Major
publicity for the spectacular new Wild
Things title Islandeering: Adventures Around the Edge of Britain's Hidden Islands (£16.99, pb, 978 1910636176); here on the BBC (which
had 600,000 views) and here
and here
in the Mail, and here
on the front page of the Saturday Guardian
Travel section; has now pushed this title to the top of the charts on
Amazon. If you haven’t got it in your bookshop yet then you are truly missing
out – this publisher knows which outdoor trend is hitting the zeitgeist and
Islandeering is definitely it! Many booksellers were surprised by how well they
did with the Scottish
Bothy Bible given that bothies are
relatively obscure; and I think this title has exactly the same appeal. Islandeering
shares similar psychology as climbing to the summit of a mountain, according to
author Lisa
Drewe, appealing to the same "completist" urge. Lisa
hiked, biked, swum and kayaked around 150 islands in the UK before selecting
her 50 favourites and this gorgeous book is for both genuine adventurers and
also those who just want to look at the pictures and imagine themselves
bothy-bagging or conquering one of these stunning little pieces of paradise!
Leanne Maskell was on the ITV’s Lorraine breakfast show this week, talking about The Model Manifesto:
An A-Z Anti-Exploitation Manual for the Fashion Industry (£14.99, pb, 978 1788600651). You can see a short clip
here; this
tweet alone has had 2.5K views and the Lorraine
show regularly gets a million viewers, so this is really terrific publicity.
There has also been coverage in the Times,
Grazia, Mail, Sun, Express, the Independent
and on the BBC. The Mail piece was headlined “Former model who began her career at 13,
reveals her agency told her to lose 5cm from her hips for a job she wasn't even
paid for and sent emails asking what she had eaten. She's written a tell-all
manifesto for models to avoid exploitation” and had a full credit for the
book – you can read that article here.
This guide to the modelling industry
focuses on ending the financial, physical, sexual and emotional exploitation of
aspiring and current models and it really is a great read – highly recommended.
It’s published by Practical Inspiration.
We’ve just
heard that there will be a big serial in the Daily Mail sometime pre-publication for the Biteback title Cleaning Up the Mess: After the MP’s Expenses Scandal
by Ian Kennedy (978 1785904943, hb, £20). Ian will also be interviewed on BBC R4’s Today programme, and on Iain
Dale's show on LBC and there will be
a feature in the Daily Telegraph. It’s
hard to believe that it’s now ten years since the news broke that MPs had been
claiming taxpayer’s money to pay for such excesses as a floating duck-house,
moat-cleaning services and 550 sacks of manure – revelations which shook
Westminster. Ian
Kennedy was the chairman of
Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority for its first seven years,
designed to scrutinise every claim and hold MPs to account. He came up against
a series of obstacles, ranging from MPs who had never used a computer to
vicious online abuse, all the while being hounded by the press for not doing
what they wanted. Riveting stuff, and it’s published on 11 June.
Big
congratulations to all of our friends at Emerald,
who won the Academic
and Professional Publisher of the Year Award at the Nibbies
this week. The
British Book Awards judges
applauded Emerald’s PR and marketing
activity, which “achieved some impressive
coverage for its books in mainstream as well as academic channels”; and
also admired Emerald’s “care of people”
– authors and staff alike. “This is
obviously a great place to be published – a real go-to place for academics”
they said. They saw concerted efforts to support diversity too, both in Emerald’s output by appointing its
first Gender and Diversity Publisher, and in-house by launching a STRIDE
initiative and tackling issues around family-friendly working and the gender
pay divide. Fantastic! You can find all the winners here.
We were also
so pleased to see the wonderful Golden
Hare Bookshop win Independent Bookshop of the Year! The judges called it an “effervescent Edinburgh indie” saying “in a city not short on either bookshops or distinctive independent
retailers, Golden Hare stands out for the beauty of its boutique-style store,
its sharp growth in sales, and its eagerness to try new things in the pursuit
of customers.” And Compass were thrilled
to get a shout-out in their Twitter thank-you thread, where as well as thanking
writers, staff, the independent book trade and the Stockbridge community; they said
thanks “to publishers whose reps take the
time to see us and get to know us – we have learned so much from you. John
McColgan, @MackayGillian, @BloomsburyNorth and @compass_david especially.” Thanks guys – we love you too!
Super to see
the fabulous Comma profiled as the
10th and final radical indie publisher in Huck
Magazine, who said of their work “Unapologetically
political, Comma Press are in the vanguard of UK literary culture”, you can
read the whole piece here.
Who knows a
mum who blogs, Instagrams or Facebooks? Most of us almost certainly do, and I
for one am very much looking forward to reading The Mummy Bloggers (pb, £8.99, 978 1789550535) a new novel out on 3 June
from Legend which takes a sharp and
funny look at this all too popular phenomenon! The title will be will be
featured in the Mail on Sunday’s You
Magazine on 2nd June and stars three mummy bloggers, each of them idolised,
imitated, taunted and trolled online. When the women are nominated for a
prestigious blogging award with a hefty cash prize, the scene is set for a
brutal and often hilarious battle for hearts, minds, and clicks! Author Holly Wainwright has been called “the
freshest, funniest new voice in fiction since Liane Moriarty” and this
perceptive novel looks like a winner to me!
