This week at Valley Press, #32: 'Cover version'

Dear readers,

A nice brief post this week, for a change! First, I want to mention that Antony Dunn's Take This One To Bed – with its instantly-iconic cover photograph, as featured above – will be with us soon. At the moment you are spoilt for choice: you can buy a first-edition paperback, signed by Antony, for £10, or a limited-edition hardback, signed and numbered, for £20. (Alternatively, should you not want to handle any paper or card whatsoever, there's a Kindle version for £3.99.)

At some point in the next few weeks, those signed books are likely to disappear, so you may want to get in now if you want one. If you've never encountered Antony's poetry, and are wondering what all the fuss is about, you can read nine poems from the new book here – hardly ever do you get such a generous preview!

There are launch events coming: Friday 11th November in Leeds, at Yorkshire Dance (St Peter’s Buildings, St Peter’s Square, LS9 8AH), then Friday 18th November in York, at the Friargate Theatre (Lower Friargate, YO1 9SL). In both cases, the bar will open at 7pm, there'll be a brief reading at 7.30pm, and then lots of milling around with interesting people; surely there's no better way to spend a winter evening?

The second thing I want to mention comes courtesy of Twitter. Kris Mole, author of our 2015 travel hit Gatecrashing Europe, posted on Tuesday: 'Mind blown. Got sent this epic pic from a reader ... in Mostar, same spot as front cover.'

I have to say, I never thought I'd see that! Even more impressive, the reader pictured (named Lewis Lloyd) is actually from Scarborough; he met Kris when he came over for a book signing in August '15, so that copy has travelled all the way from VP HQ. Got to respect the effort involved! (We can't condone smoking, obviously; I've explained to baby George that holding a cigarette is only appropriate when reconstructing classic book covers in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and I think he understood.)

Speaking of George – because I can, and because his one-month birthday is coming up, let's end with a picture of him in his best 'book launch' outfit:

All best,
Jamie McGarry, VP Publisher

Valley Press celebrates 'greatest ever week'

Dear readers,

It's been a remarkable week at Valley Press – you may want to sit down with a strong drink before reading this blog post.  Done that?  Right, on we go!

Back in July, for the first time in my publishing career, I decided to apply to Arts Council England for a grant to support the growth and development of Valley Press.  Many of my publishing heroes run their businesses with the aid of money distributed by ACE (which is originally from the National Lottery); I'd not previously felt there was any chance of me joining their ranks, but in July I decided it was time to find out for sure.  So I diligently spent a week or so filling out the form, and off it went.

This week I heard my application was successful, and I can now announce Valley Press will be recieving nearly £50,000 of Arts Council funding between today and May 2017.  I know – I didn't see it coming either!  Time to take a sip of that strong drink you sat down with, two paragraphs ago, and enjoy the official, compulsory logo, which you'll be seeing a lot of from now on:

A press release about this can be read here (two, even), and an article from The Bookseller (who broke the news simultaneously with the VP newsletter) here.  What I promised to do with the money was: publish at least twelve books in 2016, from familiar and new authors, and do an absolutely outstanding job on them; take those authors and others on a national tour (like the one we did in 2013, but bigger); construct a new website for Valley Press which works on mobiles and has a shopping basket; and carry out an extremely active search for new writing throughout 2016, to find truly undiscovered writers from every corner of society. So look out for more information on all of that over the next few months.

Moving on now; it was a lively week even before the grant news arrived.  The non-fiction books I told you about last month have gone from strength to strength – Tom Preston's second-person cancer memoir The Boy in the Mirror received a five star review in The Sun (see here), and Tom was interviewed for the most recent edition of The Sunday Times (clipping below, full article here for subscribers).
 

Kris Mole's epic travel adventure Gatecrashing Europe appeared in Brighton paper The Argus (see here), in rather photo-heavy style in the Daily Mail (see here – though approach with caution!) and perhaps most informatively in The Mirror. This kind of national press attention is unprecedented for VP books, really; hopefully a sign of things to come.

