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30 Sep 2007: The origin of life
Time for more you-heard-it-here-first, gee-whiz science. Unlike the linguistic divergence thing (remember that? No? OK, never mind) this one isn't mine. It's probably the idea of Thomas Gold, late of Cornell University.
Continue reading "The origin of life" »
posted on September 30, 2007 02:55 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
30 Sep 2007: Transatlantic comparisons
Now there are many things I don't understand, but here's one that's often bothered me. In America, a small town can have a gigantic Barnes & Noble or Borders bookstore and in the UK only a major town can sustain such a thing. And forgive me for saying this, but when attempting to complete the unfinished sentence 'The average American is...' very few people would suggest 'relentlessly bookish' as their answer. America doesn't have a culture that particularly glorifies the bookworm, but somehow it has an economy that encourages the mega-bookstore. Or maybe it's that the UK has an economy that discourages big shops for small towns.
Continue reading "Transatlantic comparisons" »
posted on September 30, 2007 07:49 AM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
29 Sep 2007: Emails
If you're waiting for a reply to an email you've sent me, sorry for the delay. I was on the road most of last week, first at the Gardners Trade show, then Windsor, then LBS in Worthing, then to London, and then in meetings all yesterday. So I have neither done much work nor answered many emails. I'm bound to have cleared most of them by Monday night, so shouldn't be too much longer. Thanks for your patience!
posted on September 29, 2007 11:03 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
29 Sep 2007: My lovely husband...
Not Em's Husband
...has just bought two tickets to see the Cure next March as an early birthday present for me (I'm 33 next Wednesday, since you ask). Wheeeeeee! I am taking breaks in between dancing my excited dance to type this post. It's their only UK show next year where they will be, no doubt, playing from their... NEW ALBUM. Best News Ever.
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Update, some minutes later:
Hmm. Dancing is all well and good but if it means you fall over and sprain your ankle, as I have just done, it rather detracts from the celebrations. Bah. No Bicester Shopping Village for me, today, which was my other birthday treat. Bah.
----------------------
posted on September 29, 2007 09:53 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
27 Sep 2007: Our day out in pictures
An early start now we live in the countryside, followed by a lovely day at LBS signing books.
Continue reading "Our day out in pictures" »
posted on September 27, 2007 10:33 AM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
27 Sep 2007: Anglican split, etc;
Continue reading "Anglican split, etc;" »
posted on September 27, 2007 06:36 AM | link | Comments (6) | Leave a comment
26 Sep 2007: Mover and shaker
What a lovely day we've had today - down at LBS with a selection of festive Christmas authors to sign some books. Thousands of books. More photos tomorrow - but in the meantime, how about this? Richard Charkin has moved from being CEO of Macmillan to a director at Bloomsbury. He's going to be responsible for "growth through acquisitions, new publishing areas and international expansion." Assuming they've got lots of money, and I assume they have, that sounds like rather a fun role. Watching with interest...
posted on September 26, 2007 10:31 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
24 Sep 2007: Incentives
Thanks, all, for sharing a bit about what you read. So right now I'm really obsessed with the new Naomi Klein book, think it's stunningly good, and I see it as an interesting way of understanding the non-fiction market. I can see from what you've said about your ratios of fiction to non-fiction - and the fact that biography/memoirs and (non-modern) history are the fave non-fiction areas - that very few of you are likely to pick it up. Would anything change your mind? Say:
1) The Harry Potter Effect: you see everyone else reading it and even though it's not your usual thing you decide to give it a try
2) Money: As commenter Keith imagined, what if Tesco's were giving it away? Is there a price-point where you'd think, 'oh why not'?
3) Negative Publicity: if bookstores or the government banned it would you seek it out?
4) TV tie-ins: would a really interesting documentary or documentary series interest you in the book?
5) Personal Recommendation from a cool friend maybe?
Or any other suggestions. What would make you buy a book like The Shock Doctrine?
posted on September 24, 2007 06:58 PM | link | Comments (8) | Leave a comment
24 Sep 2007: City Cycling / London Freewheel
Whilst Rob and I were at the Gardners Trade Show yesterday, Richard Ballantine was out on his 8-freight bike drumming up support for City Cycling in a most unusual way at the London Freewheel Day!
