This week WH Allen welcomed Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg, and author of the Sunday Times Bestseller Lean In, to London. 

On Monday night Sheryl attended a book launch at 11 Downing Street hosted by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne MP.  Sheryl was introduced in a brilliant speech by BBC Economics Editor Stephanie Flanders who once worked with Sheryl at the US Treasury and revealed that thirteen years ago Sheryl once confessed to having a crush on Gordon Brown!  Sheryl then delivered a very warm, poignant and funny speech about her book to a rapt audience of MPs, dignitaries and businesswomen.

On Tuesday night we headed to the Times/ News International offices near Tower Hill. Up on their impressive 13th floor events space (with magnificent views of London), Associate Editor of the Times, Camilla Cavendish, interviewed Sheryl in front of a packed audience of over 300 opinion formers such as Martha Lane Fox, Justine Roberts and Joanna Trollope, CEOs and Times subscribers.  Tickets had sold out within a matter of hours and for the first time, the Times live-streamed the event from outside their paywall.  It was an engaging evening with lots of discussion and questions which continued at a drinks reception afterwards where Sheryl met the Ebury Lean In team and posed for photos.  The official hashtag #SandbergTimesLive reached approximately 27,000 accounts and had a reach of nearly 56,000 people.

Then on Wednesday Sheryl put in a full day of whistle-stop broadcast and print publicity in London including Radio 4 Woman’s Hour, Radio 3 Nightwaves, RTE  Radio Ireland, Channel 4 News, BBC World, The Andrew Marr Show and interviews with the Daily Telegraph and Marie Claire.

For the fourth year in a row the Ebury team decamped from Ebury Towers for the weekend and set up camp in the wilds of rural Suffolk to take part in Latitude Festival! Braving the rain and mud were members of our Publicity, Marketing and Editorial teams and of course a selection of our bravest authors.

Joining us in our tent in the Faraway Forest for our Eccentrically English themed weekend we had Stuart Maconie regaling us with hilarious tales of Britain from Hope and Glory, Mark Thomas drew the crowds for his talk on Extreme Rambling, Miles Jupp chatted to us about cricket and his latest book, Fibber in the Heat.

     Suzannah Lipscomb fascinated the forest with her Tudor facts taken from, A Visitor’s Companion to Tudor England and Lucy Edge calmed us and helped us find our centre with yoga classes in the main arena with an introductory reading from her charming memoir, The Handbag and Wellies Yoga Club. Vintage author, Adele Nozedar took groups of festival goers off foraging into the forest with top tips from her book, The Hedgerow Handbook and Tony Wrighton persuaded, relaxed and made us all confident in only a minute.

The lovely Lisa Comfort, our Sew Over It author, created a beautiful patchwork quilt with the help of festival goers, teaching them the techniques needed to hand stitch or machine sew their own part of the design.

 There were loads of things going on in the Ebury Library to ensure that passersby always had a chance to get involved. All weekend people dressed up and had their photograph taken in the Ebury Photobooth, if you’d like to see the pictures they have all been uploaded to the brand new Ebury Tumblr site: eburyphotobooth.tumblr.com

Embracing the Eccentrically English theme we hosted a festival tea party in the forest, giving out scones with jam and cream and a cup of tea to everyone for a much needed sugar boost!

The festival is a melting pot of literature, music, art, drama, poetry, dance and general creativity so to take advantage of all those flowing creative juices we provided art materials and paper for our visitors to write short stories, scribble down poems and sketch us some pretty pictures. Here are a few of our favourites:

 Thank you to all who came to say hello and got stuck in with all the activities, listened and chatted to our authors and sat under the canopy enjoying some peace and quiet, we hope you had as brilliant a time as we did!

 Check out the video we filmed over the weekend featuring our authors, activities and lovely Library visitors!

 See you next year!

 Jen - Marketing Assistant

There aren’t many things I can watch for seven hours straight (ten hours if you count the afterparty; more dancing, different venue), but there is quite simply something addictive about seeing the b-boys and girls live in action.

Walking into the O2 academy it’s clear this isn’t a showcase; it’s all about the battle. Throughout the two packed rooms dedicated to the Regional Conflict final, cyphers sprang up – by the bar, amongst the audience – for the b-boys to warm-up between rounds and ready themselves for battle. With Popping, Solo B-boy and B-boy Crew battles to decide who goes through to the World Finals at Brixton O2 Academy in October, the competition was heated; and to a relative newcomer, completely awe-inspiring. With DJ Renegade on-hand to fire up the battles with some great tracks, the audience were stabbing at their phones to Shazam the tunes.

With kids as young as ten competing and taking on the more battle-hardened dancers, b-boying isn’t just thriving here in the UK – it is explosive, thanks to Hooch’s 16-year-old Championships. World Final regulars Soul Mavericks perhaps predictably took the Crew title, though were closely fought by La Familia. B-boy Spin goes on to represent the UK in the Solo B-Boy battle at the Finals, while Mechanikool P took the Popping title.

