Essential Works

Gaga’s in the office!

It’s hard to contain the excitement in the Essential penthouse when we hear the sound of labouring breath on the approach to our top floor apartment, accessed only via several flights of stairs (or over rickety Clerkenwell rooftops). Not because we rarely get visitors, because we do, often. Honest. (And they’re not all looking for the ladies’ toilet, either.) No, the reason we get excited when we hear someone approaching who sounds out of breath it’s most often because they are carrying something heavy: books, in their fifteenth century format.

Books are hefty—especially the kind we like to make—and they take some effort to transport in boxes of 20 or so, which is usually how they arrive here. This week we have been delighted to receive two boxes of advance copies of our Gaga book, and a thing of rare beauty it is, too, as befits the Upper West Side Pop Princess herself.

Once the conveyor of the boxes has been given oxygen, a cocoa leaf and sent on his merry way, the top of the first box is ripped away and we all inhale that unmistakable odor of fresh books. It’s impossible to explain in any satisfactory terms the olfactory sensation given by freshly printed books, but it compares favourably with the moment when the microwave door swings open on an Wiseguys anchovy Pizza.

After we’ve all fumbled our own copy of the glossy tome onto our desks, in the silence which followed as we pored over every page,  you could hear the shriek of a police siren in W6 from our EC1 address. Although to be fair, you can hear that any day and any time. The consensus of opinion here is that the book is good. Hopefully our cousins in America will feel the same way when they ripped the top from the box of their advance copies. We’ll let you know.

Dixe does documentary

Dixe Wills, the author Tiny Campsites (the number 1 bestseller in Amazon.co.uk’s ‘Special Interest — Camping’ category), is to make an appearance on the telly at 9pm on July 20, BBC4. He will be a so-called ‘expert’ on the matter of Britain Goes Camping, and will arguably be the only man in the documentary to deliberately make you laugh. Or at least smile broadly.

Hopefully this will be the first of many such appearances for our author on TV, since he is made for small screen superstardom, as well as international best-sellerdom. The latter will be achieved with the publication of his next, proposed book. Clues about that can be found on his blog site, which is at http://dixewills.com.

Don’t worry if you miss the first screening of the documentary, because it’ll be repeated, often, on the same channel and may even cross over to ‘proper’ TV and BBC2 later in the year. See http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00t5hcl for details.

How to link to books on the iBooks store

Apple has a fairly well-documented mechanism for publishers wanting to load their ePub books on to the new iBooks store, but working out how to link directly from your own website to a specific book within the iBooks store is not quite so easy. Luckily, it’s easy once you know how. Our friends we are working with at White Crow Books received this information from Apple, and shared the magic with us. Here’s our step-by-step guide.

1. First, make sure your title has uploaded to the iBooks store and is available for purchase. If you don’t have an iPhone or iPad to hand, you can check the status of uploaded titles from a PC or Mac by logging in to your iTunes Connect account. Click on ‘Manage Your Books’ and make sure that the title you want to link to has a little green dot underneath its cover image (a yellow dot means it’s still being processed, and is not on sale yet).
2. Assuming your title is showing, you now need to build the link. It’s an ordinary HTML link you need, where the HREF attribute contains the address of the book on iBooks. So to build a link to Essential’s history of the Mini (with its foreword by Jeremy Clarkson, no less), we’d start out with:
   <a href="[URL of title on iBooks will go here]“>Buy Mini by Brian Laban and Jeremy Clarkson on iBooks</a>
3. The address that goes in the HREF attribute starts out with http://itunes.apple.com
4. To this, add a forward slash and the relevant country code for the particular iBooks store you want to send people to. The code for the US store is – wait for it – US and the code for the UK store is GB. In our example, this gives us http://itunes.apple.com/gb Note that each link is for one national iBooks store only, so if you want links to the same title on sale in the different national stores (and our books are on sale in all of the stores launched to date), you will need a separate link for each one.
5. Next, stick on another forward slash and the word book, giving us http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book
6. Then, add one more forward slash followed by the letters isbn and the ISBN of the title you are linking to. The ISBN for Mini is 9781906615048 (don’t use any spaces or hyphens), so that the final HREF is http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/isbn9781906615048.
7. Put this HREF in your link, and you can now direct readers straight into the iBooks store. In our example, the working link code is <a href="http://itunes.apple.com/gb/book/isbn9780748122721">Buy Mini by Brian Laban and Jeremy Clarkson on iBooks</a>, producing: Buy Mini by Brian Laban and Jeremy Clarkson on iBooks. Web surfers using an iPad or iPhone with iBooks installed will be taken straight into the iBooks store application, while everyone else is forwarded to a page about that book on Apple’s regular website.
8. Remember you can also use all the other attributes you might normally use in an HTML link, such as the title attribute for the little text hint that appears when the user hovers over the link.

