Hattori Hachi is a  series of kick-ass action adventure books for kids and playful adults about a 15 year old Japanese girl, Hattie Jackson, from Camberwell who discovers her ninjitsu heritage after her mother goes missing.

“They are books where people have to work for success; where the heroes train hard, face their own demons and have to confront their invisible barriers to overcome their fears and phobias; characters who aspire to achieve difficult goals and learn to accept that sometimes, failure can be just as important as success…”

Written by Jane Prowse (creator of several TV dramas for the BBC and plays that have been performed in the UK, Ireland and America, including one that’s currently in the West End), the first two books of the series, The Revenge of the Praying Mantis, and Stalking The Enemy, have previously been published and are available to download online. And the third book, Curse of the Diamond Daggers, is set to be  published exclusively by Unbound, in a bound volume containing all three books in the trilogy. You can read excerpts from all 3 books here.

This is a great way to discover a superbly written series for all ages and for those who are already fans of the series, this is a great opportunity to help get the third book published, by pledging money in return for your name being printed in the back of each book plus an ebook or a first edition hardback and anything else from a whole range of gifts such as a Hattie hoodie and  ninja club membership, invites to the launch party, a writing workshop with Jane, and even getting a character in the new Hattori Hachi book named after you.
Click here to find out how you can get involved…

26 (an association for writers, editors and language consultants) has posted a great interview with one of our founders, John Mitchinson in which he shares advice for aspiring writers keen to get published by Unbound…

John Mitchinson is the co-founder of Unbound, a revolutionary crowdfunding publishing concept. He is also the co-author of QI books and director of research for QI. As 26 Treasures builds support on the Unbound website, John tells Elen Lewis why we all need to make sure the 26 Treasures book sees the light of day.

What makes 26 Treasures an ideal project for Unbound?
It’s exactly the kind of book that might get overlooked in today’s rather confused publishing environment. Yet it comes with wonderful writers attached – some well known; many not – and four museums supporting it. It offers us the chance to collaborate with readers to producing a memorable, beautiful object – an artefact in its own right – made from words and images. That kind of idea – one which stimulates excitement and offers the chance for readers to create something new and different seems to be the ones that work best for Unbound.

What advice would you offer aspiring writers keen to be considered by Unbound?
Be bold in your ideas and don’t become preoccupied with which niche you fit into. There’s far too much second-guessing in publishing already. Send us your ideas as a pitch, in your own words explaining why you want to write it, with an excerpt of 1,000 words or so. If we like what we read, we’re pretty sure other people will too.

Click here to read the rest of the interview…

We’re publishing a book by 26, called 26 Treasures - it’s an illustrated anthology in which 26 writers (from established authors like Alexander McCall Smith and Gillian Clarke to up and coming talents like Lucy Caldwell) respond to 26 treasures in 4 museums, using only 62 words.

Click here to find out more about the 26 Treasures book, and how you can support it in return for things like a creative writing workshop with the authors, a museum tour with one of the authors to see the featured treasures and plenty more.

Justin Pollard, one of the founders of Unbound, first got the idea for a radical new model for book publishing while sitting in the pub with his friend and fellow author Dan Kieran. “In the way that writers do, we were having a good old moan about publishers and how they don’t get any publicity for their books, and how advances are getting ever smaller,” he recalls. “I mean, friends of ours, established authors, were getting advances of £4,000. That’s a nice amount for a hobby, but not for a proper job.”

Yet at the same time, Pollard and Kieran observed that book sales were hardly in freefall. More books were being published than ever. People were still reading. “And so we decided to ask: where is the money going? And what we realised is that the problem isn’t to do with middle men taking it all. It’s to do with the traditional model of publishing, where you have to pay advances that are non-returnable. Because most books don’t earn out their advances, publishers have a huge exposure up front. That’s where an awful lot of the money goes.”

Pollard and Kieran (by now working with the company’s third co-founder, John Mitchinson) decided that there had to be another way of doing things. For inspiration, they looked partly to the music industry, and bands like Marillion who, after they were dropped by their record label, asked their fans directly to put up enough money for a recording session and printing. At the same time, they looked back to a much older model of book publishing. “Subscription publishing is extremely old when it comes to books,” Pollard says. “It’s how Johnson’s dictionary was published, as well as a large number of 18th- and 19th-century novels.”

From the yoking together of these two ideas – online pledging in the music business, and old-fashioned subscription publishing – Unbound Books was born.

Read the rest here!