Alison Hennessey
@Alison_Edits
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Publishing Director of Raven Books. Lover of the gripping & the gothic, the contemporary & the cunning. Comprehensive school girl in literary world.
South East London
Joined October 2011
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Lee Child making an excellent point that people will pay £5 for two coffees but yet often baulk at how ‘expensive’ books are, a book that could change your life, that may have taken an author years to write. (I couldn’t agree more with this.)
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Strong opening line from the man on his phone sitting near me on the train: ‘How was your weekend? I did something I deeply regret.’
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Hello Twitter - our utterly gorgeous six month old baby is having a five & a half hour operation this week so please can you send us all your love and encouragement? And then can you please let me know your most comforting of comfort reads for when I’m in the hospital with him?
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I hope the people making sarky/hilarious comments about the number of books being published today remember that behind each book is an author who has worked incredibly hard, & a whole team of agents/publishers/designers, etc who just want to do the best by their author.
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My kingdom for a submission in which the female characters actually like their friends and don’t spent the entirety of the novel resenting/sniping at them. I like my friends. I believe most people do. Not in fiction apparently.
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Walked past
@Foyles
earlier and was admiring their window display for 'Book Friday' rather than 'Black Friday.' Can we all make that a thing?
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She was also the lead in her own show on Netflix, but hey - let’s lead with the time she played someone’s girlfriend.
She played Jesse's girlfriend in Breaking Bad - now
@Krystenritter
has written Bonfire, a scorching thriller. See tomorrow's Crime Club
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Tom Gauld’s cartoon in the Guardian this weekend is all kinds of brilliant.
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Briefly fell into the rabbit hole of stalking anyone on Amazon who has left a bad review for one of my books to see what else they reviewed. Didn't like this amazing novel but you did inexplicably enjoy a family pack of washing up cloths, eh?
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This is so heartbreaking - authors work incredibly hard often for relatively little reward & if you can’t afford to buy their books, which I know many people can’t, then please please use a library as authors receive a payment for every book of theirs that is borrowed.
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Last week I read a submission where a young woman stares at - and describes at length - her naked body in the mirror, and I really really thought we might be over that in 2019. Especially when said book was written by a man.
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I've been writing rejection emails this afternoon & it reminded me again how often the reason for passing on a book isn't that it isn't any 'good', it's just that it's not for me. So many books that I passed on have been published so brilliantly by clever editors elsewhere.
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I really am so sorry for everyone whose plans have been thrown into utter chaos by all these changes, & feeling extraordinarily grateful we managed to squeeze in a teeny tiny, perfect for us, wedding just before the new rules came in. May 2021 bring a lot more joy to all of you.
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How incredibly beautiful is our latest addition to our modern classics? A gorgeous hardback of Margaret Atwood's amazing Alias Grace.
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'Most shockingly, perhaps, there are at least two novels that have won literary prizes whose authors had handed the idea over to a ghost after being afflicted by writers’ block'
Wait, what? This seems madly unfair to other writers.
Interesting
@RosamundUrwin
piece on ghostwriters, including the detail that, despite Isabel Oakeshott insisting she wasn't paid to help Hancock with his book, she's believed to have made *48 grand* from its syndication
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Bit sad to see, in the coverage of the Booker longlist, someone describing the now defunct Costa Book Award as 'middlebrow.' It felt like an unnecessary sneer at a prize that picked a real range of brilliant, and brilliantly readable titles.
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Who is writing me a novel about this, eh? I really quite fancy publishing a thriller about urban/abandoned building explorers.
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I really had never anticipated, as someone who has so often been the only comprehensive school person in a room, just how joyful it would feel for the first time to see a Cabinet almost entirely made up of state educated politicians. Viva la comprehensives!
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Two years ago today we had a teeny tiny pandemic wedding, and this weekend we finally got to have a proper celebration of it with our friends and family - and with one extra guest too.
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When I started at Bloomsbury, people kept asking me what the next big trend would be & I said (because I loved it) gothic. Now that I keep seeing articles on how this autumn is all about gothic books, I’m contemplating what my next prediction will be. Books about hats perhaps.
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Some people take photos of the wisteria when on long London wanders, I take pictures of unimpressed school cats...
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Just signed off an email 'All my books' rather than 'All my best' if you're wondering how my Monday is going.
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Mainly hoping this now gives me the justification to get a real raven for our offices when we finally return.
.
@BloomsburyBooks
' Baggaley promotes Kirschbaum and Hennessey! The adult trade senior management team sees Alexis Kirschbaum become associate publisher, with
@Alison_Edits
stepping up as publishing director! See more moves here:
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Thirty seven years old, an editor for...some...years now, and I still can't spell restaurant on my first go.
