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Sunday, August 31, 2014

Happy 2nd Birthday Bottom Drawer Publications.

         
                                                                          a Rafflecopter giveaway 
* Birthday promotion:

This weekend is our 2nd birthday, so all of the books in our digital shop will be half price for 3 days August 30-Sept 1 to celebrate. Enter the code bdpparty to get 50% off our entire catalogue.

People can also join our members club to get a permanent 10% discount on any purchase and get access to regular giveaways and notice of new releases. You can join on our website home page.

We also have an amazing giveaway happening with the major prize being a copy of all e-books currently in our catalogue and every new release for one year. For more information and to enter the draw, check out our blog post about it here: www.bottomdrawerpub.blogspot.com/come-to-our-party
Entry also available via Facebook: http://tinyurl.com/kgtd52v




What better time to introduce to you on their second birthday, the wonderfully talented, Sam and Suz, the creators of Australia’s Bottom Drawer Publications.
 Bottom Drawer Publications will be publishing one of my latest books I’m Your Man.
Over the last few weeks, Suz and I have been working together, sharing many laughs from, Steamy doctors to English slang.
Not only would I like to thank them both for taking time out from their hectic schedule to write a piece for my blog, but also the opportunity to work with them.  It has been a great learning curve for me personally, and I feel privileged to be a part of Bottom Drawer Publications.

Happy Birthday xx


 BDP Bio:

Bottom Drawer Publications (BDP) is an independent Australian publisher that publishes romance in all genres. Our philosophy is to provide quality, romance and erotic fiction to readers in an ever-growing market for both print and e-books. Our motto is:

Read whatever you want, wherever you want, whenever you want.

In our view, romance is romance. At Bottom Drawer Publications we don’t believe there to be a definable difference between M/F, M/M, or F/F relationships, so you will not find a separate LGBT category within our catalogue. We are an inclusive publisher, and love is love to us.

All e-books are available from our online shop and also from the main electronic bookstores. Our e-book formats are: mobi, ePub, and PDF. All novel-length books are available in print and can be purchased from the same online stores.



 * About Us:

BDP is co-owned and operated by Suzanne Kneeves and Samantha Blundell. BDP came about after Suz and Sam met when they first co-edited a manuscript. After that, they worked together a lot, often seeking each other out to utilise their complementary skillsets. After much research and benchmarking, as well as utilising extensive business and editing experience, BDP put out its first submissions call, releasing its first books two years ago today.

Publishers are asked all the time in these types of interviews about what differentiates them from the masses. Our aim is not to say we can do it better than others, because there are a lot of great publishers out there, so instead we strive to emulate the best publishing models that we can. Three things we take particular pride in offering are:
undertaking a strict three-step editorial process, comprising content/substantive editing, copy editing, and separate proof editing. Each done by a separate editor to ensure a well-rounded product;
using localised spelling and usage for the manuscript setting. So if your story is set in London, the spelling will adhere to UK English. If it is set in New York, we will ensure it stays true to the location, with US spelling and usage. AU English no exception of course; and
promoting authors as well as their books in a range of avenues.

Suz’s forte is substantive editing, and she takes the lead in this role for BDP, either editing herself, or supervising the freelance editors undertaking that work. Before starting in the editing field, Suz always thought how cool it would be to get paid to actually read and give opinions on books. Now reality has set in, and although it is still exciting to read and get paid, the reality of the number of times you need to read and analyse the same book to get the most comprehensive edit finalised, means her joy in the job is now more about her investment in the characters and their story and her contribution in getting that told in the best way possible.

Sam is our copy editor extraordinaire. Sam takes the lead in our copy edit process, again either undertaking edits herself or supervising any freelance editors we engage. She’s the epitome of someone who dots their i’s and crosses their t’s and can’t read a book without noticing every copy error there is—great for copy editing, not so great for reading for fun: it can become a bit of a chore. Luckily, there are lots of manuscripts for her to read that keep her happy.