Continue reading "City Cycling / London Freewheel" »
posted on September 24, 2007 09:17 AM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
23 Sep 2007: I have never thought of doing this
Sometimes you see something and think 'yeah, I would have thought of this eventually.' I do not think I would ever have thought of this.
posted on September 23, 2007 08:45 PM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
22 Sep 2007: You can lead a horse to books...
I'm about halfway through Naomi Klein's new book The Shock Doctrine. I want to describe it but I'm sorry I can't do it without using the same words that you'll have heard applied to so many other titles so many times before. It's 'masterful' and 'magnificent' and absolutely readable and fairly writhing with horrors. And what's depressing me is not the contents of the book, because I have read dozens of others like it (though probably none as well written and researched) so the facts alone aren't surprising to me any more. What's depressing is that this book could change the world; and yet it probably won't. It will be read by the sort of people who read these books and by no one else. And yet if the information within its covers somehow reached ordinary people, the world would shift because of it. Democracy would see to that. The disgust and revulsion we'd all feel would affect the way we scrutinise our politicians, it would change what we demand of them, and they would respond or entirely lose the confidence of their electorates. That's all it would take. Enough people to read a book. And yet I doubt it will happen and there's something so depressing about that, especially for a publisher.
Check out Em's post below, compare with mine, and see how rock'n'roll Snowbooks is when it comes to Saturday night. Thank goodness Anna is at an all-night party celebrating the first gig by a friend's punk band.
posted on September 22, 2007 08:07 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
22 Sep 2007: Cover design
I've just read a rubbish book on cover design. The author of Designing Books: Practice and Theory is obsessed with the, apparantly raging, argument that exists between designers who favour symmetry in their design, and those who inisist on asymmetry. Ironically his captions are almost impossible to decipher or figure out which image they relate to. His use of language is clunktastic ("Disputatious all his life, [Tschichold] found himself proclaiming much that was exactly opposite to what he held to be correct in 1928.") Disputatious? Lawks. Sadly, the examples that he gave throughout the book - in much the same way as the examples of cover design I saw a few months back at a lecture on book design at the RSA - were to my eye jarring, poorly formed, laboured and often archaic-looking.
Maybe I'm insufficiently educated. Maybe I have terrible judgement. Perhaps. But instead, here are a few of my views on cover design.
Continue reading "Cover design" »
posted on September 22, 2007 02:13 PM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2007: Borders - Superb!
Absolutely brilliant news has come through that Borders UK, which was up for sale by its US parent company, has successfully been bought by Luke Johnson and will remain under David Roche's control. Any other solution - and the options ranging from shipbreaking to one that would involve integration with another business (read months of eye-off-the-ball and closures) - would have spelled disaster, for them and us. Borders do an excellent job of supporting independent publishers. I am simply thrilled by this news.
posted on September 21, 2007 03:27 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
21 Sep 2007: Maybe too geeky?
Custom-made phone
Will I have to start putting a 'G' on these sorts of posts to give you fair warning, the way I do now with the fearsome 'P' for politics? It's just that we live in a geeky time. I've been reading and enjoying Stephen Fry's first blog post. [<- link was broken, now fixed] And is he writing about film-making, or opera or perhaps the Victorian Novel? No, he's giving an off-the-cuff and encyclopedic run-down of the history of SmartPhones. That's mobile phones with extra, computer-like features, to the jargonless among you.
Continue reading "Maybe too geeky?" »
posted on September 21, 2007 11:54 AM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2007: Snowblog post #500: Genesis
Post 500
Here it is, blogpost number 500. We asked you what you'd like this landmark blogpost to be about, and you suggested a 'story so far' piece might be nice. So here it is.
Continue reading "Snowblog post #500: Genesis" »
posted on September 20, 2007 05:27 PM | link | Comments (9) | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2007: Cool things in Adobe CS3
Probably more for my benefit than anyone's, here's my Top Ten list of cool things that the new (well, new to me after they took the best part of a year to deliver it) Adobe CS3 does. Geeks only, read on.
Continue reading "Cool things in Adobe CS3" »
posted on September 20, 2007 04:53 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2007: Competence and a nice pub lunch
Click to buy
Em and I went to visit Haynes yesterday. As someone who used to lie underneath cheap cars trying to fix them, the trip was quite a treat. I even came away with a free copy of the book you can see in the picture. And yes, given a choice, that was the one I picked. It's nerdilicious.