(Or poison, which you think would be less significant but comes up a lot in my line of work.)
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The Secret History was published in 1992; The Little Friend was published in 2002; The Goldfinch was published in 2013. So *surely* this means we’re owed a new Donna Tartt very soon….?
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If you are in any way gloomy, may I recommend this article on rabbits riding on sheep to keep safe during floods?
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Very much on board with my email from Southwark Council asking those who are lucky enough to have a garden to consider whether they need to leave home this weekend and could instead ensure those without have the space to use the parks safely.
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Really enjoying this juxtaposition in my local Lidl.
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So Raven Books has been going so well I thought it was time to expand the team. Welcome to the world, Maud and Casper Raven-Hennessey. They’ll be accepting submissions from next week.
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My new assistant starts next week and as this is her very first role in publishing, I am trying to think back to when I started & it was all new to me. If you're a recent starter in editorial, what were the most helpful things you were told/explained/warned about?
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After an English degree, and approximately 16 (eeek!) years of working in publishing, 15 of them in editorial, I can confirm I still can't remember which one is a metaphor & which one is a simile without looking them up. And as for adverbs....
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This may possibly be the greatest book themed baby gro I have seen...
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It's the time of the £1 bunch of daffodils again! Hurray! Is there anything - apart from a discounted Chocolate Orange naturally, or a 99p kindle deal for a brilliant book - that can bring such joy for such a small amount?
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No matter how many hundreds of years I work in publishing, I still have a small moment of terror whenever I send an offer to an agent that I've accidentally somehow added a zero to the advance I'm proposing.
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Oh how very lovely book buyers are - we have now sold over 50,000 copies of the paperback of The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle in the UK! So thank you to anyone who has bought one of them (or the hardback or the ebook, or indeed the audio book. You're all great.)
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Continuing my commitment to publishing only the most beautiful books at Bloomsbury - LOOK AT THIS!
@stu_turton
’s Seven Deaths is as gorgeous and glorious inside & out as I’d hoped.
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First day back in after a week off, & I can finally share these beauties with the world. It’s the stunning proofs of The Devil and the Dark Water!
Booksellers - holler at your reps; bloggers - the first 2 chapters are on Netgalley; & authors, if you would like one let me know!
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I am so so so angry & so sorry for anyone who doesn’t get to feel angry because they’re so scared by this result & the impact it has on them, their families, their health & jobs.
And tomorrow I sign up for more volunteering because like hell am I letting this world be the norm.
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Just had a conversation with our Assistant Editor about the fact I haven't fallen in love with a submission for ages and realised what I am craving for Raven Books is a deeply layered, character rich, damaged family type novel. Bonus points for a great setting at the heart.
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All credit to
@FaberBooks
: Sally Rooney's Normal People has gone into the hb fiction charts at
#2
(just beaten by some nobody called Tolkein.) How utterly cheering to see new novelists published brilliantly & not depending on massive advertising campaigns/huge discounting.
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I love that despite working in publishing for over seventeen years, the joy of a beautifully designed book still hasn’t worn off. (And I hope it never shall.) And a Raven on the title page, too!
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Oh, I love this -
@TransworldBooks
have signed a 70 year old debut author Giving hope to late starters everywhere!
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Reading submissions on a very grey muggy Sunday and I’ve just remembered the experience of reading Fingersmith for the first time and getting to the oh so perfect twist, and basically I would like that feeling again in a submission please.
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I am thrilled to announce the hatching of my new imprint here at Bloomsbury: welcome to the world
@BloomsburyRaven
!
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I started off this lockdown doing a long cycle or an online yoga class every morning before I started work, & often a short yoga class at lunch Now I can barely make porridge before I start work. Please tell me some of you have been similarly affected by such torpor?
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Every year I read the tweets about the super glam Harper Collins summer party and every year I vow that one day Raven Books will have our own summer party. Then I realise that’s hopelessly off brand for the publishers of all things dark and sinister.
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There is a case in the news at the moment that is so utterly heartbreaking that even the tiny detail I’ve accidentally read is haunting me. In cases like these are the jury & court staff offered counselling? I can’t imagine what that was like to have to listen to.
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Counting down the seconds till my mum finds this and then emails to ask why I’m the only one not smiling....
(I am very bad at having my photo taken.)
(I am also slightly blown away by this and the amazing fellow shortlistees. What a very lovely thing.)
