Inkubook attributes 60 percent of first year sales to email marketing

Online photo book publisher Inkubook, a subsidiary of vanity press AuthorHouse, says that that its ExactTarget email marketing campaigns drove more than 60 percent of the brand`s first-year revenue.
Launched in July 2008 as one of six self-publishing brands owned by Author Solutions, Inkubook posted the first-year results using ExactTarget’s on-demand email technology to build relationships between the photo book publisher and its growing list of more than 50,000 members around the world.
Using ExactTarget’s Core Edition in tandem with its customer database, Inkubook automatically builds and sends messages to its members based on their activity on the book builder’s Web site. The technology allows the company to remain in contact with customers during the book creation process, informing them of their current project status and encouraging them to finish should they abandon a project before completion.
The re-engagement effort, Inkubook`s Market Development Manager Jim Eup said, has driven nearly 20 percent of the company’s first year revenue.
Inkubook sends monthly newsletters to customers featuring season-specific offers and promotions. To extend the reach of the newsletters, the company includes links to its Facebook and Twitter pages in emails and invites customers to share special offers with friends and family, Eup said.

Author Solutions seeks to be largest publisher of digital content

Author Solutions Inc. (ASI) has announced an initiative to become the world's largest publisher and marketer of original digital content.
ASI has begun making alliances with digital content portals, giving its titles widespread digital availability. In the process, ASI will produce digital versions of all new titles it publishes, convert thousands from its backlist, and make them available through several popular e-readers and e-channels to readers worldwide.
ASI in coming months will begin making titles available through Sony's e-Book Store.
"Author Solutions leads the world in new titles brought to market with more than 20,000 annually,” said Kevin Weiss, ASI president and chief executive officer. “We will convert every new title and tens of thousands from our backlist into digital formats and make them available through the leading digital content portals. We believe as our self-publishing business continues to accelerate, we will become the world's largest publisher of original digital content,".
In 2008, ASI brought to market more than 21,000 unique titles through its vanity press imprints AuthorHouse, AuthorHouse UK, iUniverse, Trafford Publishing, Wordclay and Xlibris. Overall, ASI has helped more than 85,000 authors worldwide bring more than 120,000 titles to market.
Author Solutions, Inc. is owned by Bertram Capital Management LLC Headquartered in Bloomington, Ind. ASI also operates offices in Indianapolis and Milton Keynes, England.

Sony ramps up e-book self-publishing options

After watching Amazon make huge headway in the e-book self-publishing game with its Digital Text Platform, Sony is finally making a real push into this area with a new Publisher Portal and partnerships with self-publishing companies Smashwords and Author Solutions.
"New authors can select a self-publishing path and get their work published and for sale on Sony's eBook Store in as little as 10 days," Sony representatives said. "As Sony completes the conversion of its eBook store to the industry-standard EPUB format, Smashwords and Authors Solutions will expand the offer to all existing Author Solutions and Smashwords authors to get their titles up on the Sony site."
Author Solutions, one of the larger vanity press companies, with several brands, offers a full suite of self-publishing services, most of which are fee-based. Start-up Smashwords is focused exclusively on e-book creation and sales, and it is free to use - you simply upload a Word file, make some tweaks to your formatting based on a style guide, and presto, you have an e-book.
According to Sony, Author Solutions and Smashwords will offer authors the option to publish content in the EPUB format, "the International Digital Publishing Forum's XML-based standard format for reflowable digital books and publications." Amazon, on the other hand, uses its proprietary e-book format.

Disney launches Digital Books initiative targeting children

Disney Publishing Worldwide said in September that it has launched its online Disney Digital Books initiative.
The company said that the site offers more than 500 children's books, including titles from Disney franchises like Mickey Mouse, Toy Story, Cars and Hannah Montana. More books and features will be added on an ongoing basis, the company said.

