Pages & Proofs

I love this signed photo of Arthur Conan Doyle. The Sherlock Holmes author has a phenomenal handlebar moustache and must have preened it prior to having the photo taken. While we’re talking about the great man, here is a video of Conan Doyle from 1928 discussing his famous detective with an appearance from Doyle’s dog. [...]

Virgin boss Richard Branson has revealed how he was heavily influenced by Luke Rhinehart’s Dice Man books in the early stages of his business career. The original Dice Man novel, a fictional memoir, was published in 1971 and it tells tells the story of a psychiatrist who makes decisions according to the throw of a dice. The [...]

Mrs Dalloway was published on this day in 1925. It was Virginia Woolf’s fourth novel and published by the Hogarth Press. The Vanessa Bell-designed dust jacket is something to behold. The novel famously details a June day in the life of 51-year-old Clarissa Dalloway – a society lady in post-World War I England – as [...]

Lots and lots of Dan Brown stories today. The Guardian says Inferno will be the biggest book of the year. I have no doubt about that. The Daily Telegraph makes fun of Brown and how he is going to be mauled by the critics… again. We also learn that Dan Brown hangs upside down in [...]

Author Jacqueline Wilson has criticised children’s book publishers for using too much pink when marketing to young girls. Dame Jacqueline admitted that her struggle against the pink tide dated back to when she was bringing up her own daughter, Emma – now a Cambridge don – but that even then she had little success in resisting [...]

The Daily Telegraph has interviewed Scottish farmer and crime writer James Oswald – another success story from the world of self-published ebook authors. He has released two ebooks - Natural Causes and a sequel, The Book of Souls – and has racked up sales of 350,000. Now Natural Causes is being released as a physical book from [...]

The Wall Street Journal has a rather scary article about Charlaine Harris and her decision to end the Sookie Stackhouse series, much to the chagrin of her obsessive fans who have not taken news well. Her 13th book in the series, Dead Ever After, is just about to be released and the author won’t be [...]

How do you promote a book? With a clever cat video, of course. Henri the Existential Cat muses on the price of literary fame for his owner, William Braden who has written Henri Le Chat Noir (subtitle The Existential Musings of an Angst-Filled Cat). Sounds like fun. Henri’s wisdom includes “Kittens dream at 1 week, have nightmares [...]

Our friends at English PEN, an organisation devoted to literary freedom, are staging an exciting event later this month when 50 modern first editions are to be auctioned. However, these are no ordinary first editions. All the books have been annotated, usually at length and in great detail, by their authors specially for the ‘First [...]

American author Augusten Burroughs arrives at a Chicago radio station to do a publicity interview for this latest book, This is How, but ends up becoming the owner of a cute puppy. His Facebook page reveals the story in detail. He also posed for this deeply disturbing photograph – obviously, the dog is scarred out of [...]