New Large Print Books for April 2013

New books for April - available now!

This month's titles include the hilarious Is It Just Me? from Miranda Hart which won the Non-fiction Book of the Year at the 2012 National Book Awards along with the first book in a new series by M. C. Beaton Minerva and a great new novel from Peter Mayle The Vintage Caper

 

Other highlights this month include the arrival in paperback of John Grisham's The Litigator and the canine adventures of Copper. All these and many more are available from the Large Print Bookshop.

New in hardback:

Is It Just Me? - Miranda Hart Is it just me or does anyone else find that adulthood offers no refuge from the unexpected horrors, peculiar lack of physical coordination and sometimes unexplained nudity, that accompanied childhood and adolescence? This is the award-winning stand-up and TV comedian's manual on how to navigate life's rocky path. Hardback £19.99

The Vintage Caper - Peter Mayle Danny Roth is the rich owner of a priceless collection of wines. He invites a journalist to write a piece about his rare collection and shortly afterwards is the unfortunate victim of a world-class wine heist. Roth is devastated. Called in by Roth's insurance company, lawyer and wine connoisseur Sam Levitt investigates... Hardback £19.99             Other books by Peter Mayle

Minerva - M. C. Beaton This is the first in a new series, The Six Sisters. Minerva, eldest daughter of an impecunious vicar, is dispatched to town under the wing of the disreputable old Lady Godolphin. Her task: to find a rich husband. When her London debut is marred by her habit of speaking her mind, the highly eligible Lord Sylvester Comfrey decides to give her lessons in the gentle art of attracting the opposite sex. Hardback £19.99             Other books by M. C. Beaton

Now available in paperback:

The Litigators - John Grisham Oscar Finley, Wally Figg and David Zinc make up Finley & Figg: specialists in injury claims, quickie divorces and DUIs (Driving Under the Influence). Now they are about to take on one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the States. David gave up his lucrative career at Chicago's leading law firm for the chance to help the little guy stand up to the big corporations. Paperback £13.49             Other books by John Grisham

Copper: A Dog's Life - Annabel Goldsmith A lovable local legend, Copper was no ordinary dog. Famed for his remarkable wanderlust, canine curiosity took him all over the place; sometimes travelling on buses, often stopping off at his favourite pubs, or chasing unsuspecting joggers in the park, a hobby which nearly ended his days. In this book, he tells us of his adventures. Paperback £10.49

Raylan - Elmore Leonard When Federal Marshall Raylan Givens squares off against a known offender he'll warn the man, 'If I have to pull my gun I'll shoot to kill.' Except this time he finds the offender naked in a bathtub, doped up and missing his kidneys. By the time Raylan finds out who's making the cuts, he's lying naked in a bathtub himself. Paperback £13.49             Other books by Elmore Leonard

Younger Readers:

 

Deep Deep Down - Garrett Carr Around a hidden lake in the mountains is a perfect place. The people there live long and contented lives. But not for much longer. Andrew, May and Ewan will destroy everything. Unless the mystery that awaits deep, deep down destroys them first... Paperback £12.99             Other books by Garrett Carr

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The Accessibility Guide to the Costa Book Awards 2012

The five category winners have just been announced.

Novel Award: The winner of the Costa Novel Award is Hilary Mantel for Bring Up the Bodies, the sequel to Wolf Hall.

The good news is that the large print edition of Bring Up the Bodies will be published (at long last) next month, priced £19.99. We will only put it on our website when publication is imminent, but if you want to be informed when it is available please send us an email here.

If you cannot wait, there is a marvellous unabridged audiobook available and you can find details here.

There is also a Kobo eBook available which you can find here.

If you don’t have an ereader we sell the brilliant Kobo Glo. For further guidance on reading Kobo ebooks on your laptop or tablet read our blog.

Incidentally if you want to read or listen to Wolf Hall before reading Bring Up the Bodies follow these links for large print, eBook or audio book editions.

First Novel Award: Francesca Segal has won this with The Innocents, which is available in large print and also as a Kobo eBook, but not as an audio book.

Biography Award: The judges have, for the first time, selected a graphic work, Dotter of her Father’s Eyes by Mary Talbot (illustrated by her husband Bryan). Although this is an interesting award it is a difficult format to produce for the visually impaired and it is no surprise that there is no large print, eBook or audio book edition.

Poetry Award: the poetry prize goes to Kathleen Jamie for The Overhaul. This is available as an eBook but not in large print or as an audio book.

Finally, the Children’s Book Award goes to Sally Gardner for Maggot Moon, which is available as an audio book but not as a large print title or as an eBook.

Seven reasons why you might buy an ereader

Seven reasons why you might buy an eReader

 

As booksellers, many customers assume that we are antagonistic to eReaders but our concern is with the visually impaired, and enabling them to continue to enjoy a major pleasure – reading.