The Chaps at Haynes print an awful lot of manuals, and they also handle other people's printing too - including some of ours. They don't necessarily look like shrewd business types (I hope they don't mind me saying so); they look more like engineers, but they certainly know how to run a business. As well as being good at what they do and very easy to talk to, they also put on a good spread: in this case a nice steak and kidney pie in the pub across the road, followed by apple crumble and custard. What with that, a look at a few Heidelberg Speedmasters, and a free manual on engine modification, the whole day out was a treat for my 'y' chromosome.
Hey, Em! Hurry up and write Post 500: Our Complete Official History (With Footnotes) so that I'm allowed to add posts again.
posted on September 20, 2007 04:43 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
20 Sep 2007: Can you handle the truth (in book form)?
Snowbooks started out with hardly any non-fiction, but we're planning to gradually add more into the mix. We've already talked about why. It's easier to spot gaps in the market with non-fiction. And 'good' is less a matter of taste and more a matter of standards. Both of those mean our hard work is less of a gamble and more likely to pay off. And non-fiction titles often benefit from colour and pictures in a way that novels don't. And that's good because it's more difficult to self-publish graphics-heavy books and less likely that an e-book reader will be able to do a good job of displaying them any time soon.
With that in mind I'm thinking of talking about and reviewing lots of non-fiction on this here blog and I'm wondering whether I might be out of step with the current make up of the Snowblog readership. So who are you people? When you tot up the books you read in a year, what's the ratio of fiction to non-fiction titles? I'd love to know. I could quite imagine that the average Snowblogger is 20:1 Fiction to Non-Fiction. Maybe higher. Am I right? I used to be like that: 50-60 novels per year and a couple of non-fiction titles, probably pop science books. But now I'd say my ratio was more like 1:20. Anyone else undergone a change like that? Maybe someone with a ratio like 1F:20NF wouldn't be visiting the Snowblog in the first place.
I'm guilty of it myself, but do you find that when you think of publishing, your first thought is always fiction?
posted on September 20, 2007 09:36 AM | link | Comments (13) | Leave a comment
18 Sep 2007: Snowbooks Blogpost # 500
soon
This post is number 495. Would you credit it. And that's not including the fact that we managed to lose a year's worth of posts in November 2005 and had to start from scratch. So to celebrate this anniversary of sorts, tell us what you would like us to write about for post number 500 and we'll do it, by jiminiy!
Snowbooks: delivering high-quality (except this one, maybe) daily blog posts since 2004.
posted on September 18, 2007 01:20 PM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
17 Sep 2007: Aylett gig
The inimitable Steve Aylett, author of Lint, is doing a stand-up gig at the Troy Club at CROBAR, Manette Street, Soho, London (near Foyles) on September 30. SIMON MUNNERY (League Against Tedium) headlines, plus Terry Saunders and tbc. From around 7.30pm. Featuring the hellish Lord Pin. You should go.
posted on September 17, 2007 04:57 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
17 Sep 2007: All dressed up and nowhere to go
Hey, anyone want to invite me to the Bookseller Retail Awards on Thursday? I am polite and entertaining, and scrub up nicely so won't be too much of an eyesore on your table (that a person can only sit at if she has bought or has been given a very expensive ticket). I can laugh in the right places at jokes, and can also talk sensibly about current affairs in publishing and the wider world, as well as strategy and trading tactics. I am moderately indiscreet about things that don't matter too much, so good for low-level gossip. I don't drink much so there will be no messy clearing up at the end of the evening. Oh, and I am bubbly with a GSOH.
Reply to box number 766926657 or email me.
posted on September 17, 2007 03:19 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
17 Sep 2007: Christmas homepage
When was the last time you looked at snowbooks.com - the homepage, I mean? Do you go there every time you visit the site, or do you come straight to the blog? It's of passing curiosity to us - that and other stats about snowbooks.com. This morning we were trying to figure out what our stats mean. The numbers are either vast, or massively skewed by the fact that I visit the site around three times a day. Since January this year we have had:
1,769,431 hits
332,523 pages viewed
Continue reading "Christmas homepage" »
posted on September 17, 2007 11:08 AM | link | Comments (15) | Leave a comment
17 Sep 2007: Snowcase #31
Keith, 43, loves to write. "The wolf that used to live in a land far, far away has just moved in next door and still I love to write. Fool," he says. Here is an extract from his novel, Legacy.
As the carnage of 1915 Flanders explodes in modern England, two friends must stop the killing by following the clues to their shocking, bitter end.
(I reckon this one's a corker!)