July bookstore sales slip 0.5 percent from July 2008

July bookstore sales dropped 0.5 percent compared to July 2008, according to preliminary estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau released in mid-September.
For the year to date, bookstore sales dropped 2.5 percent to $8.523 billion.
Total retail sales in July dropped 9.2 percent to $314.6 billion compared to the same period a year ago. For the year to date, total retail sales were down 10.8 percent to $2,081.2 billion.

ABA’s Vlahos offers survival advice to Western booksellers

In a session entitled “Surviving Tough Times” at the Mountains & Plains Independent Booksellers Association (MPIBA) annual trade show, Len Vlahos, chief operating officer of the American Booksellers Association, offered practical advice about how to reduce costs and increase sales - such as renegotiating leases, cutting staff hours and using part time employees more than full time employees.
Even skimping on bags saves money, Vlahos noted He said that instructing employees to shift from asking customers, “Would you like a bag?” to “Do you need a bag?” cuts bag use by 20 percent.
Attendees agreed with Vlahos that sales of regular-priced books are down, while sales of used, bargain and sale books are up.

Google enters print book market in deal with On Demand Books

Google is partnering with book publisher On Demand Books in a deal that will permit the search giant to enter the print market.
In the latest extension of Google's ongoing and controversial book scanning project, its inventory of public domain titles will be available for print using On Demand Book's instant publishing machines.
Though On Demand's Espresso Book Machine technology first entered the book market in 2006, the Google deal substantially boosts On Demand's book inventory. It also gives Google a valuable revenue stream, allowing users to buy, in physical form, the scanned books that Google to date has only made available for free online reading and reading with electronic readers.
Google will provide some two million out-of-copyright book titles to the On Demand Books partnership, more than doubling the number of titles available on the machines through On Demand's existing licensing partnerships.
Depending on the outcome of the U.S. Justice Department's investigation into the Google Books project, the search giant could potentially add another six million orphan book titles to the partnership.
On Demand as this was written had 16 machines installed at various stores, libraries and universities, and planned to make another 64 available in 2010. The machines are priced at $75,000-$100,000 each and have the capacity to generate around 60,000 300-page books a year.

Zondervan will publish new book by evangelist Rick Warren

Zondervan has signed an exclusive agreement with Dr. Rick Warren, author of the bestselling book, The Purpose Driven Life, to publish his next major book release.
Warren and his wife Kay founded Saddleback Church in Orange County, Calif., which is now one of the largest and best-known churches in the nation.
Seven years after the success of his signature title that became the No. 1 all-time bestselling hardcover non-fiction book in publishing history, Warren has gone back to the writing studio to create The Hope You Need.
"My motivation as an author has always been the message, not the market and I have been waiting for the right time, until I had something to say that would speak to the personal and societal problems we all face," Warren said.
Inspired by an eight-part sermon series Warren taught on the Lord's Prayer at Saddleback Church earlier this year, The Hope You Need invites readers to plug into the unparalleled power that exists within the words of the Lord’s Prayer.
The Hope You Need will release simultaneously in English and Spanish worldwide on Nov.17.

Release of Sarah Palin’s 'Going Rogue' memoir moved up to Nov. 17

Former Alaska governor and Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin has finished co-authoring her memoir just four months after the book deal was announced, and the release date has been moved up from spring 2010 to Nov. 17.
"Governor Palin has been unbelievably conscientious and hands-on at every stage, investing herself deeply and passionately in this project," said Jonathan Burnham, publisher at Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins, which has commissioned a first printing of 1.5 million copies, the same as for Sen. Ted Kennedy's True Compass.
The book, titled Going Rogue: An American Life, will be 400 pages long, said Burnham.
The digital edition of Palin's memoir will not be released at the same time as the hardcover. Going Rogue will not be available as an e-book until Dec. 26. Publishers have been concerned that e-books might take away sales from hardcover editions which are more expensive.
Palin, 45, spent weeks in San Diego working on the manuscript with collaborator Lynn Vincent, a person close to her said. She was joined in San Diego by her family and her top aide, Meghan Stapleton, then spent several days in New York working around the clock with editors at Harper, said a person who wasn't authorized to comment and asked not to be identified.

