We have just lowered our author's prices for our North American customers, by up to $2.00 per book. This means higher profits for our authors and a lower cost of publishing your book.

The holidays are over and we're all back at work here at Spire Publishing. We've got a number of exciting features in the plans for 2008, so watch this space. In the meantime, take a look at this. We've come a long way in the world of book production:

Christmas is approaching fast and we have decided to all take a break and close our offices for a couple of days. We'll be shut from Friday the 21st of December 2007 to Tuesday the 1st of January 2008. See you all in the new year.

Amazon have released the Amazon Kindle, the first of what promises to become a long line of electronic reading devices. Personally I am of two minds. On the one hand I'd like to carry my entire library around with me in a device the size of a paperback book, but I also really like the look and feel of books. Especially a good hardback book just feels different from reading text on a screen. Right now the kindle comes with a black and white screen only which for me personally is an instant deal breaker. We'll be offering books formatted for the Kindle in the near future. In the meantime I don't think paper books will go away anytime soon. For starters, they work without batteries and that's worth an awful lot in itself.

We're currently testing out talking avatars on some of the pages on our site. They are supposed to give a quick audio overview of what the page is about. What do you think? Useful? Corny? Funny? Annoying? Let me know.

From today on our entire website is hosted on carbon neutral servers. Our web host has calculated the impact of everything that they use and leave behind in the course of their daily work. Without the option to put up solar panels or connect with a green power utility this means purchasing Renewable Energy Credits. Finally, to neutralize those unavoidable emissions, our host company has invested in Emission Reduction Credits which guarantee that the remaining impact is effectively erased.

Here at Spire Publishing we also do what we can to minimize our environmental footprint. Simple things like switching off the light when we leave an office, using both sides of a sheet of paper and recycling everything that's recyclable. Printing our books in the country they will be sold in reduces transport emissions and using email and video conferencing whenever possible reduces our need for travel. We are very aware of our environmental responsibilities and do our best to run our business in a sustainable way.

I know, I know. Every year Christmas seems to be coming earlier. My wife and I went to IKEA this last weekend (what were we thinking, IKEA on a Sunday) and all the Christmas stuff was already out. A couple of days after Halloween.

However, in our world of book publishing there's a real reason for posting this. Every year we get a rush in late November, with authors self publishing their book in time for Christmas. And every year there are some which we have to disappoint because they are simply too late. It takes us about four weeks to get a book into print and that assumes a flawless, proofed and formatted manuscript.

So please, if you have a book that you want published before the new year, do it soon, otherwise we won't be able to guarantee delivery in time for the holidays.

We're currently beta testing a forum where our authors can meet and exchange experiences and ideas. If you are interested in trying the software before the official launch please send me a quick email.

Happy Halloween to all our authors and readers. We had everything from a very small Dark Lord to a guy with no costume at all claiming to be a ninja turn up, demanding the annual sweets tribute.

To celebrate the occasion we're releasing a Halloween discount code. Submit your book before the 10th of November 2007, quoting code SPOOKS, and get $100.00/£50.00 off the Professional Publishing Package.

Author Steve Barton is leaving copies of his book in public places. Here's an en exert from his website:

I have stupid ideas. I mean really stupid ideas. Without doubt the most stupendous was to open a restaurant with absolutely no experience, 200 miles away from home in a town I’d never visited before. But I’ve also had many, many smaller, but just as stupid, ideas. My latest, as an author, is to give my book away totally free. Actually, once you have ignored the fact that I’m encouraging people not to buy my book but instead give them the opportunity to read it for free, I think this is quite a fun idea.

I have left copies of Burnt! in public places: Café’s, restaurants, buses etc in the hope that someone will find it, read it, enjoy it and then in turn leave it somewhere different for someone else to find. I hope that people will be creative and leave the books in places where they stand a chance of reaching a wide audience: Take it on holiday or leave it in a hotel room.

By recording where books have been found and subsequently left, the journey the book takes can be tracked. To assist with this each book has been given an identifying ‘name’; each one relating to a celebrity chef (just to keep with a theme). So if you have found Gordon strewn across a park bench early one Saturday morning, or if you have been lucky enough to discover Nigella in your hotel room, please record the details here.

If you have found Gordon please post here

If you have found Jamie please post here

More celebrity books will be left in various counties over the coming weeks.

Far from stupid, this is a brilliant idea to get people to read your book and pass it on to other readers. Best of luck with it.

My wife and I had a short holiday, visiting my mother in law and spending a couple of days in the UK. If you're in London and got the chance, visit the Tate Modern. Doris Salcedo's Shibboleth installation is breathtaking.

