Compass
Points 11
Your weekly round
up of publishing news, publicity information and trivia!
Wow, it’s great to start with a big bestseller!
Sunshine on Scotland Street is at number
nine in the Hardback Fiction chart on the Sunday Times Bestseller list
this week! Alexander McCall Smith has
sell-out appearances at the Edinburgh Book Festival coming up, as well a major
interview in The Guardian and a piece on the author as performer for
Chanel 4 news, so the book could rise even higher in the charts! Congratulations
Sandy !
Have the Olympics inspired you to get out into the
world a bit more – and visit some of the far flung countries that the athletes
are representing? Hands up if anyone actually knows where Azerbaijan or Burkina Faso
are? And who knows where the Winter Olympics in 2012 will be held? Well I can
tell you – Russia . Which gives me a nice link to
tell you about a new title from a bestselling series that’s coming out in
October – City-Pick St Petersburg. The
City-Lit and City-Pick books are published by Oxygen Books, and
give you all the sights, sounds and flavours of city life in a collection of
perfect gems of city writing. Already the series has taken us to the hearts of
New York, Paris, London, Berlin, Dublin, Amsterdam and Venice and the St
Petersburg title is already attracting media attention – The Bookseller
made it a non-fiction highlight, and the book will feature at the Manchester
Literary Festival and launch at
Waterstone’s Piccadilly. The book includes writing from Helen Dunmore, J.M
Coetzee and Malcolm
Bradbury as well as Joseph
Brodsky, Alexander Pushkin and
Fyodor Dostoyevsky. The Times said
of this series ‘Superb … it’s like
having your own iPad loaded with different tomes’ All the City-Lit
books have been Amazon UK Top Ten city bestsellers – don’t let Amazon grab all
the sales for this new one! Visit the City-Lit Café here -
a great website with info on the books and lots of cool info on the cities as
well!
And while we’re on the subject of Russia
– who has heard of thriller writer Anna
Starobinets? Well, The Telegraph said “she has been
compared with a host of literary greats, including Edgar Allan Poe and George
Orwell, Ray Bradbury and HG Wells’” She is a Russian journalist and
internationally published author who was nominated for Russia’s prestigious
National Bestseller Prize. You
can find out more by reading the Telegraph article here. Now Hesperus, the
champion of intelligent, bestselling translated fiction bring us The Living. After a global catastrophe called the
Great Reduction, the number of people living on Earth has become fixed,
remaining a constant three billion. The concept of death no longer exists (yes
yes, I know it sounds like Torchwood – but read on). Instead people are
reborn anywhere on the planet with an in-code that keeps track of information
about all their previous incarnations. Humankind is no longer made up of
individuals – people are only particles making up one composite organism called
The Living. These particles live happily and die happily, according to a
government-determined schedule. Yet… there is one man born without an in-code -
a spare human being. His birth increases the number of The Living by one, which
threatens global harmony. Who is ‘Zero’ and how will The Living survive? This
truly enthralling, disturbing and unique anti-utopian fantasy novel that will
have the reader gripped from page one – and if you’d like to read the first
chapter then please email Pat@compass-dsa.co.uk to request one! It's published
in October - find out more here.
Now I like a bit of
futuristic dystopia as much as the next person – but sometimes you just
need a laugh. Here's a link to some hilarious
cartoons by Tony Husband. I Nearly Died
Laughing (which features his characters The Yobs) by Tony
Husband is published in September and Marc Riley of 6Music
said of Tony that ‘Over the last 30 years, it’s safe to say he’s made me
laugh out loud more than anybody else… he comes from a dark, twisted place.’
And this latest book of cartoons will not disappoint. Tony has created cartoons
for many leading publications, including The Spectator, Private Eye,
The Times and Punch. His Yobs strip (Private Eye) is one of
the best-known comic strips in the UK and, at 25 years, one of the
longest running. The book has an intro by Stephen Fry –order
it here!
Naked horseback riding. Being on a carousel for 24
hours. Fighting a bear. Leaving home. Illicit sex. If you stay Here this is just some of the things you’ll do.
The Elsewhere series brings together some
of the finest names writing today such as Michael
Morpurgo, Joan Lindgard, Julia Donaldson, Roddy Doyle and Al Kennedy, to tell us through fiction and essays,
tales of the real, the unreal, the known, the unknown, the fantastical and the
unbelievable. The series is quirky, saleable and the books are originally and
beautifully packaged. There are four titles in the series: Here, There, Somewhere and Elsewhere, and they’re also available as a boxed
set. The £7.99 price point is amazing value – big names, lovely looking books, a
great price - what more do you need!
And finally – the latest in the eBooks versus real
books debate. Like them or loathe them, estimates suggest over two million
Kindles have been sold in the UK over the last three years. The
Kindle e-reader has become one of the most iconic objects of our contemporary
culture. But what happens when a Kindle dies? 101
Uses of a Dead Kindle shows the many imaginative, irreverent and
often downright bizarre ways your dead Kindle can live on! It’s hilarious, weird
and highly imaginative! The book should appeal to the vast range of Kindle
owners and their friends across the UK and taps into the popularity of
the 80s cult classic 101 Uses of a Dead Cat. It’s sure to become a must
have gift for Kindle owners everywhere! Find
out more about the book here!
This newsletter is sent weekly to over 400
booksellers. If you would like to order any of the titles mentioned, then please click here to go to the
Compass New Titles Website.
Compass Points is
now off on holiday - back in a fortnight!
No comments:
Post a Comment