Essential does iPad books

Apple’s sleek new iPad could change the way we consume media forever, and while the press has focused much of its attention on the device’s implications for newspapers and magazines, book publishers have also been chomping at the bit for a piece of the Apple action. Once dismissive of electronic books, the California company’s new iBooks store might just be the answer to the prayers of publishers everywhere.

As of a couple of weeks ago, anyone can upload books to iBookstore – which is good news for small publishers. Here at Essential, we’ve already added our first books to the system.

There are, of course, already plenty of places you can buy electronic books online, and a good selection of electronic readers on which to enjoy them – notably Amazon’s Kindle. Yet none of Apple’s competitors can quite match the glamour and hype that surrounds products like the iPhone and iPad, and the it’s the promise of simplifying the current rather confusing process of buying and using eBooks that makes Apple’s offering so interesting. As for actually producing e-books, Apple’s embracing of the ePub standard championed by the International Digital Publishing Forum is a welcome development. As we’ve been finding out, (60 eBooks and counting for start-up publisher White Crow) turning printed books into electronic books can be a pretty fraught process at the best of times, and the prevailing multitude of different file formats serves neither publishers nor readers effectively.

So it was with a sense of real excitement that we uploaded our first two books onto the iBooks store. They are The Mini: Celebrating 50 Years of a Modern Motoring Icon by Brian Laban (foreword by Jeremy Clarkson) and Dog Breeds: An essential eBook guide to choosing your perfect canine companion. If you’re lucky enough to have an iPad to hand (or, now, an iPhone running the new iOS4 software), you’ll find them in iBooks now – click here for the Dog Breeds, and here for the Mini.

We’ll be adding more new titles over the coming weeks, and we’re also exploring the possibilities of the iPad as a platform for illustrated eBooks. Watch this space!

Art of the LP – and art of the shop window

Imagine our delight when our attention was drawn to the window display of this leading Amsterdam bookshop – a celebration of our Art of the LP book, which we created for Sterling Publishing.

The window display of Amsterdam's Athenaeum Boekhandel.

The display belongs to Athenaeum Boekhandel, one of the Dutch capital’s best-known booksellers. It seems the shop’s book buyer was so taken with our title that he raided his own record collection to help promote it, and many of the LP covers you see in the picture are discussed in the book itself.

Written by Johnny Morgan and Ben Wardle, The Art of the LP highlights over 350 superb examples of album cover design dating from 1955 all the way up to 1995 – before CD’s stole the LP’s large-format glory. For good measure, the authors balance their pick of the best with some of the worst examples of the rest. Artists featured include the The Clash, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and Elvis Presley, but since the focus of the book is on the quality of the artwork rather than the prominence of the music, there are also plenty of less familiar and therefore all the more fascinating album designs.

“I’m hoping there are covers here that people don’t remember and might get people to search them out”, co-author Johnny Morgan told Reuters. “There’s a lot of stuff that’s a bit more underground. Baby boomers missed a lot the first time around. There’s a band called Gang of Four. Tickets for the reunion gigs were impossible to get.”

It’s all organised thematically, with topics like sex, ego, and politics making this a truly fresh look at the art of album cover design. Early reviews around the web suggest the book has certainly got music lovers talking, with The Daily Loaf calling this 400-page tome “a gorgeous example of the way a quality coffee table book should be put together” and examiner.com awarding it an impressive nine out of ten rating. The book’s available now.

Barrett book trailer goes live

Publishers advertising their wares in the press, on the web or on the side of a bus is nothing new, but movie-style video trailers for  new publications are more unusual. That’s what we’ve created for our latest direct-to-consumer project, a lavishly illustrated volume of rare photographs and artwork of and by Pink Floyd legend Roger ‘Syd’ Barrett.

The proposed book will be a magnificent tribute to Barrett’s life and work, and we’ve been busy tracking down some fantastic photographs and paintings for inclusion – many of them never before published in book form. It was the need to communicate the richness of this material that made the video such a good idea, and we invited experts on Barrett’s life and work to explain just how significant these images are.

Available on YouTube and the Pink Floyd Facebook page, the video trailer compliments the project’s active presence on Facebook, MySpace and Twitter – making it a great example of our efforts to harness the power of social media to reach niche audiences directly (something we’ve already achieved with Lifting Shadows, our Dream Theater books). Fans are currently being invited to register their interest in the project on the project website, barrettbook.com. Once a sufficient level of interest is reached, the book will go into production. In the mean time, take a look at the video below.

