This Week

It seems like Isabel Allende is not the only one doing good deeds today. Our friends Enhanced Editions, who helped us out with the amazing Wolf Hall app have also produced these iPhone versions of 2010’s Quick Reads books, published on World Book Day.

As part of this year’s Quick Reads and World Book Day initiatives, Enhanced Editions has partnered with a number of leading publishers to bring brilliantly written books by bestselling authors and celebrities to the iPhone.

Each product contains sample chapters from the other Quick Reads apps, a news feed to keep you up-to-date with competitions and other events, as well as all of our usual features.

The apps include short titles by authors Andy McNab, Peter James (who made his first iPhone outing late last year with this excellent carousel app) and my favourite, Cathy Kelly’s The Perfect Holiday. (Biased? Me? Never.)

All the apps are priced at £1.79.

About The Perfect Holiday

On an idyllic Greek island, Anthony and Carole have begun to repair their damaged marriage. Widowed Jessica has started to heal at last and is learning to live her life again. But on the flight home, unexpected and startling events force Anthony, Carole and Jessica to face up to the difficult truths they have been avoiding. By the time they land, the lessons they have learned will change their lives for ever.

About The Quick Reads initiative:

Quick Reads are part of a campaign to get more people reading in the UK and Ireland. They are short, sharp shots of entertainment – fast, fun books by bestselling writers and celebrities which prove that books can be as exciting as an action film and as thrilling as a theme-park ride. Since its inception in March 2006, over one and a quarter million Quick Reads have reached new readers.

Free courses are available for anyone who wants to develop their skills. You can attend the courses in your local area. If you’d like to find out more, phone 0800 66 0800.

A list of books for new readers can be found on www.firstchoicebooks.org.uk or at your local library.

Publishers Barrington Stoke and New Island also provide books for new readers.

The BBC runs an adult basic skills campaign. See www.bbc.co.uk/raw.

Enhanced Editions is committed to improving literacy and using technology to bring great literature to new readers. In keeping with this commitment, all of our profits from the Quick Reads titles will be donated to a literacy charity.

(from enhanced-editions.com)

Read more about digital publishing…

• The Future of Publishing
• Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall now on iPhone
• What Google Insight tells us about Kindle vs iSlate
• iPad: the headlines
• Digital Diary: iPad revealed

It’s always nice to have an author on the list who is not only a great writer but also a caring person.

On Friday Fourth Estate author Isabel Allende announced that she has pledged $500,000 to “Chile ayuda a Chile,” a telethon that will be broadcast from Teatro Teletón in Santiago, Chile from March 5 to 6, 2010 to raise funds for the construction of emergency housing for those displaced by the devastating earthquake of February 27, 2010.

Allende, a native of Chile, will also participate as a phone operator for the telethon.  “I am certain that nothing will be wasted and nothing will disappear in the maze of corruption as often happens in crises such as these,” says Isabel Allende.

“The press reports and television footage show unimaginable devastation. I feel an urgent need to return home and do whatever I can to help.”

In addition to this grant, the Isabel Allende Foundation will continue its longstanding practice of making grants to grassroots NGO’s empowering women in Chile through The Global Fund for Women.

Click here for more information about Chile ayuda a Chile.
Or here to find out about the Global Fund for Women
For more information about Isabel, click Isabel Allende.
Please mail Rebecca McEwan with any PR Enquiries.

This is the first of the top secret iPhone projects I’ve been working on for the last few months – the result of a close collaboration between Fourth Estate and the awesome Enhanced Editions (founded by longtime 5th Estate friend and contributor, Peter Collingridge). Finally all the hard work has come to fruition, and we can announce…

WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel, out now in paperback, and on your iPhone. Choose your weapon!

About Wolf Hall:

‘It is The Book, without question, that leaves every other novel I have read this year in its wake. Magnificent’ James Naughtie, Sunday Telegraph, Books of the Year.