Here at Spire we are getting more and more returning authors. Understandably enough, many are asking whether there's a discount for authors self publishing more than one book. The answer is yes, but for some reason we've never published them. Here's that situation remedied:

• Sell 10.000+ books per calendar year and receive a 100% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.
• Sell 5.000+ books per calendar year and receive a 50% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.
• Sell 2500+ books per calendar year and receive a 25% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.
• Sell 1000+ books per calendar year and receive a 15% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.
• Sell 500+ books per calendar year and receive a 10% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.
• Sell 250+ books per calendar year and receive a 5% discount on the publishing fee for book 2.

This discounts also apply if you are publishing two, or three, books at the same time. If your first book sells over 5000 books in the first calendar year after it has been published then you'll receive a 50% discount on the publishing fee you paid for book two at the end of that year. The above discounts are valid from October 17th, 2007.

Need something literary to listen to on the way to work? Try one of the many literary podcasts out there, created by writers and publishers. Here's a small selection to get you started:

• Agony Column
• Average Mortal Radio
• The Penguin Podcast
• Engaging the Word
• The Literate Loser
• Air Out My Shorts
• Drinks with Tony
• Librivox
• Pinky's Paperhaus
• Moby Lives Radio

Tags: Podcast

Refer other authors, friends and loved ones (even strangers) to Spire Publishing, and earn cold hard cash. You will get referral credit for anyone who publishes a book with us and uses your affiliate code when submitting their book.

Here's how it works:

• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Professional Service and receive $50.00/£25.00.
• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Essential Service and receive $30.00/£15.00.
• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Print Ready Service and receive $25.00/£12.50.

Want free books instead? Here's how:

• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Professional Service and receive 20 free copies of your own book.
• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Essential Service and receive 15 free copies of your own book.
• Refer an author to us who then publishes a book using the Spire Print Ready Service and receive 10 free copies of your own book.

You need to join the Spire Affiliate Program for this offer to take effect. Offer valid from September 27, 2007.

This just in from Publisher's Weekly:

Harlequin said yesterday that from this point forward it is making its complete frontlist catalogue available in e-book format. Active in the e-book marketplace since October 2005, with an initial publication schedule of nine titles a month, Harlequin will now be releasing more than 120 titles per month in both print and digital formats.

Harlequin’s e-books will be priced slightly lower than their print books and be available in Adobe, Microsoft Reader, MobiPocket, Palm and Sony formats. The company said it is launching this initiative because its customers embrace the immediacy and portability of the format and the titles do not go out of stock.

Here at Spire we will be making e-books available in the near future. Right now we're looking into who to partner with and how to get the best return for our authors.

This is a great book, written by a marketing genius. Unleashing The Ideavirus explains the logic of word-of-mouth advertising and how you can get it working for you. Available for free download in PDF format.
If you'd rather buy the book then you can do so by following the following amazon links:

Tags: Seth Godin

Writing a blog is one of the best ways for authors to get feedback about their book. You can test story lines, you can test characters, you can communicate with your intended audience. That's one of the reasons we give every author who publishes with Spire Publishing his or her own website and blog. But what if you're not yet ready to publish? What if you're still writing your book? What if you just want to make some of your writing public, with no intention of ever publishing it? Well, fear not, we have the solution.

We are offering every writer, regardless of whether he/she publishes a book with us, a free literary blog. The blogs are located at yourname.spireblogs.com and are powered by WordPress, an easy to use and highly reliable blogging platform. Send a mail to info@spirepublishing.com and we'll set everything up for you post haste.

We frequently publish a series of discount codes on this blog. All codes are public between 2 and 24 hours, then they are removed. Please take a note of the coupon code and when ready to publish enter it into the 'discount code' field in the 'Publish Now" page.

Too late - code removed

Keep an eye open for future discount codes.

Tags: Secret Discount Coupon

Thanks for your responses to the free author website offer - it's been overwhelmingly positive.
Just a reminder on how this offer works: Every new author who publishes with Spire Publishing will get his or her own website, complete with a unique web address (normally the title of the book published) and three to five email addresses. We recently extended that offer to authors who had published with us in the past. I am almost certain that we're on top of all of the installations, if you haven't received your domain details by now please let us know and we'll check your site for progress.

This offer is running until the end of September, so if you haven't responded yet you've got two weeks left.

The latest changes will be mostly invisible - at least we hope they will be because that's what is supposed to happen. We updated the design for this blog page, which is visible of course, but the remainder is mainly designed to make the site easier to find for search engines. If you find any glitches please let us know, especially if you're using Internet Explorer.

Tags: CSS

We're constantly walking an information tightrope when it comes to our website. On the one hand we want to make the traditional black art of book publishing as simple and transparent as we possibly can - on the other hand there really is a lot of information to read and digest.

The new front page should keep things as simple as possible. If you follow the four steps listed you'll be able to publish your book without ever reading another page of our site - you'll be missing out on a ton of interesting and useful (we hope) information, but you'll have your book in print. Let us know how you like it.

Tags: Information architecture