From Alan Bennett's end-of-year thing in the London Review of Books ( Read more... )

My first customer review on Amazon US. Three stars and a concluding paragraph which says: "The downside of "The Big Necessity" is that its anecdotal nature makes it difficult for readers to sometimes place facts into perspective, and some of the facts seem misstated ( Read more... )

Some of the fun of endlessly checking my Amazon ratings is seeing the bits that tell me what other people who have bought my book have bought. Today has provided special fun because it told me that 92% of people who visited the Amazon page for the US edition bought the US edition; 2% bought the UK edition, and 1% bought "Autism: The Musical."

New ( Read more... )

Not that I'm throwing flowers at missen again and not that Amazon ratings mean owt anyway and not that I'm checking them every two minutes, but my book came out in the US yesterday and it's in the top 1000. That probably means it's sold half a dozen copies. I don't care. Yahoo.

New York. Unseasonably warm. And so far seen through exhaustion. Until this morning, when my lovely host Claudine took me downstairs to her café - it's practically in her apartment block - and I woke up in style by means of coffee and something called a chocolate croissant bread pudding. Oh, it was good. There is little better than really really ( Read more... )

GreenScritti has some splendid anecdotes about the joys of promoting your creative work for local radio stations. As I pass from the UK plugging to the US plugging, here, so far, are my highlights:

1. BBC West Midlands: Sitting next to three people, two with Brummie accents, the third in a suit. The suit brings out a copy of Closer and tells the ( Read more... )

Fanmail. Ace ( Read more... )

I thought the process of buying a house - ok, a seven-bedroom, three-storey-barned ex-cinema/restaurant/hotel - was meant to be the stressful bit. No. It's the checking of my bank accounts afterwards. Minus forty degrees below zero. Still, I have a lovely old key. And a house. It's only taken me 38 years.

A book launch was organized in a posh private members' club in Oxford. No-one turned up, except one man who was passing and had read my book in New York (where it is on-sale in Housing Works, a rather good second-hand bookshop) and came in to say extremely complimentary things for about half an hour. Thank you, Giles. Otherwise, what a waste of ( Read more... )

I am, as people do, obsessively checking my Amazon page for reviews. Sometimes I look at the sales ranking too but as it's usually about 1300, I've given up. Today though I noticed that my book is the number two best-seller in this category:#2 in  Books > Science & Nature > Engineering & Technology > Civil Engineering > Environmental

Isn't that like ( Read more... )