‘A stunning book. It breaks free of what the novel has become nowadays. I can’t think of anything since Middlemarch which so convincingly builds a world.’ Diana Athill

‘The most gripping book you’ll ever read’ The Times

‘Dizzyingly, dazzlingly good’ Daily Mail

‘A superb epic work’ Kate Mosse, author of Labyrinth

‘Genuinely outstanding’ Independent

‘A feast’ Daily Telegraph

‘Bewitching’ Observer

The Wolf Hall App is a feature-packed ebook version of the 2009 Man Booker prize winning Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. In Wolf Hall, Mantel, one of UK’s leading writers, brings the opulent, brutal world of the Tudors to bloody, glittering life. Wolf Hall is the backdrop to the rise and rise of Thomas Cromwell: lowborn boy, charmer, bully, master of deadly intrigue, and, finally, most powerful of Henry VIII’s courtiers.

“We’re thrilled to be launching this app on the App Store at the same time as our paperback publication of the phenomenon that is Wolf Hall,” said Press Books MD, John Bond. “The enhanced app for iPhone and iPod touch gives us an opportunity to reach readers who want to experience the book in an exciting new way.”

“Releasing an enhanced edition of the most successful Man Booker prize winner ever shows the incredible growth and authority now associated with reading on iPhone and iPod touch,” said Peter Collingridge, Enhanced Editions. “This is a book that defies simple categorisation and we expect it to gain a whole new audience now that it is also an app.”

About this enhanced edition

Hilary Mantel’s Booker Prize-winning novel has now been tailor-made for the iPhone. It includes the full ebook, a set of video interviews between Hilary Mantel and Professor David Starkey, and other great extras.

As well as a paid app at £6.99 (paperback RRP £8.99) there’s also a free app which contains chapter one of Wolf Hall, the news feed, and a short clip from the video discussion.

More information…

About the author:

Hilary Mantel is the author of twelve books, including A Place of Greater Safety, Giving up the Ghost and Beyond Black, which was shortlisted for the 2006 Orange Prize. Wolf Hall won the 2009 Man Booker Prize and was shortlisted for the 2009 Costa Novel Award.

About the publisher:

Founded by Victoria Barnsley in 1984 and acquired by HarperCollins in 2000, Fourth Estate is one of the most innovative imprints in the industry with a reputation for selecting critically-acclaimed titles such as Half of a Yellow Sun by Orange Broadband prize-winner Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale and the 2009 Man Booker Prize winner Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel. Recent non-fiction successes include Bad Science by Ben Goldacre and Tender Volume 1 by Nigel Slater.

About Enhanced Editions:

Founded by a team of former publishers in 2009, Enhanced Editions has the singular vision of bringing the iPhone the reading experience it deserves.

Our apps include titles by Nick Cave, Barack Obama, David Simon and David Eagleman, and have been described as “the moment digital publishing came of age” (The Bookseller). As well as receiving outstanding user acclaim, our apps have featured in Apple’s “Best Apps of 2009″; The Observer’s “Best Cultural Apps of 2009″; and Wallpaper / Wolff Olins’ “Ten Things to Change The World in 2010″. Enhanced Editions also won the eConsultancy “Innovation in User Experience” award in 2009 and have been shortlisted for the Media Guardian Innovation awards.

Read more…

More about digital publishing:

• The Future of Publishing
• What Google Insight tells us about Kindle vs iSlate
• iPad: the headlines
• Digital Diary: iPad revealed

More about Wolf Hall:

• Read an interview with Hilary Mantel
• Watch Hilary Mantel at the Daunt Debates
• Hilary’s Backlist on Bookarmy
• Wolf Hall on wheels
  

Recently I had the good fortune of bumping into the brilliant Susan Fletcher, author of Eve Green, and Corrag which we published in hardback yesterday. Susan was kind of enough to let me ask her a few questions on the process of writing Corrag, the importance of landscape in her fiction, the theme of witchcraft, and what she thinks about the digital future of publishing.

DOWNLOAD THE PODCAST HERE

More about Susan:

• Susan Fletcher at Topping and Co
• Corrag
• The pressures of the second novel (post Richard and Judy)

More podcasts:

• Video and podcast with Gary Kemp
• Frank McCourt Podcast from the archives
• Bill Bryson reads from Shakespeare

With a hardback as successful as Wolf Hall was, there was a lot of pressure on our designers to come up with an awesome paperback jacket.  Of course, we never doubted them, and after not much time at all they came up with not one great cover look, but two!

