Graham Storrs

A survey of book promotion tactics was conducted by The Savvy Book Marketer in December, 2009, and is reported today. It asked a number of authors what their book promotion strategy would involve in 2010. You can check the method and the outcome there. I just want to look at the list of tactics they [...]

Please say hello to the newest member of The New York Journal of Books‘ reviews team. And, while you’re at it, why not nip across and have a look at my first review for this new, online book review journal. (Actually, if you read my recent review here of Dawkins’ Oxford Book of Modern Science [...]

If I wanted an ebook reader, would I buy an Apple iPad? I don’t think so. Would I accept one as a gift? I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t.
The only ebook reader I know well is my 6″ Kindle 2 (foreigner’s edition). It cost me $256, and there are no ongoing costs. It’s a great reading [...]

Sometimes, as you near the end of a book, you start to feel sad that there isn’t much more of it left. Sometimes, a book is such a pleasure to read that you wish it could go on forever. Well that’s how I felt about The Oxford Book of Modern Science Writing, by Richard Dawkins [...]

I’ve been looking at 2009 to check how I’ve been doing against my writerly ambitions. It’s pretty good, overall. I got eight shorts stories published and placed in two competitions. I also won a write-a-quote competition! I also had my two first print publications (both short stories in anthologies). Although I actually made money by [...]

I ran the complete set of posts from this blog through the Wordle program. Wordle calculates word frequencies, translates them to physical sizes, and uses this information to lay out the most frequent words in interesting ways. The image below, therefore, shows you just what I talk about most in this blog. If you haven’t [...]

When Jeremy C Shipp asked for people willing to read the ARC of his forthcoming novel, Cursed, I was keen but nervous. I’ve been following Shipp on Twitter and enjoying his quirky humour. I’d noticed that Jeff Vandermeer – whom I greatly admire – thinks highly of him. And I’d read an interview Shipp gave [...]

Life is short. If you only read 20 or 30 novels a year, as I do, you’ve only got time to read about 1500 of them between being old enough to start and being too gaga to remember where the library is. Maybe 2,000 if you start young and keep a close watch on your [...]

Let me come clean. Luke Keioskie is a friend, so I’m bound to be a bit biased about his work. On the other hand, he’s a friend I admire and respect for his work, so the fact that I like what he writes isn’t that big a surprise.
I first came across Dead America eighteen months [...]

Some of the most moving poetry in the English language has been written by people who have been involved in wars. Some of my all-time favourite pieces are by Sassoon, Owen, and Kipling. I’ve never been that keen on poets laureat, though. Benjamin Britten may be the one exception I’d make. So it was a [...]