Here.

This is serious. I am relying on you here to pull one out of the hat.

Your comrade and snowblog-reader-in-arms, Kat Coldiron, needs your help. Go, buy and enjoy her short stories and help her out to retrain as she's getting laid off.

I'm asking this as a personal favour - if you have ever enjoyed the Snowblog, do this for me.

Up.

On the subject of White magazine, I should reiterate that I welcome submissions from anyone - Snowbooks authors, hopeful Snowbooks authors, non-Snowbooks authors, the man down the street with the funny dog - on the subject of Writing Insights. I also welcome any sort of writing at all from Snowbooks' authors, ranging from poetry to extracts to photos of your cat. Really, there's very little I would say no to, because anything like this provides a window into your writing lives, and that's fascinating. So email away.

Heads up: there's a rather special competition running on White Magazine's current newsletter. Sign up quick so you don't miss out.

"Steve Aylett's biography of fictional writer Jeff Lint has become a modern cult classic. Among Lint's work was the surreal comic book The Caterer, which Aylett lovingly produced as a real, US-format comic book for sale, rendered in pitch-perfect 70s style, even down to the colour separation printing and Comics Code Authority stamp on the cover."

Says The Guardian.

Sometimes something isn't really real until you read it in The Bookseller.

Hey, guess what? We're launching a magazine!

Up now. Sorry I missed last week. I don't quite have the time or, let's face it, the patience to do last week's too, but suffice to say sales weren't too bad.

A short and sweet review of Skarlet. And lucky lucky me, I've just been one of the first to read Thomas Emson's next novel, Prey, (oops, no cover on Amazon yet) which is the sequel to Maneater. My god, it's fantastic. Out in hardback in November!

Are not up, because I am, as I believe the phrase goes, bonkers busy. Thanks for being patient. I'll do them soon enough...

Here's a great review of The J-Word. Everyone who's read it has raved about it to me, by the way, so you really should take a look.

Like they say in arguments about book copyright, piracy is not an author's greatest threat, obscurity is. And in industries like music, books and movies, the threat of obscurity is made worse because big names get the marketing spend to make them even bigger and everyone else tends to gets nothing. Focussing demand where you want it might make business sense, but I prefer the idea that we can each find authors who suit us, regardless of whether they're big names. To my way of thinking, we need to gradually replace the existing marketing machinery with something a bit more like a dating agency, which helps match author to reader.

I don't know exactly what such a thing would look like, but CompletelyNovel seems like it might be a step in the right direction. If you're an author, it's pretty quick and easy to sign up. Here's a PDF on how to do it. I'll admit, I'm biased in favour of CompletelyNovel compared with other, more corporate projects, partly because of their indy feistiness and partly because they're such nice people. Nothing wrong with that, though, is there?

Shamelessly and lazily lifted straight from BoingBoing:

The first ship to transmit an SOS distress call was the Cunard liner Slavonia on June 10, 1909, when it went aground on rocks off the Azores.

Prior to that, ships used a variety of distress calls, such as:

-.-. -.. --.-
= CDQ (subject to misunderstanding)

..- .... / --- .... / .-- . / .- .-. . / ... .. -. -.- .. -. --.
= UH OH WE ARE SINKING (much clearer)

.. / - .... .. -. -.- / .. / .... .. - / .- / --. --- -.. -.. .- -- -. / .. -.-. . -... . .-. --.
= I THINK I HIT A GODDAMN ICEBERG (No doubt at all here)

... .... .. .--. / -.-. .- .--. - .- .. -. / -....- / ..-. .- .. .-..
= SHIP CAPTAIN - FAIL!

I'm pleased to share with you www.cyclebooks.co.uk, a new website we've created to share stuff on the, er, cycle books we publish. Go there now and sign up for freebies! It's brand new so we'll be adding to it as we go. And comments, critiques, thoughts very welcome as it's still in the development phase. Thanks!

Oh, and this just in as I press 'post': National Bike Week at the Book Depository!

You'll recall that at the start of this year Rob, Robin and I started a new business, Onix Central, You'll be pleased to know it's going very well indeed, to the point that we're now hiring. (And getting an office in Oxfordshire which will have its very own post.)

Click below the line or download a job spec for Onix Administrators. This is a superb opportunity for someone looking for their first break in publishing - probably a recent graduate. It's a 6 month contract - this isn't a job for life, but instead will get you a CV to die for. You'll be working for me, so you'll also be able to learn about how Snowbooks works. And judging by the many applications I get for unpaid work experience, I'm sure that the prospect of a paid job where you learn this stuff is rather fine.

You will have to be very comfortable with computers. I'm not necessarily expecting you to be able to process XSLT using Eclipse on the first day, although that would be great, but I need you to be fascinated by what I'm talking about and keen to learn. In fact, you should be googling it right now. (And heads up: if you come to interview, guess what I'm going to ask?) Ideally, you don't just use Amazon: you dig around in their API. You don't just Twitter: you write little Twitter apps. You blog, but you've installed it yourself and tweaked the CSS to your tastes.

Sound like you? Better apply.

I like this.

This page contains all the weird characters you can't get in Photoshop, and tells you how to make them appear. For instance, to get an en dash in Photoshop hold down Alt in Windows, Opt on the Mac and type 0151. Who knew?!

Various excellent items to share. Firstly, there's a lovely review of The Letters here. Next, our man in Scotland appears in the Times Higher Education magazine this week, looking very suave. Finally, a fantastic first for Snowbooks: Thomas Emson has his own label! How cool!