Archive
New Work: www.granta.com
We’ve just launched the first phase of the new website for literary quarterly, Granta Magazine.
Granta is “the magazine of new writing”, and recently celebrated its 100th issue. The magazine dates back to 1889, and our new site coincides with the publication of Granta 101, the first issue edited by Jason Cowley, who was appointed by […]
Published: April 15, 2008. Read more →
Why Agents Need Good Websites
Do agents need (good) web sites? It depends who you ask. Some agents don’t have web sites at all - and, alarmingly, some agents I’ve spoken to continue to take a fairly dim view of the web as a whole, almost considering it beneath or outside their areas of responsibility.
None (that I know of, […]
Published: March 31, 2008. Read more →
James Frey
We’ve just launched a site for James Frey’s UK publisher, all about A Million Little Pieces and My Friend Leonard.
Given the whole Oprah / Smoking Gun stuff, there’s still a lot of debate about the books.
There’s some details about why we did what we did over here, or you can engage in the […]
Published: February 18, 2008. Read more →
The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (200,000 times)
In 1999, I wrote a business plan for the company I was then working for, Canongate Books. The plan was for the Scottish Arts Council, and the idea I’d come up with was to make “pop promos for books” which would get a web and film festival showing, and drive traffic to the Canongate site […]
Published: February 14, 2008. Read more →
Free: PDF vs. MP3?
In among all the recent interest in free I wanted to pick up on something I mentioned in passing (I think during a question) at RRO a couple of weeks back.
We have an increasingly broad range of options these days for electronic reading devices - be it the basic (phone, computer), dedicated (Kindle, Sony Reader), […]
Published: February 13, 2008. Read more →
Free (conomics)
We’ve long, long, long-since argued that giving books away for free online is a great way to market them.
However, not all - in fact very few, possibly close to none - of our clients agrees, despite some great anecdotal evidence from the like of Corey Doctorow, Seth Godin and now, as fate would have […]
Published: February 11, 2008. Read more →
Reaching Readers Online - follow up
So, a few technical hitches* aside, Thursday went well. The seminar was held at the London Stock Exchange, which was all very shiny and expensive and flash. (I particularly enjoyed seeing The Source sculpture first hand.)
All of the files presented are available here as PDF (with and without notes), and embedded Powerpoint.
My favourite bit was […]
Published: February 4, 2008. Read more →
Reaching Readers Online - 2008
Update: All of my files from the presentation are available for download here
I’ve been asked back to The Bookseller’s Reaching Readers Online seminar, which takes place at the end of this Month.
There’s some really interesting people looking like taking part, including those within the publishing industry (from Penguin, Little Brown and Headline) and within the […]
Published: January 10, 2008. Read more →
New project live: The Wisdom of Whores
If things have been quiet around here - in terms of blog posts at least - it’s because we’ve been running fast at a number of projects over the last few months. No excuse for paltry blogging, but we’re coming to the point where some of these projects are now going live.
The first out is […]
Published: December 6, 2007. Read more →
Fair Trade Books?
Being green is high on the publishing agenda these days, thankfully, although which agenda is up for some debate.
The mainstream UK publishing industry has dipped a toe in the water with the no-returns initiative, and shouting about printing on recycled (or at least sustainable) paper. Both have had mixed successes and are far from being […]
Published: October 18, 2007. Read more →