Why is it so hard to make money from something that so many people love so much? What is it about books that they put those who love them most through the mill? It can be hard to love books sometimes. I learned the other day that the Hughes & Hughes bookshop chain is closing down – in fact…
To recap from Part 1 (of my ambitious and epic blog trilogy) what a publisher traditionally does for a writer is: first, they take that story on. That approval is, in itself, a recognition that the story is of a reasonable quality. Then they hone it into something they can sell, produce the printed matter and distribute it to…
The issue of what, and more importantly how children will read in the future is a battle – not just for hearts and minds, but also for attention spans. In this, the second of this three-part post, I’ll outline how I believe this change in reading will shape publishing as we know it, and how those of us working…
I’m going to post this in three parts – blogging is meant to be an exercise in short, sharp writing and I’m tackling a complicated issue. That brevity in writing will be part of what I want to talk about. In this post, I’d like to put forward an outline of what publishing has been up until now, and…
The Kelloggs Storytime Launch, in association with Hughes & Hughes and the O’Brien Press.
The RED Awards ceremony – a break from the norm.
Charles Stross’s blog and the discussion about how to make a living in the new world of digital publishing.
‘Strangled Silence’, the ‘The Goblin of Tara’ and ‘The Evil Eye’ audiobooks and the Scottish Connection.
This is a first for me. One of my books is now available in your local shop or supermarket – in the breakfast cereal section. With boxes of Rice Krispies. ‘Mad Grandad and the Mutant River’ is part of a promotion from Kelloggs, along with Hughes & Hughes bookshops and the O’Brien Press, to sell cereal and reading material…
I was reading Eoin Purcell’s post on the problem bookshops are faced with as they lose more and more customers to online booksellers, both for print and digital books. Actually, he was passing on a point made by another blogger, Seth Godin (Is this all we do in blogs now – talk about other people’s blogs?), but it amounts…