Palin’s new memoir described as ‘thinly disguised press release’

Ex-Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's new memoir is being variously described as “a thinly disguised press release” and “nothing more than a vitriolic attack on Levi Johnston, the estranged father of teen Bristol Palin’s child”
Due to be published in mid-November, Palin's book, co-written with Lynn Vincent, “whitewashes her controversial background and family life,” according to one publishing source. More specifically, the source says,
"If you think you're going to learn the down-and-dirty details of her rumored messy marriage, think again because you're wrong.
"Sarah got a ton of dough from her advance, but the book appears to be nothing more than a self-serving press release touting what she calls her 'happy marriage.'
"It's also a renewed attack on Levi Johnston, 19, calling him 'a liar' once again for all the claims he's made against her after breaking up with Bristol and for saying he's going to battle for custody of baby Tripp.
"She defends her marriage to Todd, saying they are happy together. She also shoots down Levi's claims that they constantly bickered and slept in separate bedrooms. She insists they're just as in love as they were in high school.
"She writes that (Johnston) is a 'bald-face liar.' She says he's bitter at the dissolution of his relationship with her daughter, and is trying to earn a fast buck at the ex-governor's expense."

Breaking news from the book barons

First-day sales of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown exceeded one million copies in the U.S., Canada and the U.K., according to the publisher. In its first week, the title sold two million copies. The publisher has already gone back to press for another 600,000 copies on top of the initial print run of five million copies… An Amazon spokesperson told the Wall Street Journal that the Kindle edition of The Lost Symbol outsold hardcover editions, excluding advance orders on the release date. “The big surprise was that, despite sustained, strong physical books sales… we saw the Kindle edition outsell hardcover editions on the book’s release day,” wrote Andrew Herdener, an Amazon spokesman in an e-mail message. He noted, however, that the numbers did not include pre-orders of the hardcover, which had pushed the title to No. 1 on Amazon’s bestseller list more than a week before its release Sept. 15. Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group had worried over whether to release the e-book on the same day the hardcover went on sale, in part because of concerns over the e-book’s possible effect on hardcover sales. In the end, the publisher decided to let the book go on sale in both forms at the same time. Electronic books so far have represented only one and four4 percent of overall book sales, according to publishers… Borders Group has joined Barnes & Noble and is now offering free wi-fi service to customers. Verizon is providing the service, which should be available in most of the 500 Borders stores by mid-October… The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, has sold 421,000 copies in hardcover and 583,000 in paperback, many of the sales to book clubs. Movie rights have been optioned.

First book published in America inaugurates Espresso unit in Boston

The independent Harvard Book Store inaugurated its new Espresso instant book machine, which can print a library-quality paperback book in just four minutes, on Sept. 29 by ordering it to spit out a copy of the first book published in America.
The book, now in public domain, is Facsimile of First Edition of The Whole Booke of Psalmes Faithfully Translated into English Metre, commonly known as the Bay Psalm Book. It was the first book ever printed in the American colonies, in Cambridge in 1640.
Author E.L. Doctorow - who was doing a reading later in the evening at the store - was on hand to help celebrate the machine's christening.
In a contest to name its new Espresso machine, Harvard Book Store selected the name Paige M. Gutenborg from a variety of entries. The store received more than 500 suggested names.