Gaga Gaga

We’re going Gaga with some amazing rare images of the world’s favourite pop star for our latest glittering illustrated biography.

Gaga is the first illustrated book to tell the full story of Stefani Joanne Germanotta from her upbringing on New York’s Upper West side through private schools and NYU, to her descent into the raunchy, druggy, New York Lower East side club scene and inexorable rise to global domination.

As well as telling her life-story, the book looks at the ‘Gaga Gods’ and ‘Gaga Goddesses’ who have guided her to become what she is – Cyndi Lauper, Freddie Mercury, Madonna, Elton John, David Bowie, Grace Jones, Leigh Bowery, and others. The pictures tell the story though, so gaze on…

World English language rights are sold, translation rights available.

Another day, another champagne reception

We’ve been a part of the Newspaper Marketing Agency’s prestigious Awards for National Newspaper Advertising for five glamorous years now, producing the oversized hardback book that is presented to attendees at the annual award ceremony. The latest crop of winners was announced at last night’s event, held at the Mall Galleries in the heart of central London and hosted by comedian Rob Brydon.

The awards – ANNAs for short (as Brydon pointed out, “it’s easier”) – have become a firm fixture of the advertising calendar. There’s an impressive £55,000 prize fund for the best newspaper ads in a range of categories, plus another £10,000 for the best online campaign on national newspaper websites. This year’s overall winner went to agency Wieden + Kennedy’s for their Honda campaign, with further prizes going to the likes of Bartle Bogle Hegarty (for ITV), Publicis (for CWDC/COI), and Leagas Delaney (for Nationwide). Wieden + Kennedy also picked up the Creative Media Partnership Award for their Lurpak ad, while the online award went to Agency Republic and iLevel for their anti-smoking ads for the Department of Health. Take a look at all the winners and nominees on the ANNAs website.

This year’s event had an Indian theme, with winners showered in bright red petals before withdrawing to an incredible oriental tent (created by our friends at Parker Harris) to watch the rest of the event over a(nother) glass of champagne and an intriguing platter of quail eggs.

The annual itself was presented to visitors as they left the gallery. Shinier than an Apple iPad, this year’s book is bound in a shimmering, gold fabric that matched the event decor perfectly. Inside, it shows all the winning and nominated artwork at full size. Working closely with both the NMA and the talented folk over at SomeOne, we coordinate the entire editorial, production and print process. It’s a great opportunity for us to show just how special a book can be, and for the client the annual is a truly special, lasting record of each year’s ANNAs. As the years go on, our growing collection of annuals is turning into an interesting history of modern advertising, and we’ve already started work on next year’s book.

But that’s a little while ahead. In the mean time, we’re still reveling in the fun of last night’s party. Here’s a few pictures – there are more over on the ANNAs website.

The event was packed, and winning ads were displayed around the gallery walls.

Uncle Bryn, our hilarious host.

These days, we only go to parties with live bands.

The awards that everyone wanted to win.

More champagne anyone?

Cross Country Murder Song - read it first on Kindle

If, like us, you’re looking forward to seeing finished copies of Cross Country Murder Song – the new novel by broadcaster and Essential author Phil Wilding – then there’s still over a month to wait before books arrive in stores. Owners of Amazon’s Kindle in the UK can start reading right now though, as the e-Book version is already on sale.

Wilding’s much-anticipated novel, which will be published by Jonathan Cape in February, has been chosen to be made available for Kindle before it’s available in print. With the Kindle having now appeared outside of the US, it’s yet another sign of the rise and rise of the digital book.

The Cross Country Murder Song e-Book is available in Kindle form from Amazon.com.

Word, lots of swearwords

Further to his Today programme bleepfest Pete Silverton has now  joined Mark Ellen and David Hepworth to light up Word magazine’s latest podcast. Here’s what they say about it:

Pete Silverton’s Filthy English is sub-titled “the how, why, when and what of everyday swearing”. He joined us in the pod to talk, in wholly unexpurgated fashion, about the history, culture and - let’s face it - humour of swearing. We’ve covered the derivation of the word testicles, the things that made Shakespeare’s audience snigger, the contrasting swearing habits of Catholic and Protestant countries, the key turning points in the history of swearing on TV, what Nick Cave said when he was told not to and how The Wire made poetry out of that four syllable epithet.

The podcast is available to stream from Word magazine or via iTunes.