Continue reading "Snowcase #31" »
posted on September 17, 2007 08:03 AM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
16 Sep 2007: Why be famous?
So I have this thing about wanting to be famous. Or rather wanting not to be, except for one thing. I reckon if you're famous you could be friends with people who are also famous without it being weird or, you know, stalking. So I'd like to be just famous enough to be able to swap e-mails with William Gibson. Oh and I think I should add Bruce Sterling to the list too. I mean I do really like his novels and articles. But I should add him anyway out of politeness because of a theory I have.
Continue reading "Why be famous?" »
posted on September 16, 2007 08:47 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
16 Sep 2007: The Take
Maybe this counts as politics too, but let's give it the benefit of the doubt and just say it's about something interesting. I'd also like to make it clear that although this post involves the work of Naomi Klein, I'm not just mentioning it because she's scrumptious. Although any woman who's that daring, moral, eloquent, insightful - and who can giggle attractively when talking about being tear-gassed - deserves the occasional mention here. Phew. Is it me or is it a bit warm in here?
Ahem. Anyway 'The Take' is her husband's film, with Ms. Klein in a supporting role. The two of them, plus a dozen or so crew went to Argentina because of a new form of business they'd heard about there.
posted on September 16, 2007 10:56 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
16 Sep 2007: Like the Krays but hate Saddam?
(For newcomers, the deadly green 'P' warns of politics. Eeek. Gasp.)
Continue reading "Like the Krays but hate Saddam?" »
posted on September 16, 2007 09:28 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
15 Sep 2007: My geekdom knows no bounds
It's Saturday night. So what am I doing? I'm trying to master Office 2007 and all its XMLy goodness. Why? Well, I'm trying to find a way to create a nicely laid out Word 2007 document that can be populated with data from an XML file - specifically an Onix file full of information about one of our books. That way I can design a document once and churn out a version for each of our titles at the click of a button.
Continue reading "My geekdom knows no bounds" »
posted on September 15, 2007 10:30 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
15 Sep 2007: Rob's theory of linguistic divergence
Slightly specialised post here. I'll put it behind a cut because it's mainly for people who've been wracking their brains to understand why language is always evolving. If that's not you, then, as ever, here's a link to Cute Overload instead. Remember, there's no shame in not being a colossal nerd. Now off with you; go look at fuzzy things.
Continue reading "Rob's theory of linguistic divergence" »
posted on September 15, 2007 11:05 AM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
14 Sep 2007: Snowvon calling!
So, the book I'm finding stupidly easy to sell at the moment is Richard Ballantine's City Cycling. People see it, they want it. Thing is, I am a bit busy doing all the other one hundred million things I have to do to keep Snowbooks going. It seems such a shame to have this book that everyone wants but not the time to tell them that it exists.
So here's the deal. You, friends, can sell it on Snowbooks' behalf. Think of yourself as a bookish Avon Lady, going from house to house, friend to friend, trying to sell orangey make-up - except now you can have a Quality Product that takes no effort to sell at all (providing you are talking to someone who likes cycling - and there are lots of them about). For every copy of City Cycling that you sell, Snowbooks will pay you £2.50! That's right. You only need to shift four copies to get a crisp ten pound note in the post, to exchange for the goods and services that you most desire.
Get your friends to order from www.citycycling.org. Once they've done that, email me with their names and I'll send you your commission! Easy money.
Go! Sell! The person who sells the most will be names Snowvon Seller of the Month. You need no more incentive than that.
posted on September 14, 2007 03:17 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
14 Sep 2007: Hospitality beyond what's credible
click to embiggen
Sorry to be a big blurty blog hog today, but I wanted to mention something that happened while I was writing that last post: my neighbour dropped by to give me a jar of crab apple jelly his wife had made and to see if I'd remembered that the village movie night was coming up. I mean really! Why wasn't he angry or belligerently drunk or something? Why wasn't he shouting or trying to borrow money? My urban life has not prepared me for the preposterous levels of warmth and generosity I now have to contend with. And last night my neighbours on the other side invited me round for tea and snacks in a little garden they've built especially for watching the sun go down. It's open to the hills on one side, but enclosed by plants and hedges on the other three. It even has its own outdoor heater so we were toasty and snug. Their cats wandered over too. And I sat drinking tea and eating little delicious dips until the sky was dark enough to see about ten million stars. What on earth was I doing in London all these years?