Mackenzie Phillips details drug use and incest in new memoir

High on Arrival, a memoir from actress Mackenzie Phillips, was released in September.
On the day the book was released, Phillips appeared on Oprah to bare all and promote the book. Oprah’s website touted the appearance for a week with this tag line: “Mackenzie Phillips speaks out on the heroin and cocaine bust, Mick Jagger and the explosive family secret she says she’s kept for 31 years.”
What was the secret?
Phillips claims in the book that on the eve of her 1979 wedding, at age 19, she slept with (or was raped by) her musician father, John Phillips. “My father was not a man with boundaries,” writes the actress. “He was full of love, and he was sick with drugs. I woke up that night from a blackout to find myself having sex with my own father.”
The sexual relationship - which occurred over a 10-year span - later became "consensual," she said.
Singer-songwriter John Phillips was the founder of the Mamas and the Papas. He enjoyed an extraordinary run of hits in the late ’60s, including “California Dreamin’,” “Monday, Monday” and “Dedicated to the One I Love.” He also co-wrote the 1988 Beach Boys hit “Kokomo.” But Phillips had a number of addiction issues which undoubtedly contributed to the patchiness of his post-Mamas solo career and, ultimately, to his demise in 2001 at the age of 65.
Daughter Mackenzie Phillips, best known as a TV star on One Day at a Time, is also an addict, and hers is a book not about celebrity life, but about the frantic, unremitting scramble to get high.
She did her best to obliterate a miserable childhood by shooting, snorting, and swallowing every drug possible. She says she was raped at 14 by a stranger and at 19 by her own father, then continued a pattern of using and detoxing until an August 2008 drug arrest at LAX forced her, she says, to embrace sobriety once and for all.

Massachusetts prep school library ditching books, going all digital

Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, Mass., is clearing out the more than 20,000 books in its library and going completely digital, according to the Boston Globe.
"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,'' James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing told the paper.
"Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we're building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books," Tracy added:
Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,'” though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine."
In addition, Cushing is spending $10,000 (less than the cost of the cappuccino machine!) on 18 e-readers from Amazon and Sony, on which students interested in reading literature can find what they need.
Liz Vezina, a librarian at Cushing for 17 years, told the Globe she never imagined working as the director of a library without any books. And Alexander Coyle, chairman of the history department, said, "A lot us are wondering how this changes the dignity of the library, and why we can't move to increase digital resources while keeping the books."

Google adopts ePub digital book format for public domain books

Google is adopting the ePub digital book format for distribution of more than one million public domain books that it has digitized, "giving the standard a significant boost in the ongoing tussle for a dominant digital book format," the Los Angeles Times reports.
In recent months, ePub has emerged as one of the dominant formats for digital books.
Brandon Badger, Google's product manager, observed: "We're excited to now offer downloads in ePub format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format."

The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media

Low e-book prices set by retailers such as Amazon.com, B&N.com and Google could destroy publishers' profits and ruin hardcover sales, according to Arnaud Nourry, CEO of Hachette in France. Nourry said publishers are "very hostile" to Amazon's pricing of most e-books at $9.99, which is less than publishers are charging Amazon. "That cannot last," he said. "Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: by the way, we are cutting the price we pay. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers."… Former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has raised $3 million from Bay Area Holdings Inc., a fund of venture capital firm Kohlberg Ventures, for her new company, OpenRoad Integrated Media LLC. Law firm Reiter, Kailas & Rosenblatt, which represents OpenRoad, described the new firm as "a start-up entity which is engaged in developing a platform for eBook marketing and publishing." Jeff Sharp, an independent movie producer, and Chris Lederer, former CMO at HarperCollins, are listed as executives of OpenRoad... Random House released an e-version of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown simultaneously with the publication of the $29.95 book on Sept. 15, meaning that the publisher is not challenging Amazon's $9.99 pricing policy on e-books for the Kindle… Sony introduced two new electronic reading devices in August and cut prices for new and bestselling e-books. The Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition now sell for $199 and $299 respectively. The devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader, the 505 and 700, which cost $269 and $399. In lowering selected e-book prices from $11.99 to $9.99, Sony matched the discount price offered by Amazon for users of its Kindle device and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Fictionwise.

