Compass
Points 15
Your
weekly round up of publishing news, publicity information
and trivia!
The nights
are drawing in, and a bookseller’s thoughts must surely be turning to thoughts
of their Halloween window display. Well here’s the perfect title coming in
October from Carnegie Books. The Witch and her
Soul by Christine Middleton is
a gritty, sensual, moving and absorbing historical novel, published on the 400th
anniversary of the infamous Lancashire Witch Trials of 1612. Find
out more about it here.
And talking
of all things witchy and wizardy – who’s looking forward to the new adult novel
from JK Rowling, A Casual Vacancy, published on 27 September? Or maybe
you’re one of those immune to the charms of this particular author? Whether or
not you’re a fan, you’ll probably enjoy this – if you don’t get
respect, put your wands in the air!
Publicity is
building for the UK publication in October of The
Gingerbread House by Carin
Gerhardsen (Sweden’s number one fiction author). Bestselling author
Peter James said recently “Gerhardsen writes so vividly, like she is
painting with words, gripping your heart and soul in an ever-tightening
tourniquet.” And there will be many more glowing reviews to come you can
be sure of that! We had a terrific response when we offered to send you out the
first chapter – this is now available online, so click here to go
to the publisher's website to read it.
A couple of
weeks ago we were talking about The Good Food
Guide – which has had some amazing publicity! The PR team responsible
for this have worked out that there have been 57 pieces of national news
coverage for it, with a combined circulation of over 51 million people;
and also 219 pieces of coverage in the regional press which had a
combined circulation of over 7 million people! Wow! Let’s hope all of this
publicity is leading to lots and lots of sales of the book for you! Now hot on
its heels in October comes The Good Hotel
Guide, which is generally agreed to be Britain’s leading hotel
guidebook. As The Guardian said; it is “Number one of the guides that
takes no freebies.” And the Daily Telegraph called it “One of the
most reliable and independent guides”. Whatever must it be like to be in
these hotels when someone arrives to check them out I wonder? Let’s just have a
little look to remind ourselves of exactly how not to behave when The Hotel
Inspectors come to call. Manuel – you are a waste of
space.
Goodness me,
have exams got harder than they used to be? Or are they easier they used to be?
And will the EBACC replacement for the GCSE make them easier or harder – I don’t
know it’s all so confusing. And should kids be allowed to just keep retaking an
exam until they pass it, or is that cheating? Look out for F in Retakes: Even More Test Paper Blunders published in
October which could not be more topical. The previous title in this
hilarious series from Summersdale: F in
Exams has now sold over quarter of a million copies so don’t miss out
on what is a bit of a sales phenomenon! Here are some examples from the Science
test papers of some of Britain’s brightest and best…
What is
an artificial pesticide?
Someone who’s
only pretending to be annoying really.
Earth is
closer to the sun than Mars, and bigger. What are two other differences between
the two planets?
1. Colour 2. Aliens
Name four
diseases related to diet.
Fatness,
really fatness, when you’re so fat you can’t move, death.
And on that
note… how is the post-holiday slim-down going? Not good? Well maybe you need
The De-Stress Diet by Anna McGee and Charlotte Watts. This book uses the
powerful and proven connection between stress and excess weight to your
advantage; showing you how you can eat, relax and gently exercise your way to a
better body for life. It is a unique book which can help you to lose up to 10
pounds in six weeks. Look out this Sunday 23
September for a major three page feature in The Mail on
Sunday’s You Magazine. The Mail on Sunday has a massive
readership, so this feature will bring the book to the attention of millions of
women – make sure it’s easy for them to find the book in your shop next
week!
In 2007
Sophie Lancaster, a 20-year-old ‘Goth’, was attacked and killed in a Lancashire
park by a gang of feral youths. The incident shocked the nation and was given
world-wide media coverage. Poet Simon
Armitage wrote the long prose-poem Black
Roses about the incident specifically for broadcast on BBC Radio 4,
last March. "It was immediate," he says of the reaction. "People were
phoning in to the BBC switchboard on the day, writing in, emailing, getting
messages to me afterwards about how much they'd been affected by the whole
thing. ”If there's ever a signifier of whether something on radio has caught
people's attention, it's where people get in touch and say 'I was driving the
car but I had to pull over', or 'I'd got to where I was going but I had to stay
in the car until the programme came to the end'. "I can't tell you how many
hundreds of people got in touch with me and told me that had
happened."
Now the
piece has been adapted for the stage which you can read all about on a BBC news
page here
and is also published as a book with the profits divided equally between author,
publisher and the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. There will be a lot of interest
in this as we are coming up to the fifth anniversary of Sophie's murder, and
Simon Armitage is well-connected in both the broadcast and print
media.
And lastly
well done again to The Garden of Evening
Mists and Tan Twan Eng – which
is showing a staggering sales growth of 512% this week according to The
Bookseller; all thanks to that Booker Prize nomination! It's
available in trade paperback (£12.99) 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.
That’s
all for now folks, more next week!
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