We liked the two different coloured covers so much that in the end, we couldn’t choose between them. And so we went for this – a black version and a white.

Which do you prefer?

More about Wolf Hall:

• Win a Wolf Hall special edition!
• Wolf Hall on wheels
• Read an interview with Hilary Mantel
• Hilary Mantel: The Novelist’s Arithmetic
• Watch Hilary Mantel at the Daunt Debates
• Hilary’s Backlist on Bookarmy

To celebrate the paperback release of Wolf Hall today, March 4th, 5^th Estate is holding a prize draw for one copy of this amazing special edition, worth £150. The special edition is leather bound with cloth boards and a cloth slipcase,  is signed by the author, and is from a limited print run of 100, commissioned to celebrate Hilary’s historic Booker win.

To enter the prize draw to be in with the chance of winning, all you have to do is become a founding fan of our brand new Facebook page.

The winner will be selected at random from all those who join up before March 31st. Click here for full terms and conditions.

If you would like to buy a copy of the special limited edition, retailing at £150, you can do so by phoning: 0844 576 8122 (while stocks last!)

Competition Terms and Conditions

More about Wolf Hall:

• Wolf Hall on wheels
• Wolf Hall Paperback: Black versus White
• Read an interview with Hilary Mantel
• Hilary Mantel: The Novelist’s Arithmetic
• Hilary’s Backlist on Bookarmy

Terms of Conditions for the Wolf Hall competition.

1. This competition is promoted by HarperCollins Publishers (“HarperCollins”), 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, London, W6 8JB.

2. This promotion is open to all UK residents except employees of HarperCollins (or their parent, subsidiaries or any affiliated companies) and their immediate families, who are not allowed to enter the competition.

3. Participation is through becoming a fan of our 5th Estate Facebook page only.

4. Closing date for entries is 31st March 2010. No entries received after this date will be valid. No purchase necessary. Only one entry allowed per household

5. The prize is one special edition hardback copy of Wolf Hall, from a 100 copy limited print run to commemorate Hilary’s Booker win.

6. The prize is non-refundable, non-transferable and subject to availability. No guarantee is given as to the quality of the prize.

7. No cash or prize alternatives are available.

8. HarperCollins reserve the right in their reasonable discretion to substitute any prize with a prize of equal or greater value.

9. The winner of the competition will drawn at random from all correct entries by an independent adjudicator and notified through Facebook no later than the April 10th.

10. The prize will be delivered to the winner by April 3oth

11. Any application containing incorrect, false or unreadable information will be rejected. Any applications made on behalf of or for another person or multiple entries will not be included in the competition.

12. HarperCollins’ decision as to who has won the competition shall be final.

13. To obtain the name of the prize winner after the closing date, please write to Wolf Hall Special Edn Comp, HarperCollins Publishers, 77-85 Fulham Palace Road, Hammersmith, London, W6 8JB.

14. The entry instructions are part of the Terms and Conditions for this competition.

15. By entering the competition you are agreeing to accept these Terms and Conditions. Any breach of these Terms and Conditions by you will mean that your entry will not be valid, and you will not be allowed to enter this competition.

16. By entering this competition, you are agreeing that if you win your name and image may be used for the purpose of announcing the winner in any related publicity with HarperCollins, without additional payment or permission.

17. Under no circumstances will HarperCollins be responsible for any loss, damages, costs or expenses arising from or in any way connected with any errors, defects, interruptions, malfunctions or delays in the promotion of the competition or prize.

18. Any personal information you give us will be used solely for this competition and will not be passed on to any other parties without your agreement. HarperCollins’ privacy policy can be found at:  http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/legal/Pages/privacy-policy.aspx

19. HarperCollins will not be responsible unless required by law, for any loss, changes, costs or expenses, which may arise in connection with this competition and HarperCollins can cancel or alter the competition at any stage.

20. Any dispute relating to the competition shall be governed by the laws of England and Wales and will be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Click here to return to the Wolf hall competition.