Browsing Archive: July, 2012
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Monday, July 30, 2012,
This is our first 99p title and it sounds dreadfully cheap.
After all, what can you buy for 99p these days? A chocolate bar, a small piece of fruit - but certainly not a cup of tea, a coffee or even a bus ticket!
Yet, 99p for
Underground will take you places you have never been - the soft green landscape of the antebellum south where Samantha prepares for her debutante ball, not knowing she'll soon be heading north with two escaped slaves. In a parallel story, we have Annie in the mountains of...
Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Tuesday, July 24, 2012,
A Young Woman's Guide to Carrying On is a very funny novel, and Jilly Wosskow, the author, is a very funny woman.
I've decided to post some of her lines and challenge anyone to find better in novels by Kathy Lette or Jilly Cooper." 'And don't think I'm going to give up my retirement to look after your illegitimate babies.' Mother had never gone out to work in her entire life so God alone knew what she would retire from - thawing TV dinners or spying on the neighbours perhaps."
"He unlocked the... Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Thursday, July 19, 2012,
If you like Jilly Cooper, you will love Jilly Wosskow.
While Jilly Cooper writes about wealthy jet-setting polo-playing characters, Jilly Wosskow sticks to people we know, girls from Sheffield who want fun and a man to love them. And she does this as she makes us laugh and loud with sex scenes that would make Jilly Cooper blush.
Jilly Wosskow herself is a shy woman - although you would never think that to see her. She describes herself: born in
Sheffield in the mid-1950s and has been carousing... Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Tuesday, July 17, 2012,
There have been wonderful statements made by the great and good in the publishing industry concerning listening to readers, and it makes me think of our first Hookline novel,
The China Bird by Bryony Doran.
Given that we let reading groups choose the novels that go to print, I thought we would let our readers select the cover that went on the book. We had several images. The one I favoured featured a china pie bird. Not being domesticated, I didn't realise that it was a kitchen utensil for pre... Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Tuesday, July 10, 2012,
Another month and more updates on the evolution of E-books.
Faber Factory have organised a conference to brief members on new aspects of E-publishing.Many of us are keen to know how the Waterstones-Kindle alliance will play out. Will Waterstones continue to sell ePub books alongside Kindle books? (For the uninitiated, Kindle uses a different e-book formatting programme from the rest of the industry - hence Kindle can only read Kindle books). If Kindle books are sold onto Kindle devices in shop... Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Thursday, July 5, 2012,
Tax on books is a terrible thing - especially when it's a full 20 percent.
No matter what you think of progressive and regressive taxes, £1 tax on a £5 book is excessive.Fortunately, we don't pay tax on paper books, but it is a different matter when it comes to Ebooks. Apparently they are treated as computer games - hmm!Ebooks are not cheap to produce. Editing and typesetting must still take place and then they have to be 'converted' to ePub. I'm not exactly sure what this process involves -... Continue reading ...
Posted by Yvonne Barlow on Monday, July 2, 2012,
Print-on-demand publishing is a growing segment of today's book market.
For the uninitiated, print-on-demand means that books are printed as they are ordered rather than having a fixed print run of ten, twenty or thirty thousand books. For publishers, not having to commit money and warehousing space to thousands of books means we can take chances on new authors.
In the early days, print-on-demand technology wasn't great - the text wasn't even and the bindings often fell apart. This is no long... Continue reading ...
Editor at Hookline Books - where book clubs and readers choose the novels that go to print.