The Trade shortlists for The British Book Awards’ 2019 have been revealed! In the running for Editor of the Year are…
@canongatebooks
’
@Kinhead
,
@bookouture
’s
@JessieBotterill
,
@BloomsburyRaven
’s
@Alison_Edits
,
@Usborne
’s
@rebeccashill
(1/2) ✒️📚🏆
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On my bike today I overtook a woman cycling to work in a beautiful trench coat, pale pink brogues and with a sausage dog in her bike basket and I now have such lifestyle envy I might just have to give up cycling entirely now.
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We have had a lot of very VERY beautiful proofs at
@BloomsburyRaven
over the past few years but I think
@amy_donegan
might have surpassed herself with these beauties for
@spookypurcell
. Look at them!
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This is a (IMO) completely fascinating piece on an author who was asked by their editor to re-write their whole book
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I have so much respect for the woman who cycled to my yoga class today with her bike chain around her waist, got here to discover she’d left the key at home & couldn’t undo it, so did the entire class with the huge chain around her waist.
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@Magic_Kitten
@MESalisbury
Couldn’t agree more - this was exactly what I worried about previously; with so little focus on the daemons and how physically close they always are, I don’t think the moment landed at all. And without the dried fish part it lost so much poignancy/horror.
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Have sent my last emails, set my out of office, hidden my work laptop in a cupboard and left
@BloomsburyRaven
in the excellent hands of
@KatieVEBrown
, and the rest of the brilliant Raven Books team. Now to read, rather than publish, plenty of good books....
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I’ve just realised it’s two years today (I think) since I joined Bloomsbury and oh, there have been some lovely books since then. You should buy one. Or - even better - buy them all! They’re really good. Honest.
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AND the finished copies are in! How pretty? If you order from
@GoldsboroBooks
you'll get a gorgeous limited edition with creepy black edges.
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Authors, I am about to start sending out proofs of an astonishingly ambitious, inventive, story of alternative history/time slips, love & survival that I can only describe as David Mitchell meets Erin Morgenstern. If you would like to be taken on this epic story, let me know!
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Publishing/bookish people! Apparently there's something properly useful* we can do with the seventeen thousand tote bags we all have piled up at work/home - food banks need them.
*beyond using them to move house when you run out of boxes
PUBLISHERS! Do you have surplus tote bags? (Answer: yes you do).
Food banks *need them*. Please find one here and send 'em what you can ...
Please RT!
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When the hardback is so pretty, how do you make sure the paperback lives up to it? By making it even more beautiful, that’s how. Hello, The Silent Companions!
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Calling all aspiring authors! So delighted the
@BloomsburyBooks
Mentorship Programme is open! This is a development prize, so you only need to have written a synopsis and the first 2,000 words – and we can support you as you write the rest.
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This might actually be the angriest I have ever been. And I don’t have children, don’t have parents in care homes, don’t work in hospitals or as carers, haven’t had the hellish lockdown experience so many others have.
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Is there some actual term for why it can feel somehow aggressive when people use your name too much in conversations or in emails? I feel like there's probably some business book out there recommending people do it but it's just.... a bit creepy?
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Harvey Weinstein gets 23 years in jail and the government abolishes VAT on ebooks? It’s nice to know that good things can happen even during the End of Days. Dystopian writers, don’t forget this when writing your novels.
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Would you like to come and work with me & help build Raven Books? We need a brilliant editor to work mainly on the managing editorial side of the whole Bloomsbury Adult list but also to help edit some Raven titles - & commission their own!
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Just marvelling again at how brilliantly some authors can take in edits and just make the book so so much stronger. Writing a book is one thing, but revising and reworking it is another thing entirely.
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I don't condone any panic buying, but if you're wavering over buying a book at the moment, I would definitely give in to that impulse on your way home. Imagine if you were home alone and you had nothing to read! A true horror story.
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Our baby is having a big operation sometime in the next few months & there’s nothing like watching the immense strain the poor NHS is currently under & the number of operations/treatments needing to be cancelled to make me quietly hyperventilate into a paper bag.
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I feel really sad that I've seen lots of people with nice work & personal news announcing it slightly apologetically. The last few years have been pretty near terrible for everyone - if something good has happened to you amidst this, then that this brilliant and cheering.
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We starting to send these beautiful proofs of
@spookypurcell
’s The Shape of Darkness out this week and I cannot wait for other people to read this sinister tale of a spirit medium and a silhouette artist, all set in wonderfully grubby Bath. Perfect autumnal reading.