If you add in Pandora's suggestion that I listen to Acoustic Snails by Infinite Scale and Sasha's Mr Tiddles - both of which, as Anna's friend Jessie would say, rock my socks off - well, all in all it's enough to make a person extremely happy.
posted on September 14, 2007 03:06 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
14 Sep 2007: Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams are swines! (updated)
If you have a moment, read this book review. I warn you, it's for a non-fiction book. A non-fiction business book. I know! But still, if you like getting your strategy groove on* it's a pretty mouth-watering build-up. So now I have my copy and the damn thing is in code. The code of corporate PR babble. I know it's packed with delicious bon-bons of knowledge, but Don and Tony are operating some sort of old-timey strictness whereby you can't have any of the sweet stuff until you've finished your gruel. So far the book is a washing-up bowl full of cold porridge with the promise of the best dessert you've ever tasted if you can get through it.
Continue reading "Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams are swines! (updated)" »
posted on September 14, 2007 10:19 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
14 Sep 2007: Micro Tip
I see a million clever things a day and never remember to pass any of them on. This one I remembered. If you're worried about posting your e-mail address in a blog post or on a web page because automated spamming robots might use it to splurge you with spam, use a picture of your address instead. (In Windows) type your address in some random application, hit Alt-PrtScn, and then paste and edit down the resulting screen grab (say in Photoshop) to just cover the bit you want. Then embed that image in your blog/web page like you would any other.
Continue reading "Micro Tip" »
posted on September 14, 2007 07:49 AM | link | Comments (5) | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2007: Frankfurt
It's nearly that time of year again. I'm rather looking forward to it this time. Anna is flying over from the Americas and we will spend the week enthusing, being polite to strangers, repeating ourselves, and looking forward to whatever it is we will eat that evening*. Also, and this is shocking news to anyone who knows her, Anna drinks ALCOHOL nowadays so who knows what the week will be like? I will be sure to carry a camera at all times of the day and night.
Continue reading "Frankfurt" »
posted on September 13, 2007 06:32 PM | link | Comments (3) | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2007: Abusing the blog. Standby. Normal service resumed shortly.
Hey, Dee? Your email isn't working. I've sent three but they've bounced back. Give us a ring, won't you?! x
posted on September 13, 2007 03:00 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2007: WWRD?
Rob thinking
He really is a genius, that Rob. Honestly, you can ask him anything and he'll either know the answer or, more cleverly, know how to go about getting the answer.
So this morning I absolutely had to get the printer working. I had done something stupid to it last week and hadn't got round to fixing it - but today I need to print three books out to meet a prize entry deadline. I spent from 7.30 to 9am trying it my way. I think I uninstalled some drivers (turns out I just deleted the shortcut); I swapped the cables for fresh ones and researched the problem on't interweb. Still it didn't work.
So I gave up and phoned Rob, who, in three minutes flat, had given me a three-step plan to follow. And, of course, it worked. (Uninstall the printer and drivers from Add/ remove programs; restart; reinstall from disc.) Thing is, I could have asked him, to which I would have received a well-thought-through and accurate answer, whether a particularly complicated bit of prose was parsed correctly. Or what to do if my dishwasher was broken. Or how soon after exercise I should eat for optimal insulin levels. Or how to set up the new Waterstone's central distribution centre without melting the company down for six months.
So in honour of him saving the day once again, and for being a super pal, I am initiating a new occasional strand to this blog, called WWRD? (What Would Rob Do?) Feel free to send in your questions, queries and puzzles on anything from IT to strategy, grammar to DIY. He doesn't know this yet, but I'm sure he'll be delighted to answer your questions.
posted on September 13, 2007 09:42 AM | link | Comments (6) | Leave a comment
13 Sep 2007: Imprints (updated)
I wonder which is best out of Hamish Hamilton, Viking, Allen Lane Publishing, Penguin, Dorling Kindersley or Rough Guide. Do a couple of them have really good IT systems while others have fabulous PR contacts? Is one weak on recruitment while another can never seem to get a good print deal? Or since they are all owned by Penguin Group and have the same registered office, should I expect that they're all the same people wearing different imaginary hats at different times of the day?
Continue reading "Imprints (updated)" »
posted on September 13, 2007 07:11 AM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
12 Sep 2007: Venerable Persian Programmers
Thanks Commenter John (and belatedly thanks Anna too). I should have tried Pandora sooner. It's played me more music that I like in two days than even a good radio station would in a month... and there aren't that many good radio stations/music channels. With an outfit like MTV, even if they still did anything as passé and eighties as playing music, the chances that they'd play me even one new good song per day are as small as a video editor's attention span. And all the stuff I've liked on Pandora has been bands I've never heard of: like Ulrich Snauss, G-Spliff and Band (O) Neon.
