NEWS

Does your robot read to you? The future of audio books and the rise of synthetic voices.
The Future is getting closer – artificial intelligence and audio books Audio books are becoming an increasingly popular way for people to consume their books and are now the fastest growth area in the book world. Digital books, once the new kid on the block, are now an established format. Now it is the turn […]

Exactly what is a Russian Doll?
Russian Dolls or Matryoshka In The Quantum Curators and the Fabergé Egg, the hunt is on for a Russian doll, could it be hiding a priceless treasure? The section from below is from the book, I hope you enjoy it. To read more about the dolls follow the links at the end… ‘I need […]

Large Print and Libraries
With the advance of the electronic reader the large print edition has fallen out of favour. And its clear to see why, large print books could be very large and heavy, bulky unwieldy and expensive to buy. Even if you decided to overcome these issues not every book was published in a large print format […]

Judging a book by its cover. It takes a village. 4/?
Cover Design. Of course you shouldn’t judge but there we are. For years I didn’t read The Colour of Magic because I didn’t like the Josh Kirby cover. I’d glanced at it and thought it was more in the vein of the Conan books. Yes, I know! Anyway, I finally picked one up after being […]

Trying to turn the village into a town. Book marketing. 3/?
It doesn’t matter if you’ve written the best book in the world if no one knows about it. Well sure, congrats, you’ve written the best book in the world but if you are hoping to make any money off it (tawdry I know), you’re going to have to start marketing it. Social Media At the […]

Formatting, pricing and distribution of a new book – the village goes quiet. 2/?
Ah, the joys of formatting. The last few days have been a bit of a slog. I have been shaping my finished edited manuscript into something that can be actually bought. You can read about it here. This is the moment when a traditionally published author gets to relax. Their publisher takes the manuscript away […]

A tiny bit on a tiny podcast
I had the pleasure of being involved in a new “tiny” podcast. Sage Gordon-Davis runs the podcast “Ink and Sage”, a podcast looking at opening paragraphs and giving a quick evaluation. I thought it sounded like fun so sent in my pre-edited opening paragraph. I think it bore up under the scrutiny and I amended […]

The First Five Hundred Words
The Quantum Curators and the Faberge Egg Eva St. John #1 Neith – Beta Earth ‘Has she chucked the bloody thing in the lake yet?’ My earpiece hissed. ‘No, hang on. Oh, you are not going to like this.’ Clio started sniggering. ‘Some of our intel may be wrong.’ I didn’t need to be […]

It takes a village to publish a book. Part 1/?
It takes a village to raise a child and the same can be fairly applied to getting a book published. As I head toward the launch of my new series, The Quantum Curators, I thought I would walk you through the route I have taken to publish the first book in the series, The Quantum […]

Fabergé – The Jewel of the Russian Downfall
The Imperial Easter Eggs of Carl Fabergé by Toby Faber* “Between 1885 and 1916, Carl Fabergé made fifty jewelled eggs . These were Easter presents from Russia’s last two emperors to their wives. What happened to them is a fascinating story which combines unique decorative art, contemporary culture, history and the murder of the Romanovs with […]