Shouting 'Lager, lager, lager.'

... and beer, cider and bluffer's guides to wine, spirits and cocktails.

No, it's not the legendary Tonto Towers Christmas party starting early, it's the publicity for one of our new titles.
The Non-Beardy Beer book is featured in the new edition of The Crack magazine. Like us, they reckon it is a perfect stocking-filler for Christmas... as do the many branches of HMV who have been ordering it in the last few weeks.



The book can be found in most good bookstores or on the desk of the buyers for the remaining bad ones. Or order it from our website or amazon... there's still time!

Stu

Distance is no object for barmy book industry

I've moaned here before about the distance our books sometimes have to travel to reach bookshop shelves but I've never been bored enough to calculate that distance, so bear with me here.

Let's say we want to supply one of our books to the Waterstone's branch in Newcastle upon Tyne - approximately 1.5 miles from our office:

That book is printed by Cox & Wyman in Reading, and delivered to us in Newcastle. According to Google Maps that's 288 miles.

We can't supply direct to Waterstone's, so we go through Gardners wholesalers in Eastbourne. That's a journey of 364 miles.

Gardners then supply that book to Waterstone's. Assuming the book would be supplied direct to the branch, that would be another 364 miles. But it probably won't be. Instead it'll go to Waterstone's centralised hub in Burton-on-Trent. That's 211 miles.

Finally, the book is sent to the store in Newcastle. Another 177 miles.

By my reckoning, the book has travelled 1040 miles.

To end up 1.5 miles away from where it was published.

The book has a retail price of £7.99, but the wholesale price that Waterstone's buy it for is obviously much less than that. How can this be economically viable? 1040 miles! That's roughly the distance from London to Belgrade. If you travelled that distance in a fairly economical car, I reckon the petrol would cost you around £120. God knows how much it would cost in a lorry full of books. It's probably very environmentally unfriendly as well, but I'm not making this point on behalf of the environment, I'm making it on behalf of common sense.

Let's not even think about what happens if the book gets returned...

Paul

New books added to the website

Our forthcoming books 9987 by Nik Jones and Make It Back by Sarah Shaw now have their own dedicated pages on our website, and you can now pre-order both from our shop. Both novels are released on 19 January 2009. Click on the covers to read more about them.


Paul

Rosalind Wyllie at Morley Literature Festival

Everything You Ever Wanted author Rosalind Wyllie will be at the Morley Literature Festival at 2pm tomorrow (Saturday 18 October) to talk about her novel. It's a free event, in Morley Library's Baker Room, so if you're in the area (Morley is not far from Leeds) why not go along to meet Roz and get a signed book? Everyone who attends will also receive a FREE short story anthology!

Paul

Be a Tonto book reviewer

Have you read a Tonto book recently? Aching to tell the world how good it is? Then why not write an Amazon review? The links below will take you directly to the 'create your review' page for our latest titles. We'll look forward to hearing what you think of them.

The Non-Beardy Beer Book
NUFC.com Toon Diary
Sin Cities
Paralympian
Everything You Ever Wanted
Being Normal
The Burglar's Dog
...and our forthcoming books:
9987
Make It Back

You can add reviews for any of our other titles by visiting the appropriate Amazon page and clicking 'create your own review'.

Paul

Google Book Search nuggets

Several Tonto Books are on Google Book Search, which, as well as allowing readers to view searchable extracts, offers some interesting tidbits of info. For example, you can see a map showing all of the places visited by Ashley Hames in Sin Cities. (The broadminded among you might be interested to check out the keywords Google has pulled out for the book.)


You can also see a map of Stephen Miller's travels from Paralympian plus info about Being Normal, Everything You Ever Wanted, Johnny Lonely, Jonny Kennedy, The Rocketbelt Caper and The Unofficial Football World Championships.

Paul

NUFC.com Toon Diary published today

Our latest release, the NUFC.com Toon Diary 2009, is published today and available from all good bookshops. A must-have for Newcastle United fans, this useful and fascinating diary is packed with facts and information compiled by NUFC.com's Mike 'Biffa' Bolam. Oh, and it's 100 percent unofficial - meaning Mike Ashley gets nowt!


It's available from all good bookshops (and Asda), including Amazon, The Back Page, Borders, Fenwick's, HMV and Waterstone's. We've also linked up with the NUFC.com website to set up a few special offers, including the chance to get a signed copy of the book. See the offers here.

Paul

Rosalind Wyllie Brent Cross signing

Everything You Ever Wanted author Rosalind Wyllie will be at Borders in Brent Cross, London tomorrow (Saturday 4 October) from 1pm to sign copies of her book. It's her first London signing, so if you're in the area do pop along and say hello.


Paul

One for fusty real-ale buffs to avoid

Here's a bit on The Non-Beardy Beer Book from the Metro newspaper: 'With contributions from a panel of independent reviewers, who tackle everything from the battle of the Budweisers to a humorous link between Foster's and masturbation, The Non-Beardy Beer Book should perhaps be avoided by fusty real-ale buffs,' says Andrew Fenwick. 'An invaluable companion to one of Britain's most popular pursuits.' Read more here.


Paul

Reviewalanche

Our new fiction titles are getting more reviews than we could have imagined. Everything You Ever Wanted has just received two favourable reviews - from two very different publications. The Bookbag contacted us yesterday to tell us that they'd given Roz FOUR STARS! Not bad at all, eh? You can read the full review here and make sure to keep checking their website as it is an interesting read.

The second review appears in the current edition of FORUM magazine - the international journal of relationships. Being unaware of such publications (I'm not tall enough to reach the top shelf of most newsagents) I was shocked at why material like this should land on my desk, but after looking through it a few times, I stumbled across their review section.



As discussed with Roz, the review is great and the last sentence is sure to make it as a cover testimonial on the second edition.
Roz will also be at Borders Brent Cross, London, this Saturday from 1pm. If you are in the area, please drop by to say hello... and buy a copy of the book that tears strips off the competition!

Stu