If it were recommending books, though, the accuracy would have to be a bit better because it's so much easier and cheaper to flip to the next song than the next novel. But then I'd give it more info than just a thumbs-up or thumbs-down each time I finished a book. I was joking in the comments on my original post when I mentioned using this technology for dating, but it makes you think doesn't it? Predictive music and movies, then books, and then maybe significant others. What, I wonder, would the great Muhammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi (from whose name we get 'algorithm') make of it. Or maybe a man who would have just celebrated his 1224th birthday, would find having a crater on the far side of the moon named after him more mind-blowing.
posted on September 12, 2007 04:00 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
11 Sep 2007: Sorted!
Phew, that was a rollercoaster few hours. The proofs came back for a certain wonderfully funny Christmas book - two weeks late due to power failures and whatnot at the printers, so no time to lose. Thankfully I am ludicrously overcautious and built an extra four weeks into the process. Who'd have thought we'd have needed it.
posted on September 11, 2007 09:18 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
11 Sep 2007: Having said that...
I don't know if the death of Anita Roddick is in danger of coming under the definition from my last post of being merely a 'human interest' story. Even if her passing doesn't meet my strict definition of 'proper news', her life certainly did. It's 32 years after the passage of the Sex Discrimination Act in the UK and still board directors of big companies are virtually all men. Either women aren't up to the job or the men aren't inviting the women to join them on the board. You can make up your own mind on that, but 32 years is a long darn time and Anita Roddick's success is one reason to think it's discrimination and not lack of ability that's holding women back. And not only was Ms. Roddick's career good for women in general, it was good for the planet too. Body Shop have done a lot to make people think about recycling, fair trade, the environment - all of those things we shouldn't need to be prompted about. It's pretty clear that the world is worse off without Anita Roddick in it, even for those who didn't know her.
posted on September 11, 2007 11:44 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
11 Sep 2007: News watching
I've got a couple of weird rules for watching the news. I suppose having any rules at all for watching the news is a bit weird. Or maybe very weird? But the thing is, you need them. Otherwise you're not really taking it in; you're watching cartoons. Or so it seems to me.
Continue reading "News watching" »
posted on September 11, 2007 07:12 AM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
10 Sep 2007: What I do when I'm not publishing.
Trick heading, of course. I'm always publishing. It's the nature of having your own business - there's no real down time. Even when you're relaxing, it's so that you can be more productive at work.
Still, there are times in the day when I am not at my desk, and I am not actively doing things to do directly with Snowbooks, and at those times I am doing other things. You know some of them: martial arts (although there haven't been many arm-bars, eye-gouges or reverse spinning back kicks since moving to the country) (there were never many reverse spinning back kicks anyway); taking photos of bunnies (which, conversely, has really ramped up in recent weeks); the obvious activity of reading (Jasper Fforde at the moment; something about trees, too, and a book Rob lent me on book design. Oops, that's publishing).
I have also been doing a bit of Open University work. This year it has been DD100, an introduction to the social sciences, because I thought it would be nice to know enough about politics, philosophy and economics to get a degree in them, and this was the starter course. I've done quite well in the essays I've done - well enough, in fact, to have skipped the last two and still get a pass mark. And although I've proven to myself quite adequately that there is no physical way on earth that I have the time to study *and* work, I've just enrolled on another course. You might speculate that that course would be something about economics, maybe, or philosophy, given my stated aims. You'd be quite wrong. I've enrolled in M255: Object-oriented programming with Java.
Continue reading "What I do when I'm not publishing." »
posted on September 10, 2007 07:04 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
10 Sep 2007: A lovely review
of Longing from the illustrious Bluestalking Reader. Buy it here!
posted on September 10, 2007 05:43 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
10 Sep 2007: Snowcase #30
Garan is from Pontypridd in South Wales. He spent ten years teaching English in Europe and South America and now lives in Cambridge. He is a freelance writer. Reglers is his novel and he says 'For best reading results, imagine a strong valleys of South Wales accent.'
Dai wants an independent Wales, Owain wants his old life back.
