On World Book Night, I offered the chance to win one of three life-changing books – all you had to do was leave a comment telling me why you needed the one you’d chosen. Well, how could I choose, really? Six great reasons why six great women needed one of these books, and in the […]
Continue readingToday, 23 April 2017 – Shakespeare’s birthday (and Roy Orbinson’s, apparently), St George’s Day, and this year the London Marathon day too – is also World Book Day. And more importantly, since I’m posting this rather late, World Book Night. All across the country people are pressing a copy of their favourite book into the […]
Continue readingDoing some desk research today and came upon this, the website of a fellow member of the IPG, St Mark’s Press. In case you’re not able to see the image for some reason, here’s what the poignant message on the home page says: Please note that St Mark’s Press has permanently ceased trading. Thanks to […]
Continue readingLove books? Love quotes from books? Love Pinterest? You’ll love Postepic. You know that feeling when you’re reading a book and a sentence or phrase leaps out at you, it’s the most perfect string of words you’ve ever seen, it’s moved you, or made you laugh, or it contains a profound truth beautifully expressed. Until […]
Continue readingSo this is interesting. US actor Alec Baldwin has just had his biography, Nevertheless: A Memoir, published with HarperCollins. He’s done something smart, which is to create a Facebook page for the book to host the communinty of fans and as a platform on which to host additional content and an insight into the story behind […]
Continue readingIt’s been a tough week. By midnight on Monday 15 proposals had landed on my virtual doormat from the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge participants. That’s not as many as some previous challenges, so it should have been easier to choose a winner, right? Wrong. I managed to narrow it down to a shortlist of […]
Continue readingToday’s blog is over at BookMachine: reflecitons on publishing’s role in positioning authors following my conversation with Mark Levy. Read more…
Continue readingThis is/was Delivery Day, twice over. 1. I delivered the first section of my own book to the editor today. (I now have a cover design too, which I absolutely love.) 2. The completed proposals are trickling in from those who’ve completed the 10-day Business Book Proposal Challenge. The deadline is midnight, there are 11 […]
Continue readingMachine learning is where Google, Amazon, Apple and others are focusing their investment, and it’s impacting every industry from medicine to manufacturing. You’d think writing and publishing might be immune, but there are already AI-authored books out there (last year a largely machine-authored book passed the first stage of a literary competition in Japan). Another […]
Continue readingThis week’s blog is over at BookMachine, and draws out the lessons for authors from my interview with Andrian Zackheim, one of the world’s leading business book publishers and the founder of Portfolio Penguin. https://bookmachine.org/2017/03/22/author-platform-matters-publishers/
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