Monday, June 8, 2009

Ghostwalking

The cover for the first edition of The Einstein Girl has now been sent to the printers, which means no more tinkering about with the blurb or with anything else. At the last minute we received a very useful and eminently quotable endorsement from Rebecca Stott (actually that’s Professor Rebecca Stott), author of the bestselling Ghostwalk, as well as a string of remarkable non-fiction books on the history of science, most recently Darwin and the Barnacle. A shortened version of her generous comment will appear on the front cover of The Einstein Girl

Sometimes cramming extra type onto the artwork of a cover can spoil the balance of the design. I suppose cover deigners must have to get used to their beautiful creations being obscured by last minute additions - and occasionally stickers to boot (the indignity!). But in this case the extra words are not only complimentary, they also help tell potential buyers what kind of book this is - and we have managed to squeeze them in between the title and my name. So we are extremely glad to have them. 

By the way, at the end of July, the Harvill design team of Matt Broughton and Lily Richards will be contributing a piece about their work to Jane Smith’s highly authoritative blog How Publishing Really Works (see my Blog List, right).

In the meantime I am having to divide my working hours between preparation for the new book – which I think is going quite well – and a couple of promotional projects for The Einstein Girl. One of these is a brand new author web site (philipsington.com – how original!) and something else which is, for the moment, under wraps in case it doesn’t come off. I would be overwhelmed by the technical challenges, I fear, if I wasn’t blessed with some very knowledgeable and talented friends who are generously giving of their time. Still, I could use twice as many working hours as I actually have right now, hence the rather sporadic posting - and lamentable lack of wit.

By the way, you can learn more about Rebecca and her work by visiting her admirable web site: www.rebeccastott.co.uk

2 comments:

Tim Jones said...

First of all, I like your website - it has certainly made me want to read The Einstein Girl! I sympathise with attempting to write and do promotional activities at the same time: it's one of the strongest possible arguments for human cloning, not least because (for me at least) the types of thinking required for the two activities are quite different, and it is not easy to switch between them.

Philip Sington said...

I think you must be the first person to have seen the new web site, as it only went up at 1.00am local time, and your post arrived at 2.00am! You're right about promo work. I've rarely encountered writers who feel very comfortable with it; still less with the time it eats up. But that's the way of the world!