Continue reading "Snowcase #30" »
posted on September 10, 2007 12:04 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
10 Sep 2007: Competition-tastic
Stacie Lewis has once again worked wonders and got her book onto the front page of www.weddingchaos.co.uk, the pre-eminent site for wedding planning, full of advice on how to avoid disaster. Go there now and win a copy!
posted on September 10, 2007 07:30 AM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment
07 Sep 2007: Wanna get rich? Do this
When you want to buy a screwdriver, it's pretty easy to get one that will do the job (-> to tighten/untighten screws). They're standardised. But when you want to buy some fancy new slacks, it's only semi-easy to do. The sizes are standardised, but finding the right size is only half the job (-> to clothe you in style). When you want to buy a CD or a novel, it's not easy at all. Yes, they're standardised so you can be sure the CD will play in your stereo or that the novel is in the correct language, but will you like it? The surest way to find out is to buy it and read/listen to it. And risk wasting your money. If only someone would come up with a better way.
Continue reading "Wanna get rich? Do this" »
posted on September 7, 2007 06:38 PM | link | Comments (6) | Leave a comment
07 Sep 2007: Imaginary spaces and Earth's underside
I think I might just point people to BLDGBLOG rather than try to say anything very profound today. This post echoes a dream I've been having since I was little (seven? eight?) that my grandparents' giant, dilapidated Victorian terrace house had at least one forgotten room which I would discover. Then this post references it with some fascinating information about the sorts of things you might expect to find underneath Turkey.
And here is a library of pictures that one of the BLDGBLOG articles links to.
posted on September 7, 2007 01:58 PM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
06 Sep 2007: Snowbooks Cover Design Competition
After careful strategic consideration (meaning I just thought of it in the cab on the way home) I am proud to announce a competition that the Snowblog will be hosting for the best - and worst - cover designs in publishing today.
It is a truth universally acknowledged by right-thinking people that you *can* sell a book by its cover. This means that cover design is important. I see some covers that gladden my heart - they make me pick the book up, they clearly indicate what sort of a book it is but mainly they just work: simultaneously beautiful and functional.
Others, however, fail. They send confusing signals about the book. They are ugly, formulaic, or jarring to the eye. They act as a barrier to sales - if you buy the book, it's despite the cover.
So: nominations first! Submit your nominations for the best and worst covers you've seen of late as a comment to this post, with a line describing why you like/dislike them. We'll collate them, and post the images up here, then have a vote.
Head off to your local Book Depository to get some inspiration!
Continue reading "Snowbooks Cover Design Competition" »
posted on September 6, 2007 10:32 PM | link | Comments (6) | Leave a comment
05 Sep 2007: Coming soon!
How to worry friends and inconvenience people is coming soon!
posted on September 5, 2007 12:13 PM | link | Comments (1) | Leave a comment
05 Sep 2007: Last call
Thank you so much to everyone who has sent in reviews of our books for Richard and Judy! This is your last call: I'm pulling together the submissions over the next few days. Don't hold back - and thanks!
Once they're all in, I'll post them up here for you to see.
posted on September 5, 2007 11:26 AM | link | Comments (0) | Leave a comment
05 Sep 2007: Imaginary Conversation (updated)
Child: I wish I was a teacher
Teacher: That's not correct English. You should say 'were' not 'was'.
Child: Why?
Teacher: That's the rule in Standard English. And using Standard English helps us all understand one another more easily.
Child: But everyone says it the way I just did.
Teacher: Not everyone. Some people still use the correct form. The point is that it's easier to communicate if we all follow the rules.
Child: So what's the rule I should be following?
Teacher: Well, in English the subjunctive isn't grammaticalised so you don't inflect the verb to agree with the subject the same way that you do with the indicative mood. Instead we use modal auxiliaries coupled with fixed inflections of the main verb. In the past tense, the non-past plural form is used, whereas in the present the verb is not inflected at all.
Child: Where did you learn that rule?
Teacher: In college.
Child: So only ten more years and I can talk like you just did and then everyone will understand me? I'm not sure I wish I were a teacher anymore.
Continue reading "Imaginary Conversation (updated)" »
posted on September 5, 2007 11:03 AM | link | Comments (4) | Leave a comment
04 Sep 2007: A few days in pictures
Again with the blog silence! I can only put it down to towering piles of work and my rather time consuming new hobby of looking out the window for inspiration. Wouldn't you?
Continue reading "A few days in pictures" »
posted on September 4, 2007 07:37 PM | link | Comments (2) | Leave a comment