Pages & Proofs

The Daily Telegraph writes about Jane Hilton’s latest book of photography, Precious, which details brothels in Nevada. Most of the nude portraits are taken in the rooms used for sex. The brothels have names like the Playmate Ranch and Sharon’s Bar and Brothel, and they seem to be in remote locations. Nevada is only state in […]

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 […]

In an amusing survey provided by my colleagues at Amazon.co.uk, Doncaster has been deemed as the UK’s most well-read city because of its high consumption rates of romantic fiction and erotica. The Telegraph writes: Amazon’s survey established which cities were the most well-read on sales numbers divided by population in areas with more than 20,000 […]

Yes, The Great Gatsby is everywhere thanks to Baz and Leo, but F Scott Fitzgerald’s novel never really went away. It’s been published countless times since 1925. Join us on a countdown of 30 Gatsby cover designs – a few great ones, some good ones, and a couple of shockers too.

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 […]