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What with all the Books to Look Out For type lists, I can imagine Jan is quite stressful for many writers so could I just say that I have published many things that were never in any Book to Look Out for list but nevertheless did very happily? Don't fear if you're not picked!
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Yesterday a literary scout and I were discussing things that seem to turn up in fiction far more than in real life. We came up with synesthesia and amnesia. Any others? (Obviously beyond murder.)
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It’s only TWO DAYS until we publish Bone China and did I ever show you how amazing the endpapers for the indies exclusive edition are? Look at those jaunty skulls! 💀 💀
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Reading submissions by my balcony. Admittedly it’s not quite the grand gardens of some of Twitter but several bees and I are very happy this morning.
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I'm beginning to wonder if this whole virus/LBF cancellation is just another part of
@4thEstateBooks
's campaign for The Mirror and the Light, so we all get to happily self isolate at home with its 900 pages.
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I love Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell*, and I am so excited we are publishing Susanna Clarke's new book, which is very different but equally brilliant, not to mention clever and sad and unsettling and funny.
*the Raven King was *very* influential in the naming of Raven Books
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Just been talking to one of my colleagues about this gothic gem, as we’re publishing a special edition this Autumn. I love all of it, although I think the gin one is particularly apt for most of publishing...
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Delighted to see that someone on Amazon has complained that Seven Deaths - a book about a repeating day that always ends in the titular character being killed - is 'not a plot for realists.' Well no, you're right there but thank god for that, surely?
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Would you like to start your editorial career with us at Bloomsbury, working across literary and commercial fiction? You would? Then get your applications in! The salary is £23k, and our working pattern is 2 days in the office, 3 days at home.
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You know the book itself is going to be glorious when this is how pretty the bookmarks are...
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One of the advantages of being awake at four am with a horrible cold & sore throat is seeing the snow finally falling in London. It’s kind of magical seeing it like this, while everyone sleeps, like it’s the beginning of a children’s book...
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It’s the CWA Daggers tonight! I am completely thrilled to bits that we are up for publisher of the year, which is an excellent excuse to tweet a picture of all the Raven Books hardbacks so far. Aren’t they lovely?
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Just LOOK at this mountain of books that
@rosieandrews22
is signing for
@GoldsboroBooks
! How utterly gorgeous are their special editions?
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I think the news bulletins should now start with a list of the day's birthdays, so we know who to devote our Coronavirus handwashing song to every day.
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So utterly cheered to see Three Women will be the Sunday Times number one bestseller for hardback non-fiction this week! Obviously I am biased but I think it's been such an amazing campaign by the non-fiction team here.
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Watched the first three episodes of
@SarahPinborough
’s Behind Her Eyes last night.
My husband: ‘So my theory is —‘
Me: You’re not going to guess the ending, love. Trust me.
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Three weeks post baby - and just over a week since I moved flat; great timing, me - and I have finally finished my first book. Think I made a very good first choice.
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2018 at Raven Books. What a beautiful bunch they are! If you have bought one (or more) of these, a huge thank you from everyone at
@BloomsburyRaven
. And if you're currently writing your own book, may you get to see your editor tweeting a photo of the finished copy one day soon.
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As of the child of the 80s/early 90s I am entirely convinced that the lucozade will be just as medically effective as the antibiotics at curing my tonsillitis.
(Why *did* we all believe that?)
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Hurray and HURRAH - as of this week, we have sold more than 10,000 hardbacks of
@stu_turton
's Seven Deaths, which is a phenomenal achievement for a debut novel. If you are one of those brilliant book buyers or sellers, you (and ok, maybe Stu as well) are all amazing.
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Our proofs of Never Have I Ever are so stylish, a passing Icelandic publisher stopped me to ask what they were and how he could read one. I count that as a win.
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Excellent look of contempt from my editorial assistant today.
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So utterly utterly thrilled for all our amazing authors and the brilliant team who work so hard here on every area of our books - Raven Books has been shortlisted for Imprint of the Year!!
(Would love to play it cool but I am too happy)
Congratulations to The
#BritishBookAwards
Imprint of the Year shortlist:
@BlinkPublishing
,
@bookouture
,
@DoubledayUK
,
@EMTeenFiction
,
@HarperVoyagerUK
,
@HQstories
,
@BloomsburyRaven
,
@Rocktheboatnews
and
@UKTor
!
Sponsored by
@Claysltd
#Nibbies
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Genuinely being to suspect that I am the only person in publishing not secretly writing a novel. I am in awe of people that have full time jobs *and* read submissions in your free time *and* write books and one day I want you all to explain time management to me. Please.
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