Sin Cities author and TV presenter Ashley Hames will be in Newcastle upon Tyne today (Wednesday 16 July) to kick off his book signing tour. Ashley will be appearing at the Waterstone’s Emerson Chambers store at Grey’s Monument from 6.30pm to talk about his adventures around the world and to sign copies of the book.

‘One of the few concrete truths of modern life is that Newcastle is the UK’s number one Sin City,’ says Ashley. ‘It’s ace. With that in mind, I guess it’s the perfect place to start our book signing tour…’

You can hear Ashley on Radio Newcastle today at 1.30pm.

The book tour continues tomorrow (Thursday 17 July) at Waterstones in York (2pm) and Leeds (7pm). Click here to view Waterstone’s Ashley Hames events page.

Paul

Faceless behemoth it might be, but I really like Amazon. As a reader, you can get any book in print, and some that aren’t, at pretty good prices. As a publisher, your books are made easily available and get a fair crack of the whip. Amazon’s huge buying power means that they can heavily discount books that they know will sell in reasonable quantities.

From today we’re going to try to match Amazon.co.uk’s prices in our own online store. So you can get Ashley Hames’ Sin Cities for just £5.99, Stephen Miller’s Paralympian for £6.99, Rosalind Wyllie’s Everything You Ever Wanted for £5.99, and Stephen Miller’s Being Normal for £6.39. That’s up to 35% off the cover prices. (For a limited time you can also buy Everything You Ever Wanted and Being Normal together for just £10.)

You can visit our online store here.

If, however, you prefer to shop with Amazon, you can view our catalogue of books in the UK, US, Canada, Germany, France or Japan.

Paul

Friday 11 July was the launch party for Sin Cities: Adventures of a Sex Reporter at The Westbridge pub, Battersea. Judging by the photographs, bar staff are still tidying up ahead of opening up this morning.

I assume this photo was taken quite a way into the party.

I spoke to Ashley the following day and he told me waht a brilliant time he’d had. Big thanks to everyone who turned up – all the photos can be viewed as people post them here: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=18563684013
The publicity for the book is growing all the time. Ashley went for an interview at Loaded magazine on Thursday and ended up taking part in a bizarre bacon sarnie eating competition – no idea why, but we’ll post up details of the magazine feature in September.

Ashley rolls in to Newcastle tomorrow, so in case we’re offline for a bit, here’s the publicity for this week:
Tuesday 15: Smooth Radio: Ashley picks his ’6 at 6′ and talks to Paul Wappat.
Wednesday 16: Ashley and Stu on BBC Radio Newcastle.
Wednesday 16: Ashley’s author event at Waterstone’s Newcastle, 6.30pm.
Thursday 17: Ashley’s signing session at Waterstone’s York
Thursday 18: Ashley’s author event at Waterstone’s Leeds, 7pm.

We’ll post details of any updates.

Catch up with all the events and goings on at: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=12931077445

Stu

Ashley Hames’ Sin Cities was the Big Read in yesterday’s London Lite (readership: just the 824,000, apparently), receiving a very nice almost-full-page review. Orders are flooding in, and Amazon is currently showing the book as #2 in its TV Tie-in Humour chart, outselling the massive QI, and only pipped by the not-really-very humorous Life On Mars. [UPDATE: Now it's #1. Take that, Gene Hunt!] There’s loads more great publicity coming up, so watch this space. As a reminder, Ashley’s book launch is this Friday 11 July. It’s at the Westbridge Pub in Battersea, London from 8pm, so, if you’re in the area, why not pop along?

Paul

Today is the official launch date of Sin Cities: Adventures of a Sex Reporter by Ashley Hames. And as luck would have it, today we were sent an advert for the book that some unknown cyber geek has edited and put a brilliant ‘carpet salesman’ voiceover to. A big thank you to that anonymous technical wizard!

Anyone in the London area, watch out for a review feature of the book in tomorrow’s London Lite paper. As publicity continues for this title, we’ll keep posting updates.

You can also join the Facebook group here

Unrelated news: We took delivery of Everything You Ever Wanted and Being Normal on Friday. All those placing orders via our website will receive their copies long before amazon or other stores have theirs.

Stu

The launch event for Stephen Miller’s Paralympian, My Autobiography will take place in the Club 206 suite at Newcastle United’s St James’ Park on Thursday 24 July at 7.30pm. There will be a ‘talk-in’, with Stephen answering questions about his career and the forthcoming Beijing games, a chance to get a signed copy of the book, plus other fun and games and special guests. The new Club 206 suite is named after Alan Shearer’s goalscoring record, and can be found on the third level of SJP.

Paralympian launch event, Club 206, Level 3, St James’ Park, Newcastle, Thursday 24 July, 7.30pm, free.

Paul

‘How smart are you?’ asks the BBC website. ‘Hardly a week passes without headlines about academic standards. Are exams getting easier? Are people getting smarter?’ Find out with this quick English test. There’s a maths test next week, but I’ll be skiving off that one.

Paul