British author of novel set in Georgia in Atlanta Oct. 12

British author Roger J. Ellory has visited the United States a number of times, which perhaps explains why he sets most of his writing here. His latest novel, A Quiet Belief in Angels (Overlook Press, $24.95, released Sept. 8, 2009), is set in South Georgia.
Roger will again visit to the U.S. in October. He will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 11, and will be at the Borders on Peachtree Road in Atlanta from 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 12.
The protagonist in Ellory’s latest novel is Joseph Vaughan, who relates his life story while he waits for judgment on who he is and what he has done.
The story begins near the Okefenokee River in July 1939, when 12-year-old Joseph sees a slender white feather drift from the hallway into his room. He believes it's a sign that an angel had come to visit. Later that day, his father dies. In November, a dead girl is found naked in a field, and continues to haunt Joseph for the next decade as 10 other girls are murdered.
After the fourth victim is found, with still no clues, Joseph pulls together five other boys, who become “the Guardians,” pledged to protect the girls in the area. But they can't, and he lives with the girls' ghosts, thinking he should have stopped the killings. He worries that he still has to do something so the girls can become angels. By the 1960s, he finds out about more victims, murdered over a period of three decades, waiting for their wings, "waiting for me to find their killer and release them."
Author Roger Jon Ellory was born in Birmingham, England, in 1965. His father having already left before Roger was born, he was then orphaned at the age of seven. His mother, Carole, an actress and dancer, died in a pneumonia epidemic that claimed more than a dozen victims in the early 1970s.
In 1973, Roger was dispatched to a boarding school, and stayed there until he was 16. Upon leaving school, he returned to Birmingham to live with his maternal grandmother, who died in 1982.
At 17, he was arrested for poaching. He was charged, tried and sentenced to a jail term. Upon his release, he vanished quietly into obscurity to pursue interests in graphic design, photography and music.
Roger began his first novel in 1987 and did not stop writing, except for three days when he was going through a divorce from his first wife, until July 1993. During this time he completed 22 novels, most of them in longhand, and accumulated several hundred polite and complimentary rejection letters from publishers.
The standard response from the UK publishing trade was that they could not consider the possibility of publishing books based in the United States written by an Englishman. He was advised to send his work to American publishers, which he duly did, and received from them equally polite and complimentary rejection letters that said it was not possible for American publishers to publish books set in the U.S. written by an Englishman.
Roger stopped writing out of sheer frustration and did not start again until 2001. Between August 2001 and January 2002, he wrote three books, the second of which was called Candlemoth. This was purchased by Orion UK and published in 2003. Candlemoth was translated into German, Dutch and Italian. The book also secured a nomination on the shortlist for the Crime Writers' Association Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2003.
Roger's second published book, Ghostheart, was released in 2004 in the UK, and his third book, A Quiet Vendetta, was released in August 2005. In 2006 he published City of Lies, and once again secured a nomination for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of that year. City of Lies was also translated into Bulgarian and made available in large print. His fifth book - A Quiet Belief in Angels - was published in August 2007, and in the latter part of the year it was selected for the phenomenally successful British TV equivalent of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, the Richard and Judy Book Club. The book was purchased for translation into more than 20 languages including French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian, Norwegian and Lithuanian, released in both abridged and unabridged audio and made available in large print. As of mid-2008, there were more than 300,000 copies of the book in circulation in the UK alone. It was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction Novel of 2008, the 813 Trophy, the Quebec Booksellers' Prize, the European Du Point Award, and was the winner of the Inaugural Prix Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur in France.

Massachusetts prep school library ditching books, going all digital

Cushing Academy, Ashburnham, Mass., is clearing out the more than 20,000 books in its library and going completely digital, according to the Boston Globe.
"When I look at books, I see an outdated technology, like scrolls before books,'' James Tracy, headmaster of Cushing told the paper.
"Instead of a traditional library with 20,000 books, we're building a virtual library where students will have access to millions of books," Tracy added:
Instead of a library, the academy is spending nearly $500,000 to create a “learning center,'” though that is only one of the names in contention for the new space. In place of the stacks, they are spending $42,000 on three large flat-screen TVs that will project data from the Internet and $20,000 on special laptop-friendly study carrels. Where the reference desk was, they are building a $50,000 coffee shop that will include a $12,000 cappuccino machine."
In addition, Cushing is spending $10,000 (less than the cost of the cappuccino machine!) on 18 e-readers from Amazon and Sony, on which students interested in reading literature can find what they need.

