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Where book lovers unite
By Lucy Broughton, on 19 November 2014
Okay, so we may have a got a bit behind with our Tweet of the Week posts… but we’re back!
This weeks tweet celebrates our successful bake sale for Children in Need! Not bad for one hour on a rainy day… Well done everyone!
By Lucy Broughton, on 16 November 2014
Monday 17th November
6-7.00PM FOYLES
Ray’s Jazz: EFG London Jazz Festival presents Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Orchestra featuring Nathaniel Facey
Ray’s Jazz kickstart their EFG London Jazz Festival events with a full-blown set from the Tomorrow’s Warriors Youth Orchestra. The concert will also feature soloist Nathaniel Facey of Empirical fame.
Venue: The Auditorium, Level Six
Tickets: Free. To reserve, simply visit the website.
Tuesday 18th November
Sales, Marketing and Promotion – GROUP PRESENTATIONS
Author Management
Focus: Rights Management
Led by Sam, a masterclass with Diane Spivey (Little, Brown) and Lynette Owen (Pearson) on rights management.
7.00pm WATERSTONE’S PICCADILLY
Thinking Drinkers: Drinking Thinkers – an Evening with
Ben McFarland, Tom Sandham
Thinking Drinkers: The Enlightened Imbiber’s Guide to Alcohol
This event is free but reserve your place by email piccadilly@waterstones.com
Join enlightened imbibers Ben McFarland and Tom Sandham for an evening of illumination and entertainment as they take us on a cultural tour of nips, shots and pints from the Wild West saloons of America to the whisky wildernes of the Outer Hebrides via Gin’s degenerate London lanes and the anarchic absinthe-addled avenues of France. With samples and tastings, this will be an evening to remember!
Wednesday 19th November
7.00PM WATERSTONE’S PICCADILLY
Horace Warner’s “Spitalfields Nippers” A Magic Lantern Show by The Gentle Author
This event is free but reserve your place by email: piccadilly@waterstones.com
This Magic Lantern Show reveals an astonishing archive of photographs taken by Horace Warner. These take us to the byways, alleyways and yards of Spitalfields 1900 and the hidden worlds of a lost tribe: the Spitalfields Nippers. They will be giving away large poster prints of the Spitalfields Nippers to all at this event!
Thursday 20th November
Publishing Skills – InDesign Workshop part 2!
7.00pm WATERSTONE’S PICCADILLY
London Haunting with Chris McCabe and Scott Wood
In the Catacombs: A Summer Among the Dead Poets of West Norwood Cemetery
This event is free but reserve your place by email piccadilly@waterstones.com
In this darkly intriguing London Salon, Chris McCabe steals us away as he uncovers the stories of the dead poets buried in West Norwood Cemetery to reveal their still-unsilenced voices amidst the London psyche. Alongside, host of the London Fortean Society and author of London’s Urban Legends: The Corpse on the Tube reveals a geography of plague pits and morbid memorials. Hosted by Tom Chivers from penned in the margins, this will be an evening of Gothic intrigue.
Friday 21st November
Perhaps you could get ahead with the Author Management coursework?
Saturday 22nd November
12.00PM WATERSTONE’S PICCADILLY
Meet James Franco
Actors Anonymous
Meet the actor, director, screenwriter, producer, teacher and author, at this exclusive signing. Please note James Franco will be signing copies of his books only. Copies of ‘Actors Anonymous’, ‘Palo Alto’ and ‘Directing Herbert White’ will be available to purchase on the day at Waterstones Piccadilly, proof of a Waterstones receipt may be required. Please arrive early to avoid disappointment.
ASSIGNMENT COUNTDOWN – less than a month until the Author Management deadline!
By Lucy Broughton, on 3 November 2014
You are probably more than familiar with the saying ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’, which for most instances is probably good advice. However, the more we learn on this course, the more I’m inclined to think that in the literal cases, we should judge books by their covers.
The cover is the first point of contact a consumer has with a book, and no matter how well it is written, or even how good the blurb is (which is also very important), they won’t pick up a book with a bad cover. Publishers know this, and spend a lot of time and money into making the best, appropriate, covers for their books. They design their covers specifically with the target audience in mind, and ensure that it is relevant for the genre of the book.
During the first week of the course we had a great lecture from Auriol on the book cover process, and even got some insight into how the iconic One Day cover came about. And from that point onwards we have continually been told about the importance of the cover, and the impact it can have on retailers stocking the book, and particular likes/dislikes based on the type e.g. supermarket or bookstore (Asda, anyone?).
Even though ebooks are increasingly popular, the cover is still important – and publishers have had to adapt to this, for example, white covers don’t work online. But this is also an opportunity to get creative with the covers, because online it is easy to change them.
Moreover, as we have heard, one impact of digital is to make physical books more of a luxury item. A beautiful cover can make a book into something that you want to display – and consequently something you would buy in physical rather than digital format.
So, although a cover can’t tell you how well written, or how good a story is, it does tell you a lot of things. It gives you an indication as to the genre, it shows you how much effort the publisher has put into the book, and it makes you pick a book up (or click on a link).
Book covers sell books, so DO judge a book by its cover.
By Lucy Broughton, on 29 October 2014
So my group have the (lucky? unlucky?) position of being the first to have an update on our Publishing Project. Our project involves looking at the back issues of The Bookseller to chart the development of the now booming Children’s market. We’ve had loads of ideas since the very first meeting but unfortunately, because we haven’t had our meeting with our project leader at The Bookseller yet… I can’t tell you what those ideas are.
I can tell you that we have already done loads of research at the British Library, after some mishaps with cards and complex ordering systems, and have already found some amazing things, including:
So for now… we’ll just get back to research…
Got enough books there Amanda?
By Lucy Broughton, on 22 October 2014
Each week we will pick a tweet that we think you just should not miss out on…
This week, predictably, Tweet of the Week has to go to @DWill_ . With 17K retweets and 12K favourites, and the whole book industry expressing their jealousy of being trapped in a bookshop, you probably did see this… but it was definitely the highlight of Twitter this past week and I couldn’t not choose it!
Bookshop sleepover anyone?
