Back, back to my safe office and own bed and good coffee and unhobbled web connection and email and more coffee and everything. Sure, seeing the world is nice an'all, but Frankfurt hardly counts as a holiday and I'm very glad to be back... to the teetering piles of invoices which seem to be flooding my desk. Hmm. Remember I told you about that whole 'ooh Christmas is scary because lots of bookstores have bought lots of books but let's hope readers buy them too' thing? Well phase one of the scariness has started because I now have the print bills to pay. Gulp.

But the signs are good. Frinstance, we are having tremendous success with pre-orders of The Crafter's Companion. Last week Anna put a pre-order Paypal button on her website which I haven't even bothered to put on Snowbooks' yet... since then we have sold more than $5000 worth! And you should pre-order it too.

And that's not all. Frankfurt was a stormer - our best ever, probably. We only did one actual shake-hands-sign-contract-take-photo deal (on foreign rights for Ex Machina) but we:
- met with foreign wholesalers and our export partners from Europe, Australia, Asia and the US (hello!) and agreed to send them a lot of books to sell
- had excellent foreign rights interest in all our books but highlights included Deep Hanging Out (which will have its own blog post soon. Sorry this is in the wrong order), Crafters, Lint (huge interest. Steve Aylett is everyone's favourite author, turns out), Ex Machina, Plotting, Taking the Plunge, How Very Interesting, Sand Daughter (huge again), Sob Story (massive interest) and Needle in the Blood.
- caught up with our peers. Summersdale have always looked after us and tell us wise things. Such nice boys. Mark from Quercus is similarly charming and really lovely to talk to. And The Friday Project were looking gorgeous - right-thinking publishers unite.

Lots to do this week - huge amount of follow ups to do and let's not forget those bloody bills to pay. So I'll leave you with this to ponder. Here is a photo of the Frankfurter Hof - the most popular hotel for publishers to stay.

If you are an editorial assistant in a large publishing house on £18,000 and your manager tells you the company can't possibly afford to give you a £500 pay rise, show them this photo and ask how many of your senior management stayed there. In BookFair week, room rates are €500 a night with a minimum four night booking - €2000 per person. Compare that to our wonderful accomodation: total bill for four people for five nights was €700. We were in BUNK BEDS, for god's sake - but we have a lot more money to be spent on things other than jacuzzis as a result. "Snowbooks: spending money wisely since 2003."

And here is our little stand:

Right, to the email! I've answered three this morning - 1200 in the inbox still to go... Dontcha just love spam.