Buchan in the TLS
The Times Literary Supplement published their review of our edition of John Buchan’s The Runagates Club on 6 July, with some nice things to say: ‘plenty of spies and plenty of spirits, and even some unscrupulous journalists – something to keep all thrill-seekers entertained … tales of horror and excitement with a gentleman narrator’. (We do still have some copies left, if you’re looking for an entertaining train read.)
More outings for The Conscientious Objector’s Wife
Kate will be presenting our current best-seller, The Conscientious Objector’s Wife, in Bath on Thursday 4 October, as part of an evening discussing civilian responses to the First World War.
Commemoration, Conflict and Conscience is a year-long research project run by the University of Hertfordshire, and will culminate in a national festival in Bristol, 27-28 April 2019. The project looks at ‘hidden’ or lesser known stories of the First World War, legacy, peace-building & alienation from commemoration. We are uniting existing community groups and researchers, focusing on their work to date & generating new research; showcasing existing artistic work and performances and fostering new creative projects. The Conscientious Objector’s Wife fits perfectly into this project, so we look forward to further collaborations. The 4 October event will be at the Friends Meeting House in York Street, Bath, in the evening.
The Bath & Bristol Small Publishers’ Gathering
This week we’ll be launching the Bath & Bristol Small Publishers’ Gathering, to be held on 3 November in Bath. If you have any small publishers in mind who might be interested, please do send them this Newsletter. The event is aimed at anyone in the book trade – authors, illustrators, designers, editors, printers, publishers, bookseller, reviewers – in and around the south-west of England and south Wales.
Handheld has been in business for a year
We’re in the throes of the end of year accounts, stocktaking and other accountancy-driven tasks, and it’s so interesting to see what we’ve done in the past year.
Publishing six books is pretty good for one year of business, and getting two reviews in the Times Literary Supplement is also rather nice (we have also had other reviews). Those are the most obvious results, resting on the support of the people we’ve been working with, and the experience we’ve gained from so much good advice.
We’ve built up an excellent team of impressively good people, all experts in their field: Nadja of Messrs Dash + Dare for all our book design and layout, Mike and Sharon of Siserone for our website and email server, Combined Book services for distribution, Melanie for rights and contracts, and Judith for publicity. In the last month we’ve also begun working with Signature Books UK for our sales & marketing, and Monica is our new accountant. Our printers for the last four books have been TJ International of Padstow.
Big hand-claps all round to them all, looking forward to many more years of publishing!
Kate & David
Handheld Press
