2010
The Fish Pie Ladies!
At the invitation of Reading Central Library, we joined local writers, Fiona Robyn, Julie Cohen and Frank Burton, for the Library’s Local Author Day earlier this year. The event was well advertised and the organisation of the day excellent thanks to Librarian, Sarah Pearce.
We used our one hour slot to tell people of the unique way in which we publish our books of short stories for adults. We have set up JEEVE Publishing (the name stems from our initials, Julie, Eileen, Elaine, Vera and Eve) and undertake all the work from writing, through editing and formatting to provide our printer with the complete book on disk, including the cover and illustrations provided by artist Sue Tait. Thus we bypass the cost of a Self Publishing Company’s package and its limitations. Our only expense is printing and promotion while our main concern is to present a professional product to our readers.
A great deal of interest was shown by our audience in Reading of approximately forty people, busily note taking and asking questions. It was even suggested that we use one of our ISBN numbers to produce a book on how we do it!
Our books are well received; readers enjoy the five individual voices of the stories. To date we have sold almost 2000, one of which, Fish Pie and Laughter, is in its third reprint. The following comment from Jeanne of Newcastle is typical: 'I enjoyed the book (The Virgin Sardine) tremendously; what talented writers. I have read short stories before but never found them very interesting as they did not seem to have much substance to them but these were excellent.’
Following the success of Fish Pie and Laughter, The Guilty Suitcase and The Virgin Sardine, we’re gearing up to start on our fourth book. Meantime, through our sales and proceeds from talks given to local groups we have managed to donate £4500 to our local air ambulance service, The Thames Valley and Chiltern Air Ambulance Trust.
June 2010
Berkshire Life ran an excellent article detailing how we'd been inspired by our time at the Swanwick Writers' Summer School; how we'd grown together and how we publish our books. 'This team shows no signs of stopping laughing or writing.' Visit www.berksandbucks.greatbritishlife,co.uk to find out more.
Henley Literary Festival October 2009 - A Spectacular cast?
Christmas 2009 at Hurst Village Fair
