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Faber Finds is the new print-on-demand (POD) offering from Faber. It’s a classics list made up of old Faber titles, with the intention (I believe) of extending to a wider range of ‘forgotten classics’. Slowly, the larger publishers are coming round to the view that much smaller publishers (such as Salt) have had for a […]

“The blogosphere has been buzzing since the App Store launched over last weekend with comments about ‘dozy publishers’ who have missed a great opportunity to make their books available on the iPhone. But apart from a few digital PR points scored against competing publishers, there doesn’t seem to me to be any huge value in […]

So the iPhone 2.0 is here, and with it a slew of reading apps. There are two approaches here: create a standalone ereader that can be used to read ebook files, or create standalone apps for each book. The former is definitely better, and the reader of choice so far appears to be Lexcycle’s Stanza, […]

Just a quick note to say that, after a long hiatus, one of my favourite pieces of data visualisation is back*: LibraryThing’s Tag Mirror. The Tag Mirror shows what everyone on LT thinks about your books. And what lovely runs of expression! “drama drugs dystopia economics elephants”. “postmodern programming prostitution psychiatry”. Oh my! The data […]

London Lit Plus, the literary festival I set up last year, kicks off for the second time tomorrow. I’d love to see you there. After a slow start, we’ve gathered up a bunch of really fantastic events. There’s a great string of events for classic London authors like Derek Raymond and Chris Petit, walks across […]

FTW (“For The Win”): An enthusiastic emphasis to the end of a comment, message, or post. Sometimes genuine, but often sarcastic. Originated from the game show Hollywood Squares where the result of the player’s response is expected to win the game. [Urban Dictionary] The term ‘Win’ and its antonym ‘Fail’ have outgrown their origin in […]

Attempting to bypass a creative block today, I started photographing objects around the house. I noticed the texts that cover most consumer goods, the sheer wealth of them, and how they are so often hidden, turned away. I started making them visible. I’d just been reading an extract from Felicity Lawrence’s Eat Your Heart Out […]

Last night I attended the launch of Semina, a new series of experimental novels from Book Works, at Housmans. The novels are the result of an open call for submissions, and are being selected by series Commissioning Editor Stewart Home. The first two titles in the series, Bridget Penney’s Index, and Maki Kim’s One Break, […]

I have mixed feelings about creative writing courses, but Hanif Kureishi doesn’t: “One of the things you notice is that when you switch on the television and a student has gone mad with a machine gun on a campus in America, it’s always a writing student.” I recently gave a talk to some Creative Writing […]

Back in February, I sketched out this idea on the back of an envelope. I’m pleased to say it is now a reality. Bkkeepr allows you to track your reading and make bookmarks via text message and the web. It uses Twitter as it’s source, generating a timeline of everyone’s reading, as well as pages […]