Whilst we love books, there are many reasons why we would suggest that you consider ebooks. We are now selling the Kobo Glo, which is particularly easy to adjust font, type size, margins, and the brightness of light thrown on the screen.

What we like about ebooks and the Kobo Glo in particular are the following:

1. Availability: There are about 3 million ebooks available (compared to the 25,000 books in large print that are available in this country). About 1 million of these books are free of charge, including all the out of copyright classics such as Thomas Hardy, the Bronte sisters, Jane Austen, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope, etc.
2. Price: large print books are larger than normal print, their print runs are very short, and so the prices are high, especially of the out of copyright classics which are often produced to order, one at a time (print on demand). Four such classics could easily cost £25 each, which happens to be the cost of the Kobo Glo (£99.99).
3. Weight: For many of our customers, weight can be an important consideration, especially if suffering from arthritis. Our best seller, Wolf Hall, weighs over 3 pounds (1.376 kilos) whereas the Kobo Glo, which will hold 1,000 such books, weighs under 7 ounces (182 grams).
4. Font size: our books are nearly all 16 point, but you can adjust the font size of the Kobo Glo up to about 24 point. But do bear in mind that the ‘page’ size is quite small – about 6 inches – so the larger the font, the more frequent the page turns. The font is crisp, and you have a choice of seven fonts, including one particularly suitable for dyslexics.
5. Page turns are easy: it is important that an ereader is easy to operate. Just touch the screen on the right-hand side to go onto the next page; touch the left hand to go back a page.
6. The screen is lit: early eReaders were not lit up – you needed a source of light to read, just as with a book. The new generation of ereaders have their own light and the Kobo Glo is reckoned to be the best. Brightness is adjustable and you should be able to read comfortably even in the dark.
7. Read on more than one device: when you buy a kobo ebook, you can read it on different devices such as your tablet, ipad, desktop, netbook, laptop, or even your smartphone, etc. You can have five devices registered to your account and can keep all your books synced between them. This means that if you select books for a parent, and their ereader is registered to you, you can read the same book at the same time, or any time you choose in the future.

 

Available for immediate dispatch: we currently have four Kobo Glos in stock. The price is £99.99 and we send them free of charge by Royal Mail Special Delivery for delivery the next working day (Monday to Friday) by 1 pm.  Providing our website says “currently in stock”  you should receive the Kobo Glo the next day, if you order by 4 pm. We do not give you a choice of colour: like Henry Ford with his Model T you can have any colour you like as long as it is black.

If you would like to see a short video (less than a minute) about the Kobo Glo then please click here.

To see a three minute demonstration click here.

To buy the Kobo Glo now click here.

Discover the pleasure of listening to a good book!

Many people who enjoy reading large print books also enjoy audiobooks; we meet many people who can no longer manage 16 point print size and they then move on to audiobooks.

The RNIB provide a marvellous service for those who need audiobooks and have 18,000 unabridged titles. But our audiobook partner (you can find a link on our website on the right hand side) have 48,000 unabridged titles.

I am currently listening to Hilary Mantel’s marvellous Bring Up the Bodies, her sequel to Wolf Hall, and this year’s Man Booker prize winner. This book is not yet available in large print (it is due to be published in February 2013), but listening to an unabridged book has been a revelation to me – I find myself engrossed every morning when I take my dogs for a walk on Royston Heath.

You can download a free audiobook via our website (there are 60,000 titles – including some abridged ones – to choose from). If you like what you hear, you can download a book a month for only £7.99, or 12 books for £69.99 (£5.84 each) or 24 books for £109.99 (£4.59 each). You can cancel your membership at any time.

The books are yours to own and keep and you can have more than one listening device (ipod, tablet, laptop, smartphone, etc.) registered to your account, so your partner, child or parent can listen to the same book at the same time!

Best wishes

Guy Garfit

Pollinger in Print Books appeal particularly to teenagers.

Readers of large print books are very poorly served by mainstream publishers like Penguin and Random House, and by literary agents. In this digital age many more books should be available in large print. At the moment less than 1.5% of all books published are also produced in large print.

Of those that are produced many go out of print almost as soon as they are published. (Eg Victoria Hislop’s The Thread was published in hardback last November but went out of print in early December – it would have been our big Christmas book last year; this year, the paperback edition went out of print last month – it would have been our big Christmas book this year).

Very few literary agents are looking after their author’s interests as diligently as they should. It always mystifies me as to why large print publishing is so little regarded by publishers and agents. One sees so many books published which are destined for the remainder table as publishers try to reach new markets, but they ignore a large and growing section of the population who loved reading, want to continue to do so, but are unable to because of failing eyesight.

