Monthly Archives: April 2009

Enter the Teenage Judges Competition and you could win the chance to join the judging panel for the Booktrust Teenage Prize!

When Barack Obama became the first African-American President of the United States it inspired millions of people in America and across the world.

What would you do if you were president or prime minister for a day?

Write a short story about how you would spend your day and you could win the chance to join the judging panel for the UK’s biggest teenage book prize!

You could help decide this year’s best book for young adults and attend the award ceremony in London in November, where you will be able to meet the 2009 shortlisted authors.

Download the entry form here

Showcasing new titles every month in libraries and selected bookstores across Britain – with only the public voting for the winners will launch on 1st June 2009.
Its aim is to discover new writing talent, give budding authors a better chance of being published and read, raise the profile of local libraries nationwide, help market independent publishers’ titles and provide the British public with a wider choice of new titles.

Only members of the public will vote for their favourite books on the ‘TPBP’ website or at their local library. There will be no judges involved in the selection of the winners.
This site will:
· list each month’s chosen titles including book covers and relevant information
· monitor which books are winning the public’s votes
· link to participating libraries’, publishers’ and booksellers’ websites.
Each month’s winner in the three categories: fiction, non-fiction and children’s
literature, will go forward as a finalist for The People’s Book Prize of the Year.
The awards will take place on the 30th July 2010.
We hope you will join us in making this exciting new venture a success for all!

Administered by:
DELANCEY dp PRESS LTD
23 Berkeley Square, London W1J 6HE
Registered in England No. 04014929 VAT 761 537424
Phone: 020 7665 6605
www.peoplesbookprize.com

I noticed something odd on Twitter over the Easter weekend, a number of Twitterers (Tweeters?) I follow had added the hashtag #amazonfail to their tweets. On investigating I discovered that Amazon has been removing GLBT books from their sales rankings (Amazon’s Sales Ranks is a tool which shows how a good a book sells compared to other books).

This includes books for Young Adults concerning sexuality. If a person searches for one of these books by title or author, they will find it. However, that’s only so useful. Many people find books on a given subject by browsing the subject listings, not knowing what is available by title or author, or by seeing what books are most popular per sales: these derankings remove titles from those listings, no matter our book’s popularity or relevance in a given subject.

Amazon claims that this is a glitch that they are working to rectify.

For more information use the search terms ‘#amazonfail’ or ’amazonfail’ on Google or the search engine of your choice.