Sony will sell wireless e-reader for $399

Sony has unveiled its first-ever wireless e-reading device at a press conference held at the New York Public Library. The seven-inch touch screen Sony Daily Edition will be priced at $399, work on AT&T's 3G network and be available by Christmas.
Sony also announced several other initiatives, including a partnership with libraries that will let readers rent digitized books from their local library for free by downloading available ebooks for 21 days, an update of the Sony Reader Ebook Library Software 3.0 for both the Mac and the PC, a new social networking site WordsMoveMe.com, and a deal with ABA to help member independent bookstores sell e-content (see story below) as well as its various e-Readers.
Sony’s lower-end, non-wireless e-book readers will retail for $199 and $299.

Google adopts ePub digital book format for public domain books

Google is adopting the ePub digital book format for distribution of more than one million public domain books that it has digitized, "giving the standard a significant boost in the ongoing tussle for a dominant digital book format," the Los Angeles Times reports.
In recent months, ePub has emerged as one of the dominant formats for digital books.
Brandon Badger, Google's product manager, observed: "We're excited to now offer downloads in ePub format, a free and open industry standard for electronic books. It's supported by a wide variety of applications, so once you download a book, you'll be able to read it on any device or through any reading application that supports the format."

The publishing revolution: News of e-books and other new media

Low e-book prices set by retailers such as Amazon.com, B&N.com and Google could destroy publishers' profits and ruin hardcover sales, according to Arnaud Nourry, CEO of Hachette in France. Nourry said publishers are "very hostile" to Amazon's pricing of most e-books at $9.99, which is less than publishers are charging Amazon. "That cannot last," he said. "Amazon is not in the business of losing money. So, one day, they are going to come to the publishers and say: by the way, we are cutting the price we pay. If that happens, after paying the authors, there will be nothing left for the publishers."… Former HarperCollins CEO Jane Friedman has raised $3 million from Bay Area Holdings Inc., a fund of venture capital firm Kohlberg Ventures, for her new company, OpenRoad Integrated Media LLC. Law firm Reiter, Kailas & Rosenblatt, which represents OpenRoad, described the new firm as "a start-up entity which is engaged in developing a platform for eBook marketing and publishing." Jeff Sharp, an independent movie producer, and Chris Lederer, former CMO at HarperCollins, are listed as executives of OpenRoad... Random House released an e-version of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown simultaneously with the publication of the $29.95 book on Sept. 15, meaning that the publisher is not challenging Amazon's $9.99 pricing policy on e-books for the Kindle… Sony introduced two new electronic reading devices in August and cut prices for new and bestselling e-books. The Reader Pocket Edition and Reader Touch Edition now sell for $199 and $299 respectively. The devices replace earlier and more expensive versions of the Sony Reader, the 505 and 700, which cost $269 and $399. In lowering selected e-book prices from $11.99 to $9.99, Sony matched the discount price offered by Amazon for users of its Kindle device and Barnes & Noble Inc.'s Fictionwise.