Our proofreaders also play a major role in the process. We always choose a proof editor that has had no prior involvement with the editing process up to that point, to ensure a set of fresh eyes on the final product. Because of our multi-national editorial and author base, the choice of proofreader is particularly important for us. We tend to choose at least one proofer who hails from a location that the book is based in to pick up any potential setting and vernacular errors, as well as a proofer who hails from another country to where the story is based, to ensure that where localised vernacular is used, the context it is used in is easily understandable for every reader.  . . . It’s also nice to be able to educate people from other countries in the extraordinary use of the very versatile word “bloody” and how it can be used to accentuate just about everything. It’s a bloody brilliant word! Just saying. ;)

Our graphics to date have been provided by Mumson Designs, who as well as designing for us has produced covers for a number of self-published authors. We are currently in the process of expanding our freelance designers to incorporate a range of experience for new genres.

Marketing our authors is of prime importance to us; in fact, we’ve recently expanded our promotions team to include someone to actively source new avenues for us to pursue.


What’s up next for BDP?

To deal with a backlog of acquisitions, BDP closed their submissions earlier in the year; however, we are happy to announce that BDP is now re-opened for submissions again as of this weekend. For more information please visit our FAQ page here: www.bottomdrawerpublications.net/faq
In addition, we are very pleased and excited to introduce Driven Press, our general fiction imprint. Driven Press will produce novel-length print and e-book releases with our first signed authors books being available in January 2015. Submissions for Driven Press are now open. See our website for submission details: www.drivenpress.ne

* Social Media Links/graphics:

Website: www.bottomdrawerpublications.net 
                                  Facebook: www.facebook.com/pages/Bottom-Drawer-Publications 

Thanks, Jo, for having us on your blog.

Sam & Suz.


Saturday, August 30, 2014

Two more 5 star seals of approval from Readers’ Favorite




Angel of Kindness    


by Joanne Rawson
Fiction - Chick Lit
50 Pages
Reviewed on 08/22/2014
Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers' Favorite

Angel of Kindness by Joanne Rawson is a romantic Christmas comedy, a short story for that long train journey or car ride. Megan Shepherd used to love Christmas. But then she used to love her husband as well until he ran off with a cleaner. Now she faces her first Christmas as a divorcee, spending it with her hippie mother, who is also bisexual, with a twig for a Christmas tree. Her friends decide to take her on a night out to a club they used to frequent as teenagers. Now under new management, the club has turned into a swanky nightclub and, when she sets eyes on the new owner, Richie King, she is transported back to her teen years when they used to date. She knows she should walk away, but somehow she can’t. Richie sweeps her off her feet and takes her to Christmas markets, on long snowy walks and for romantic meals in front of a log fire. Has he really changed? Is he hiding a deep dark secret that he doesn’t want her to know?

Angel of Kindness is another stunning short story from Joanne Rawson, the queen of short story romance. Quirky romance is the theme here and I thoroughly enjoyed it. It drew me in and gave me a real holiday feeling. Joanne Rawson really thinks about her stories before she writes them and it shows. Lovely entertaining story, great story line and an all-round hit again. I love Joanne Rawson’s books and will keep reading them as long she publishes them.





Learner Mum   
by Joanne Rawson
Fiction - Chick Lit
36 Pages
Reviewed on 08/22/2014
Reviewed by Anne-Marie Reynolds for Readers' Favorite

Learner Mum by Joanne Rawson is a hilarious look at motherhood from the point of view of someone who doesn’t want babies. Polly has a very successful job as a freelance writer and journalist. She has been living in sin with her boyfriend Steve for 8 years and her parents are disappointed that there is no sign of any wedding or babies in her life. The thing is, Polly doesn’t like babies and has never been tempted to even think about having one of her own. Things look set to change all that when she and Steve are asked to spend a weekend babysitting her little nephew. Hilarity ensues as she and Steve get to grips with motherhood. Will this confirm her thoughts that she never wants children or will it change her mind forever?

Learner Mum by Joanne Rawson is one of the funniest books I have read in a long while. It was too short – I could have easily read a full book on this. Even so, I really enjoyed it, laughed out loud in a lot of places and found it highly entertaining. An excellent story that should be read by any mother to be, or anyone who says they don’t want kids. To read about struggling with choices and Polly’s fears of tying the knot and having children was highly entertaining as well as sobering – it’s a real story cloaked in humor – and I was sad when it ended. Bring out more books please, I love reading these.