Robin Renwick will be appearing on BBC BookTalk tomorrow to discuss his Biteback memoir Not Quite A Diplomat (£20, hb, 978 1785904592). The FT said that “in the century
since the British imperial statesman Sir Alfred Milner started the Boer War, no
British envoy has had such an impact on South Africa as Sir Robin Renwick.” Sir
Max Hastings said he was “an ambassador
with real clout in Washington” and the Guardian
wrote that “he became a bridge
between the ANC and De Klerk’s government and a personal friend of Nelson
Mandela.” This entertaining book looks back over an illustrious career in
the foreign service and paints vivid and revealing first-hand portraits of some
of the giants of international politics over the past forty years, from Mugabe
to George Bush Sr, the Clintons and Margaret Thatcher.
Great to hear
that Carcanet poet Phoebe Power has been shortlisted for the Somerset Maugham Award for
Shrines of Upper
Austria (£9.99, pb, 978 1784105341).
This playful exploration of unfamiliarity as a traveller wanders across
Austria, observing lakes, folk culture and uneasy histories is a welcome
engagement with European culture in the wake of Brexit as the poems reconsider
the meaning of the terms ‘foreign’ and ‘home’. The Somerset Maugham Awards are for published works of fiction, non-fiction
or poetry by writers under 35, to enable them to enrich their work by gaining
experience of foreign countries. Past winners include Helen Oyeyemi, Julian
Barnes and Zadie Smith. The award will be presented at a party at Southwark
Cathedral on the evening of Monday 17th June. You can find out more here.
We were
pleased to see TWO Comma titles in
the Guardian’s Top 10 Books about Sudan
which you can see here. Firstly, the Book of Khartoum (£9.99,
pb, 978 1905583720) which they said was “a
vivid, and overdue, introduction to life in the capital through the eyes of a
range of writers” and also the powerful debut from Rania Mamoun, Thirteen Months of Sunrise (pb, £9.99, 978 1910974391)
which they said was “intriguing … playful.”
The BBC have
had a whole week of menopause coverage, culminating in today’s show on everything
from Partners to Pelvic Floors, which
featured Ruth
Devlin as a guest on the sofa with
Louse Minchin. She is of course the author of the brilliant Men... Let’s Talk
Menopause (pb, £9.99, 978 1788600804)
published by Practical Inspiration. You’ll
be able to see a clip of that interview soon on the iPlayer here. She’s also been on BBC Radio Scotland, and will be on BBC Radio Manchester’s The Dead Good Show on 24th May at 7pm and Talk Radio Europe on 30th May at 1.20pm.
And there will be a big spread on the book in the brand-new magazine for 40+
women’s health called Simply You; the
June issue is out at the end of May. Men... Let’s Talk Menopause has already been included in features in the Express, Daily Record and Daily Mirror 10 Questions About Menopause for
Women, that’s here
and Men, that’s here.
You can also see a great review for the title on the website Menopause Health Matters here.
Wow, wow, wow
is my reaction to some spectacular photos from a new title just out from Amber entitled Iceland (pb, £9.99, 978 1782748717)
by Chris McNab which is in their Visual Explorer Guide series. They’ve just gone up on the Mail Online and you can see them here. They capture
Iceland’s quite breathtaking landscape; including the northern lights hanging
over mysterious rock formations, black sand beaches, geothermal pools, mighty
volcanoes and majestic waterfalls. McNab says: “Nestled
in the far, frigid north of the Atlantic Ocean, balanced on the edge of the
Arctic Circle, Iceland has forged its own unique way of life in a landscape
quite literally awesome in scale, beauty and power. It is an island that simply
cannot fail to impress.” The simply stunning pics in the Mail (which are just a small selection of
the 200 in the book) have been shared already almost 1,000 times on Facebook, this
book is a great price, beautifully produced and Iceland is a booming tourist
destination, so it should sell very well.
A nice review
of Pluto’s Rebel Footprints (£12.99, pb, 978 0745338552) in the Observer last weekend, saying “Historian David Rosenberg brings London’s past to life in his lively second edition
of 19th-century rallies and protests. Entertaining … it is written with the kind of eye for colourful
detail that you would expect from a tour guide.” You can read that here.
David
Rosenberg was also interviewed on BBC Radio London's Robert Elms Show and
you can hear that here.
Bursting with
fascinating stories, striking photographs and exclusive material provided by
NASA personnel; The
Apollo Missions: The Incredible Story of the Race to the Moon (hb, £14.99, 978 1788885232) perfectly captures the
risk, complexity and gravitas of this immense journey. Its author, former NASA
engineer, Dr David
Baker has lots of forthcoming events,
he’s at Knuston Hall in Wellingborough, Northants for a course on Apollo on 16-19
May; he’s guest of honour for a space modellers event on 7 July at Hanslope,
Bucks, he’s giving a lecture at the British Interplanetary Society, Lambeth Rd,
London, on Apollo lunar landing techniques on 12 July; he’s giving a talk at
the Battle History Society in East Sussex on 18 July and on 20 July there’s a massive 50th anniversary event in Henley
on Thames town square with live video streaming where Dr Baker will be on stage
doing a running commentary on what the landing was like with a giant screen on
the wall of the Town Hall tracking events minute-by-minute to the landing! The
predicted attendance for this will be thousands! So it’s fair to say that David
will be doing lots of promo and he also appears regularly on The Interplanetary Podcast which you can
find here. There’s a full-page advert appearing on page
35 of the June 2019 issue of Spaceflight
Magazine which you can download here. The Apollo Missions
has just been published by Artcturus.
That’s all folks,
more next week!
This weekly
blog is written for the UK book trade. If you would like to order any of the
titles mentioned, then please talk to your Compass Sales Manager, or call the
Compass office on 020 8326 5696. Every Friday an e-newsletter containing
highlights from the blog is sent out to over 700 booksellers and if you’d like
to receive this then please contact nuala@compass-ips.london
thanks for sharing information....
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