Georgia is setting for British author’s novel about serial killings

British author R. J. Ellory has visited the United States a number of times, which perhaps explains why he sets most of his writing here. His latest novel, A Quiet Belief in Angels (Overlook Press, $24.95, released Sept. 8, 2009), is set in South Georgia.
The protagonist in Ellory’s latest novel is Joseph Vaughan, who relates his life story while he waits for judgment on who he is and what he has done.
The story begins near the Okefenokee River in July 1939, when 12-year-old Joseph sees a slender white feather drift from the hallway into his room. He believes it's a sign that an angel had come to visit. Later that day, his father dies. In November, a dead girl is found naked in a field, and continues to haunt Joseph for the next decade as 10 other girls are murdered.
After the fourth victim is found, with still no clues, Joseph pulls together five other boys, who become “the Guardians,” pledged to protect the girls in the area. But they can't, and he lives with the girls' ghosts, thinking he should have stopped the killings. He worries that he still has to do something so the girls can become angels. By the 1960s, he finds out about more victims, murdered over a period of three decades, waiting for their wings, "waiting for me to find their killer and release them."
Author Roger Jon Ellory was born in Birmingham, England, in 1965. His father having already left before Roger was born, he was then orphaned at the age of seven. His mother, Carole, an actress and dancer, died in a pneumonia epidemic that claimed more than a dozen victims in the early 1970s.
In 1973, Roger was dispatched to a boarding school, and stayed there until he was 16. Upon leaving school, he returned to Birmingham to live with his maternal grandmother, who died in 1982.
At 17, he was arrested for poaching. He was charged, tried and sentenced to a jail term. Upon his release, he vanished quietly into obscurity to pursue interests in graphic design, photography and music.
Roger began his first novel in 1987 and did not stop writing, except for three days when he was going through a divorce from his first wife, until July 1993. During this time he completed 22 novels, most of them in longhand, and accumulated several hundred polite and complimentary rejection letters from publishers.
The standard response from the UK publishing trade was that they could not consider the possibility of publishing books based in the United States written by an Englishman. He was advised to send his work to American publishers, which he duly did, and received from them equally polite and complimentary rejection letters that said it was not possible for American publishers to publish books set in the U.S. written by an Englishman.
Roger stopped writing out of sheer frustration and did not start again until 2001. Between August 2001 and January 2002, he wrote three books, the second of which was called Candlemoth. This was purchased by Orion UK and published in 2003. Candlemoth was translated into German, Dutch and Italian. The book also secured a nomination on the shortlist for the Crime Writers' Association Steel Dagger for Best Thriller 2003.
Roger's second published book, Ghostheart, was released in 2004 in the UK, and his third book, A Quiet Vendetta, was released in August 2005. In 2006 he published City of Lies, and once again secured a nomination for the CWA Steel Dagger for Best Thriller of that year. City of Lies was also translated into Bulgarian and made available in large print. His fifth book - A Quiet Belief in Angels - was published in August 2007, and in the latter part of the year it was selected for the phenomenally successful British TV equivalent of the Oprah Winfrey Book Club, the Richard and Judy Book Club. The book was purchased for translation into more than 20 languages including French, Italian, Japanese, Brazilian, Norwegian and Lithuanian, released in both abridged and unabridged audio and made available in large print. As of mid-2008, there were more than 300,000 copies of the book in circulation in the UK alone. It was shortlisted for the Barry Award for Best British Crime Fiction Novel of 2008, the 813 Trophy, the Quebec Booksellers' Prize, the European Du Point Award, and was the winner of the Inaugural Prix Roman Noir Nouvel Observateur in France.
In September 2009, A Quiet Belief In Angels was released by Overlook Press in the United States.
Roger will again visit to the U.S. in October. He will appear at the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville, Tenn., on Oct. 11, and will be at the Borders on Peachtree Road in Atlanta from 7 to 9 p.m. on Oct. 12.

Update journalism: Latest skinny on past Southern Review stories

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt's corporate parent Education Media & Publishing Group has avoided bankruptcy by successfully refinancing more than $1 billion of the company’s enormous debt load of $7.6 billion -but current shareholders face a dilution of about 45 percent as that debt is converted to equity. The financier who contracted the debt, Barry O'Callaghan, will see his own stake of 40 percent cut nearly in half and will lose his voting control, but the company will save about $100 million in interest.
HMH will also abandon renewed attempts to sell its consumer book arm in the hopes of bolstering the educational publishing side with more direct sales.