This week at Valley Press, #30: 'Take two'

Dear readers,

No new book this week, as we head into what was intended to be my paternity leave – little George had other plans, of course! Instead, I want to give you a really special offer, and flag up some books that would make excellent Christmas presents (if you're one of those exceptionally organised people who are already planning for the holidays).

Obviously, if there's anyone in your life who is a fan of contemporary poetry, you are spoilt for choice – in particular, our new anthology VP50 features a wide range of modern writers, and is of course shiny and gold (very festive). There are a few poetry titles with cross-genre appeal: Reward for Winter would be a classy choice for anyone interested in smallholding, animals in general, or chickens in particular (a third of the book is entirely devoted to a biography of a chicken). That book is similarly shiny, actually, but with silver foil; I feel a theme is developing. 'Silver and gold'.

Two of our recent poetry titles have especially broad appeal, within particular age brackets: Poems for Pensioners (55 plus?) is a humour book first and foremost, ideal for anyone who 'likes a chuckle' (as opposed to those who loathe chuckles? I apologise ... it's marketing speak, a whole language on its own!) Then there's Lucky Dip, which has already found an army of primary school age fans – I met some of them yesterday at the launch. After the event, we recorded a video of Catharine reading four poems from the book, which you can watch here if you like.

Beyond poetry, The Naked Muse would be a good choice for any fans of art; and going back to last year, there's Cinema Stories for film buffs, and Gatecrashing Europe for wise-cracking, free-spirited travel enthusiasts. And loads more, of course!

So what about the special offer? For the next seven days, if you enter the voucher code GIVEMETWO, you'll get 5% off any book you buy – but more significantly, I'll post you two copies of each book in the order. So you order a copy of Mr Jolly (for example); two will arrive. You order Mr Jolly and The Learned Goose: you get two of each. Make sense? It's not too revolutionary – I guess they call it 'buy one get one free'!

This applies to any book we've published to date. (I might do it again later in the year, so keep an eye out.) Now I've typed it up, I suppose it's not that useful an offer for Christmas; unless you know a pair of people with similar tastes, to whom you can give the same present...? Oh well. Let's just go with it!

I'm hoping to see some of you this Tuesday (the 11th) at the Manchester Literature Festival; details of our event are here. Did I mention it's free to attend? There's Sheffield on the 17th too, for which there is a very small fee. I won't mention those again – next week, I hope to have another new book to tell you about. There are six titles in various stages of production, all due out before the end of November; I'll take my pick!

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher