The Folio Society, based in London, has been producing special editions of classic books since 1947. Joe Whitlock Blundell, design and production director of The Folio Society, answered some questions for us about the enduring allure of the beautifully crafted book and walked us through a Society book’s typical design process.
Monthly Archives: September 2014
The Folio Society: A Conversation with Joe Whitlock Blundell
Filed under Book Design, Books, Print Books, Publishing
A reflection on the shortlist for the Man Booker Prize 2014
The Man Booker Prize 2014 shortlist is out. Although it won’t have been chosen with this in mind, the list is a thing of perfect balance. As they sat in their last meeting the judges will have been too busy winnowing the longlisted books and arguing the case for dismissal or inclusion to have noticed what was shaping up in front of them. The realisation will have come only when they breathed out after the wrangling and found they had picked a shortlist that contains not just two women and four men but an ecumenical national representation too – three Brits (one Indian-born), two Americans and one Australian. The books’ themes show the same even-handedness: there is the future (Howard Jacobson’s J) and the past (Richard Flangan’s The Narrow Road to the Deep North); the formally traditional (Neel Mukherjee’s The Lives of Others) and the experimental (Ali Smith’s How to be Both); the modern technological (Joshua Ferris’ To Rise Again at a Decent Hour) and the imaginative twist (Karen Joy Fowler’s We are All Completely Beside Ourselves). There are even five different imprints represented on the list. The judges, clearly, are natural democrats and meritocrats.
Filed under Books, CONTESTS & COMPETITIONS
An Author Website Checklist
For some publishing projects, it’s unclear who is responsible for what when it comes to marketing.
Should the author or the publisher tweet and publish Facebook posts? Who answers reader emails? And, perhaps most importantly, who runs the author website?
Because many authors are published by several publishers — and many self-publish their own work — an author’s Web presence can be scattered and have many owners, writes publishing expert and Digital Book World 2015 conference chairman Mike Shatzkin.
Unfortunately, who creates, manages and owns an author’s website isn’t an issue that will be resolved for every author any time soon. However, there are certain things that each author should have on her website. Shatzkin offers this checklist:
– List of all the author’s books, listed chronologically and by series
– Landing page for each book, including the cover, a description, reviews, excerpts, links to retail sites and other important metadata that would help readers discover the title and decide to buy
– Contact page so readers can easily send an email and get a response
– Email capture
– Social media buttons, so readers can easily sign up to follow the author on Twitter, etc.
– Calendar with upcoming publication dates and scheduled public appearances
– Page with links to articles and reviews by the author, as well as references to the author on blogs and in the press
In addition to these things on an author website, Shatzkin recommends that authors all should have:
– Up-to-date Amazon author page
– Google Plus page (which is crucial for effective search engine optimization strategy)
– Twitter and Facebook (optional)
Kate Mosse: my skill is storytelling, not literary fiction
Kate Mosse pictured in the Covent Garden Hotel, London. Photograph: Andy Hall for the Observer
The bestselling author explains how, through creativity and connecting with readers, novelists can still thrive in a digital age.
Filed under Books, Celebrities, Writing
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