The mighty Amazon rolls on – electronically
Almost exactly a decade ago, to coincide with the second anniversary of the launch of the Kindle in the United Kingdom, Amazon UK announced that for the first time it was selling more ebooks than paperback and hardback books combined. The figure the company came up with was that for every 100 printed books Amazon […]
Pierre Cardin, Rolex and goats
I’ve mentioned before that I used to live in the mountains, in the tiny principality of Andorra between France and Spain, which is a many ways a slightly strange country. I recall one occasion when this observation was brought home to me fairly forcibly one afternoon when I was taking the dog out for a […]
The craft of writing
When we lived in Andorra up in the Pyrenees, rather than relying on my usual jar of instant, I would occasionally drive down the valley and have a coffee in one of the local establishments. Although this cost money, obviously, my wife was keen to encourage me to do this because, rather than just ambling […]
A decade ago – the stars might lie but the numbers never do
This morning I took a look at where I was and what I was doing almost exactly ten years ago, and some interesting numbers from the world of publishing more or less jumped out at me. Let’s start with some bald figures. In the United Kingdom, back in 2001, roughly 110,000 new books were published, […]
A diary brought to life
Just over 40 years ago, on 2 April 1982, Argentine forces invaded the Falkland Islands and repeated the action on South Georgia the following day. Luckily for the Falkland Islanders, at that time Britain had a Prime Minister with a bigger set of balls than any of the men who came after her. Margaret Thatcher […]
Four-letter words and ebooks
Something of a lighter note to hopefully take your mind off what’s going on in Eastern Europe right now, though I do hope that Eurovision isn’t the only contest that Ukraine manages to win this year. It’s very probably a sign of the times, at least in the world of publishing, but this blog post […]
The Russian Poseidon super-torpedo and a man from Bolton
The latest Russian threat You’ve probably seen typically hysterical newspaper reports about Vlad the Lad’s option to destroy Great Britain using his Poseidon super-torpedo, and I thought it was worth just clarifying what it is and how it works, weapons and such like being my thing. The Status-6 Oceanic Multi-purpose System, NATO reporting name Kanyon, […]
The publishing process and electronic errors
The publishing process for any book, whether submitted through a commercial publishing house or just knocked up by somebody sitting at the kitchen table and then uploaded to Amazon, should follow similar routes, albeit with some obvious differences. You, an author without a publishing contract, should read through your finished manuscript slowly and several times. […]
The genesis of a book
I’ve always been interested in how writers come up with ideas for books. I remember reading a very long time ago that Agatha Christie created one of her gentle murder mysteries with the title Why didn’t they ask Evans? simply because one of her acquaintances put down the book he had been reading with an […]
Reviews and reviewing
Yesterday I did something that I very rarely do: I went to Amazon and I checked the numbers of my last three books and glanced at the reviews as well. I suppose other authors find the Amazon numbering system for books and other products just as incomprehensible as I do, though I suppose it does […]