Hi Scribblers... 

Les has been transferred from Ipswich hospital to a care home in Felixstowe. It is Cotman House , Garfield Road, Felixstowe IP11 7PU. Visiting is from 9.30am until 5pm and then from 6.30 for the evening.  Les has a phone in his room and can be reached on 01394-672084 although you will have to ask for him. Let us all hope he settles in well and will be well cared for.

Our next meeting is on 5th May when the homework assignment is to write up to 1,000 words on 'SHARING'.

Meantime here are a few items that may be of interest...

Dave.

I am the Visitor Experience Officer at Sutton Hoo and I am contacting you regarding our Storytelling Festival in June and a writing competition that we are running in the lead up to the festival.

I would like to invite you to share the brief (attached) for the competition with your group members.

If you have any further questions please get in touch.

Kind Regards,

Rebecca Herod

Visitor Experience Officer

Sutton Hoo

t   National Trust, Sutton Hoo

- Sutton Hoo, Suffolk IP12 3DJ(   01394 389703

* rebecca.herod@nationaltrust.org.uk

8 www.nationaltrust.org.uk

I am writing to you from Legend Press, the leading independent publisher in the UK to talk to you about our annual bursary prize for writers called the Luke Bitmead Bursary.

The prize was set up in honour of Luke Bitmead. His debut novel was the first novel Legend Press published but sadly, after struggling with depression, Luke committed suicide. The award has been set up by his mother in partnership with us to support and encourage the work of struggling writers, and is the UK’s biggest prize for unpublished authors. This is an award that we are very proud to run and I am emailing you today to let you know about it in case any of your writers would be interested in entering.

Submissions must be adult fiction, and only completed novels will be considered. Full guidelines can be found on our website.

Closing: Submissions open 1st May until 1st August.

Prizes: A publishing contract with Legend Press and a £2,500 cash bursary.

Entry Fee: Free to enter.

Competition Page: http://www.legendtimesgroup.co.uk/legend-press/365-luke-bitmead-bursary

Please let me know if you need any more information

Kind regards,

Jessica

---

Jessica Reid
Publicity Manager
Legend Press and Paperbooks
[Part of the Legend Times Ltd Group]

Head Office: The Old Fire Station, 140 Tabernacle Street, London, EC2A 4SD
Tel: 0207 300 7370

Read our daily blog at: www.legendpress.co.uk

Watch our regular Legend Bites Vlogs at http://www.youtube.com/user/LegendPress
Follow us at @legend_press

Guest post: Bookselling in the Internet age

April 22, 2015 By Rosie Pearce Leave a Comment

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We’re delighted to welcome Helen Bott, of Felixstowe’s Treasure Chest Books, back to the blog! Her subject today is the impact of the Internet on bookselling, and how it can be both a blessing and a curse for independent bookshops…

Seeing the festival tickets go on sale online makes me think about the impact the Internet has had on the second hand book trade. It’s something our customers mention to us a lot, and there’s no doubt that things have changed considerably since we started selling second hand books 15 years ago. Back then there were still lots of shops and very few Internet dealers; now you can buy virtually any book you want online (often for as little as 1p) and the number of shops has drastically declined.

From a bookseller’s point of view, the Internet is a bonus as it opens up a much wider market. We have 10,000 books listed on our own website and 6,000 on Amazon, and we also sell on other websites. Every day I take at least 2 sacks of mail to the post office – recent orders have been from Australia, Chile and most of Europe. The Internet allows us to sell books that might not sell here in Suffolk: for example, today’s orders include books on a hospital railway in Lancashire, carp fishing, magic mushrooms and Rudolph Hess. It brings people to the shop, as it has a wider reach than the old J. R. Hartley Yellow Pages scenario and we also source a lot of our stock this way: recently we have trundled off in our van to buy books in Co Durham, London and Birmingham, as well as all over East Anglia.

Of course, there is a downside. There are dealers on the Internet who will automatically price their book at 1p less than yours, while others put ridiculous prices on a book because nobody else is listing it (we once saw a dealer in the USA asking 1 billion dollars for a book). Some dealers take no account of the condition of the book: we have seen books listed as ‘not necessarily with all pages’ and some dealers turn to ‘book napping’ – they list other people’s books at a higher price, then if they get a buyer they then order your book and sell it on at the higher price they are advertising. It’s not strictly illegal, but it’s certainly frustrating!

So why do we still have a bookshop instead of a warehouse and a website? There are practical reasons: having a shop gives us storage space, and it also brings in books for sale. We can sell a lot of books, especially fiction, children’s, cookery, travel etc. cheaper as a shop customer has no postage to pay. But more importantly, we love having a shop and meeting customers, and we believe that book lovers want to browse, pick up books they’ve not seen before and chat about their purchases. You can’t do that on the Internet, so let’s hope there’s still a place for bookshops for years to come.