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Behind-The-Books Blog

Authors make for good travel agents…

Friday, May 17th, 2013

I’m heading off to San Francisco tomorrow morning (I know, lucky me) and whilst this holiday has been in the pipeline for some time, what with the excitement of the Fall of Night Book Tour which has seen me travelling around the country with Rachel Caine (author of the Morganville Vampires series) this San Fran [...]

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And the winner is…

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

We seem to have had a pretty good year for publishing. Despite the tricky times on the high street, 2012 saw positive growth in both digital and print markets, and it wasn’t all EL James making a splash. Hilary Mantell’s critically lauded Bring up the Bodies has now attained incredible popular reach currently sitting at [...]

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Wednesday Cover Story: The thought-process behind the cover to A Little Murder

Wednesday, May 15th, 2013

Sometimes, after reading a book or manuscript, I can conjure up my own ideas of what could go (or could have gone) on the cover. And then there are other times where I wouldn’t know where to start. This, of course, is why our cover designs are left to our talented Art Editor, Christina… A [...]

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Dial ‘M’ for Merthyr

Tuesday, May 14th, 2013

Last week, as part of Rachel Caine’s UK tour to celebrate the launch of Fall of Night, I was excited to find myself back in my home country (well, technically ‘principality’) of Wales. After a brilliant event at Howell’s School Llandaff, and a quick hop on the train to an equally great book signing at [...]

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Holiday Reads

Monday, May 13th, 2013

It’s that time of year again when I am scouring bookshelves for potential holiday reads. I have two weeks to find two/three great books to keep me entertained on the plane and the beach. But my criteria are quite specific so I probably should’ve started my search earlier. I definitely want a print book rather [...]

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Rachel Caine visits Renaissance Learning

Friday, May 10th, 2013

Yesterday I had the chance to go along to a special event with bestselling author Rachel Caine, hosted by Renaissance Learning, a company who works with schools to encourage reading. They were also the organisers of the recent nationwide What Kids Are Reading poll which saw Glass Houses (the first book in Rachel’s Morganville Vampire [...]

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Having a Ball with Jane Austen

Thursday, May 9th, 2013

If you’re a fellow Janeite (a fan of Jane Austen, for anyone who hasn’t read Persuasion too many times), you’ll be happy to know that this Friday 10th May, at 9pm, BBC Two will be showing Pride & Prejudice: Having a Ball. The programme will involve a team of experts staging an authentically Austen-esque ball, much [...]

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Wednesday Cover Story: Creating the design for The Lavender Keeper

Wednesday, May 8th, 2013

While our Art Editor, Christina, can often create a cover design that is so perfect from the get-go that it requires not even the tiniest of tweaks (that’s how brilliant she is), the process of creating a cover can often be a more collaborative process. Designs can change to accommodate a new quote for the [...]

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Classics for Kids

Tuesday, May 7th, 2013

I was buying some books for a little person the other day. No, scratch that, considering one of my purchases was entitled Poo Bum, I was probably buying more for the dubious humour of said little one’s parents. Already being embarassed by them and she’s only a year old, poor thing. But while browsing the [...]

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A&B Spotting

Friday, May 3rd, 2013

A sunny visit to Hampshire last weekend to see my sister and brother-in-law resulted in the three of us visiting Waterstones on our jaunt into Reading. (They stood in the doorway blinking, slightly confused as to how we ended up in another bookshop while I went galloping among the shelves.) As well as spotting Hugh [...]

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Fancy living under the same roof as Rudyard Kipling?

Thursday, May 2nd, 2013

Yesterday we blogged about book-inspired summer homes, and now we have news over another house that may go on your wish-list. It’s The Gables, in Tisbury, Wiltshire, where Rudyard Kipling’s parents lived for over 20 years and apparently where Kipling wrote most of his famous novel, Kim.  And if you fancy a home with such [...]

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Wednesday Cover Story: Fancy renting out the house on this book cover?

Wednesday, May 1st, 2013

It’s the 1st of May, the sun is out and had my first lunch in the park with no coat on.  Summer is finally just round the corner and I can start looking forward to summer life: picnics and bike rides, ice-cream and beach-time, staying out late on those long warm nights, walking barefoot on [...]

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A gift of a story

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013

Books are the great present-conumdrum-solution. Whether buying for fashionista or fisherman (both actual cases on my Christmas shopping list), what other shop could you duck into with a pretty good chance of present-purchasing success? So, it seems a no-brainer to me to sprinkle some of that bookish magic into the humble greetings card… While strolling [...]

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Bookish Bags

Monday, April 29th, 2013

Today, the arrival of our fabulous Morganville canvas bags (which we’ll be taking along on Rachel Caine’s UK tour very soon) made me crave more handy bookish things to carry too much stuff around in. And thankfully there is a wealth of choice out there on the Internet; below are a couple of my favourites (click on the [...]

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A week of Barcelona…

Friday, April 26th, 2013

I started the week with another trip to my new favourite haunt a few blocks from the Allison & Busby office, Iberica, on Great Portland Street. This Spanish restaurant is inconspicuos from the outside but walk through the front doors and you’ll enter into a beautiful space, featuring tables and plush leather armchairs by the [...]

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Impromptu pep-talks to wannabe writers…

Thursday, April 25th, 2013

The chaos fromthe London Book Fair last week has only now begun to settle and I can now approach people without attempting to hand out flyers.  It was my second experience at the Fair. Last year’s was spent wide eyed, attempting to hand out CV’s and stalk famous authors. But this year’s experience was quite [...]

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Wednesday Cover Story: Getting readers’ seal of approval

Wednesday, April 24th, 2013

We often spend days, weeks, months mulling over cover designs and it’s always interesting to hear what people think of our covers. And of course, it’s particularly nice to hear readers think we’ve done a good job, especially when we’ve reprinted a book and revamped the cover with a new design… you hope readers will [...]

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Happy Shakespeare Day!

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

There are lots of weird and wonderful ‘national days’, including some more bizarre than others (Pi Day or Towel Day, for example). But today has, I think, a worthwhile theme – as well as being St George’s Day, it’s also the anniversary of William Shakespeare’s birth and death. So dig out the lace ruff and [...]

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World Book Night – cheers!

Monday, April 22nd, 2013

Tomorrow is World Book Night, the annual celebration of books and reading that seeks to share the passion for literature with those who don’t regularly read. It’s a damn fine cause and there are some great books on the list this year across a broad range of genres, full list here. There are events going [...]

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Favourite things from the London Book Fair

Friday, April 19th, 2013

It’s Friday, and we’re winding down from the buzz of the London Book Fair earlier this week. I spent one day at the big event and noted an unsurprisingly huge increase in the size of the Digital section, the absence of the Cookery Corner (a regular LBF space which used to hold cookery demos to [...]

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