Still with me?  There are some great events coming up this week too.  Let me first tell you about three forthcoming readings in Scarborough – see the poster below for details.

There are still a couple of tickets left for Norah's reading, which is happening today (Thursday 24th). We'd love it to be a sell-out, and we'd love to see you there, so give Wardle & Jones a call!  (If you haven't heard of Scarborough's new independent bookshop, by the way, the proprietors wrote a post for this blog which is well worth a read.)

We also have a reading coming up at the weekend, in London, as part of the 'Free Verse' Poetry Book Fair.  Here comes the obligatory poster:

If you're going anywhere near Conway Hall on Saturday, this reading is a must – and there are lots of others on during the day, all free, including one with The Emma Press (outside in the square at 11am).  We have a stall too, come and say hello!  Possibly some congratulations in order...?

By way of a closing note, I'd like to acknowledge that I am just the centre of the web that is Valley Press – it's the wonderful authors who've worked with me over the last seven years, the legions of readers who've bought their books, and all the hard-working freelancers and interns who've actually built VP to the point where it deserved funding.  So a huge, huge thank you to everyone who has supported Valley Press so far.  I think you'll be sticking around to see what happens next!

All the best,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)

New non-fiction from Valley Press

Dear readers,

Though Valley Press is officially a publisher of 'poetry, fiction and non-fiction', we've only rarely touched on that third category – until now. All being well, our next three books will be firmly located in the real world; so I'll give you a thorough briefing on one today, a bit of hype for the second ... and we'll leave the third for next time.

First, a quick story: in 2007, a man named Kris Mole flew one-way to Stockholm with a vow not to return home to England until he had visited every capital city in the mainland European Union. He set himself eight simple rules, most importantly that no money would be spent or handled during the journey, and no credit cards would be used either.

Thus, the great Euro Freebie Challenge began: twenty-three cities to be visited, 6000 miles to be covered, without spending a single penny – to raise money, in fact, for Cancer Research UK. Kris told the story of this trip as it happened in a series of blogs and articles for local and national newspapers; and of course in a book, which he sent to Valley Press.

That was back in 2011, just a few months after I'd decided to become a full-time publisher. This week – four years, two missed deadlines and a dozen editors later – I'm delighted to bring you the full story of Kris' journey, under the title Gatecrashing Europe. As usual, you can read a sample on the book's homepage, and Scarborough-based readers can meet the author on Saturday 15th August, as Kris is doing a book signing from 10am-2pm at our new independent bookshop Wardle & Jones, on Bar Street. (Thanks to proprietor Rachel Wardle for the photo above.)

Can't make the event?  If you order a copy of the book through our website before close-of-business on Friday 14th, I can still make sure Kris signs a personalised copy for you – if he's going to sit around signing books all day, we may as well make the most of it!  Just make sure you request a signature when you order, and let us know who you want it made out to.

The other book I want to mention today is Tom Preston's The Boy in the Mirror, which isn't due out until September 17th, but is already attracting some press attention. Book preview website NetGalley went so far as to call it one of 'the UK's top ten books for September 2015' in this blog post – and who am I to argue with the experts?

The book in question is an astonishingly original take on the 'cancer memoir'; the true story of a 21-year-old's battle with stage 4 advanced aggressive lymphoma, written in the second person, so the events in the book are happening to 'you'.

Those who responded to the request in my May newsletter for feedback on a short non-fiction book can now feel rather smug, having read this one first – and having helped myself and Tom perfect the manuscript, which was quite a challenge as you can imagine. If you missed out on that preview, the first couple of chapters can be read on the book's homepage now. I can promise you, you've never read anything quite like it before.

That's all for now – I've kept things refreshingly brief this time – but I'll be back in September with more news, more books, and more well-intentioned boasting. Enjoy your summer!

All the best,
Jamie McGarry (VP Publisher)