing means saying no to something else, so you need to budget your time carefully. I spend my life helping people create books and put out regular content to build their business, knowing […]
Continue readingLove this. Jamie Byng, CEO at Canongate publishers (he was in the year below me at Edinburgh University – I try not to think about that too much) is putting his famous head of hair on the block. He’s raising money for The Howard League for Penal Reform, and to encourage Canongate fans to put […]
Continue readingSlightly surreal evening at the Austrian Embassy with an eclectic mix of Austrian and UK publishers, publishing tech folk, and international trade envoys. Surreal but jolly, lubricated by Austrian wine (who knew?), Schnitzel and Sachertorte. The Austrian Trade Commissioner, Christian Kesberg, gave an introductory talk to kick off the evening and set the tone, in […]
Continue readingWhen I worked at Oxford University Press, an editor had cut out and stuck to the noticeboard by her office a cartoon. It showed an organization chart, cascading from the leader stick figure at the top through the ranks to a thickly populated bottom tier, which was circled. A bespectacled man was pointing to this […]
Continue readingThe first podcast I ever listened to was Joanna Penn’s The Creative Penn. It’s about writing, publishing, innovation, and business development. What’s not to like? It’s still the one I load up first on Stitcher before I go for a long run. And it was the one that most formed my thoughts about how to […]
Continue reading“Print sales soar while ebook sales decline” That’s pretty much the headlines in the traditional press at the moment, following the release of a Publishers Association report showing that print book sales increased by 8% year on year, to their highest level since 2012, while consumer ebooks fell 3%. Well, that’s certainly part of the […]
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