The digital technology that enables publishers to print a book only when they receive an order for that book (print-on-demand or POD) is ideal for large print books. POD means that a book need never go out of print – we could be happily selling The Thread if the publisher had decided to keep it in print.

Hats off then to one literary agent, Pollinger Limited, who started their own imprint, Pollinger in Print, to make some of their authors’ work available in large print, using POD. They have some 40 books available in large print.

Some of these are from perennial bestsellers like HE Bates, which you can find here. We are very aware that many of the elderly visually impaired want to revisit favourite books and authors from the past but very little backlist titles are available in large print, so this initiative is particularly welcome.

But the major emphasis of the Pollinger in Print titles is books for children, particularly teenagers: a market that is particularly ignored by the mainstream large print publishers.

A favourite author, appealing to this age range is Vera Chapman, founder of the Tolkien Society whose three books in large print would be particularly popular with Tolkien fans. You can find them here: King Arthur’s Daughter; The King’s Damosel; and The Green Knight.

One author whom they are particularly proud to support is Susan Holliday whose books are aimed at adolescents on the cusp of adulthood. In fact her latest book is a Pollinger original, Fifteen and Falling, is one that staff felt as passionate about as the author herself who wrote:

"I wrote FIFTEEN AND FALLING because I thought there might be something of value in turning my own experience into a fictional story for young adults of today. It is a tale about friendship and drug- taking, two things that have not changed over the years.

Some time ago in our leafy country town, there were young people who were not only experimenting with drugs but for whom drug-taking became a way of life. Families, including my own, were in disarray. Several children disappeared for a while and one or two died. Many survived, sometimes suffering from long lasting effects. There were others who became marvellous adults and channelled their experience into helping others.

FIFTEEN AND FALLING is no morality tale. It is a fictional realistic account of two friends who, at an emotionally difficult time of their lives, succumb to the controlling influence of their drug addict boyfriends. They live in a squat in London but are eventually made homeless. It is their friendship, talent and vision that finally lead them back to a fulfilling life."

You can find a full list of her titles here.

Other authors:

Peter Clover, whose four titles are particularly appropriate for pony-loving children.

Philip Gross, the sinister Facetaker.

Frances Mary Hendry, a teacher for 20 years, has written 16 books, four of them available in large print. You can find more details about the four here, and if you would like to learn more about the author, visit her website here.

Valerie Thame, three books involving witches.

Gary Paulsen, the prolific author of fiction for boys, has written a tongue-in-cheek memoir, ideal for teenagers who want an adrenalin rush:

How Angel Peterson Got His Name is a nonfiction, young adult memoir written by Gary Paulsen, outlining the hilarious, and often dangerous stunts Paulsen and his friends pull in order to entertain themselves and impress the young ladies. All of the tales in this book are about the true adventures of Paulsen and his friends during the mid-1950s.

Bette Paul, another prolific author with 25 years’ teaching experience, has three books available in large print.

Allan Frewin Jones: The Mole and Beverley Miller. "One of the most believable, emotionally gripping and real teen novels I've read for a long time" Stephanie Nettell, The Guardian

Helen Magee: has six comic books for children available in large print.

Brandon Robshaw: Georgina and the Dragon.

Another genre that is severely underrepresented in large print is books relating to sport, but Pollinger have made available Wasim Khan’s Brimful of Passion, the story of the first Pakistani born in this country to make it as a county cricketer.

 

Independent Booksellers’ Week Book Award 2012 Shortlist Announced

The selection of ten adult titles and twelve children’s titles have just been announced. These have been chosen by Independent Booksellers as their favourite books of the year. The public will be able to vote for their favourite from 30^th June.

The following adult titles are available in large print:

Jeanette Winterson, Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal?

Andrew Miller, Pure

Matthew Hollis, Now All Roads Lead to France. Please note that this book is not published yet. It is due in August 2012.

Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending.

Alan Bennet, Smut.

Sebastian Barry,  On Canaan’s Side.

Kate Grenville, Sarah Thornhill.

SJ Watson, Before I Go to Sleep.

Louisa Young, My Dear I Wanted to Tell You.

The following children’s titles are available in large print:

Jeff Kinney, Diary of a Wimpy Kid.

Meg Roscoff, There is No Dog.

The Richard and Judy Summer Book Club 2012

The ten titles for the Richard and Judy Summer Book Club have been announced and five of them are available in large print from our website. Click on the links to learn more about each title.

Victoria Hislop, The Thread. This book is published in paperback next week, and we have plenty of copies on order. (The hardback was published just before Christmas and went out of print almost immediately). Gransnet have also chosen this book as their June book club choice.

Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus.

Robert Harris, The Fear Index.

Lars Kepler, The Hypnotist. This book is only available in large print from the USA.

Penny Hancock, Tideline.

Richard and Judy choices are always popular and prove very good choices for book groups to discuss.