The moves on show look superhuman to outsiders, and are the result of not just months but years of training. The b-boys of today are athletes as much as they are dancers; completely dedicated, and prepared to live and breathe what they do to be the best – and boy does it show. The international judges – including Lilou, Scorpion, Mouse and Djidawi, gave an electrifying glimpse of the talent we’ll be seeing in the World Finals in their judges’ solos. You’re not going to want to miss it, so book your tickets now, and get down to Brixton O2 to see what all the fuss is about.

B-Boy Championships: From Bronx to Brixton by DJ Hooch is out on August 25th

 Hannah - Editor

One never knows quite what to expect when one is asked to speak at a writing conference. Over the years I’ve attended huge US conferences where rumours abound of editors having submissions thrust under bathroom stalls. (This never happened to me - though I once had an aspiring author pitch a paranormal romance at me in a swimming pool in Dallas!)

The Fifth Annual Verulam ‘Get Writing’ conference at the University of Hertfordshire was an all together more civilised affair - albeit more rainy. It’s run with military precision by Jenny Barden and her team and every year has managed to attract a variety of interesting speakers. (This year’s guests included WHSmiths buyer Matt Bates, chick lit writer Sarah Duncan and TV presenter turned writer Sue Cook, as well as a host of agents and editors.) And it’s a mere half hour from Kings Cross even if I was never entirely sure where I was. (Near St Albans apparantly!)

The most challenging aspect of the day was the topic of the speech itself. My first thought when Jenny said ‘Beyond the Revolution’ - was ‘Which revolution?’. (Which may reflect a diet of too many historical novels perhaps!) My second thought - when I realised that she meant ‘beyond the digital revolution - was well, that’s going to be a short speech!

Luckily I was going to be part of a publishing panel and my fellow panelists - Marlene Johnson, Publisher for Hachette Children’s and Simon Taylor from Transworld - and I convened ahead of the conference to come up with a plan.

We decided to keep it brief, keep it positive and throw the discussion open to the audience as quickly as possible. (And who knows we might even learn something along the way!) So armed with some facts and figures from Ben and Luthfa* , we three editors met up an hour before the panel to compare notes. Simon and I discovered that we pretty much had the same figures (though 800% growth year on year in eBooks was a good enough figure to repeat.) and had both at least heard about the recently launched Asda £52 E-reader. (Though I had the Times article to hand that compared it as a cross between an MP3 Player and an Etch-A-Sketch.) We wisely cut a swathe through our prepared material and decided to make the panel session as interactive as possible.

A lively discussion ensued, chaired expertly by Marlene. We’d predicted much of the topics that came up - and some that didn’t. (Marlene had been volunteered by Simon and I to tackle any difficult agency model questions. No one asked, but Marlene didn’t let that stop her from answering anyway!)

Some of the more interesting moments of the session were realising just how many of our very digital savvy audience now had access to either dedicated ereaders or tablets like the ipad and were regularly buying ebooks. There also came the interesting suggestion from one of the delegates that Waterstones should also sell e-editions in store for those who like to browse real shelves before buying a digital edition of a book. And at one point I outed my hitherto secret habit of buying certain vampire fiction in ebook form so that no one knew I was reading it! What I also took away was just how passionate the conference delegates were for the written word, no matter in what form it was delivered to them.

My afternoon ended with a a quick round of what the conference likes to call ‘Super Pitches’ where writers get the chance to pitch their books in five minutes to an agent or editor. It felt like the editorial equivalent of speed dating. Though I was impressed with all the pitches - not least by the lady who managed to tell me the entire plot of her lush sounding epic novel (large cast of characters, two continents, spannning thirty odd years) without appearing to draw breath! Time will tell how my ‘dates’ turn out…

Gillian - Fiction Editorial Director

(*I’d like to thank Luthfa especially for the ‘no one knows anything’ gem which was going to be my fallback position should any difficult questions arise!)

I am a firm devotee of Mad Men. No invitation could be exciting enough to get me out of the house on a Wednesday night while the current series is showing. However, I’m ready to be tempted away from my Joan Holloway-esque dresses for the flapper style and (fake) fur wraps of the 1920s by Boardwalk Empire, the fantastic new series from Martin Scorsese and the producers of The Sopranos.

It tells the story of Nucky Thompson (based on the real-life Enoch ‘Nucky’ Johnson) and the gangsters, racketeers and corrupt politicians who kept Atlantic City wide open during Prohibition. The performances of Steve Buscemi, and British actors Kelly McDonald and Steve Graham (who plays a young Al Capone) are already receiving acclaim from US critics, but it seems that the real star of the show will turn out to be Atlantic City itself.

From humble beginnings as a small-time seaside resort, Atlantic City became America’s playground. Even the humblest labourer could afford a good time there, and people of all classes flocked to be entertained, indulge, listen to the new ‘jazz’ and, of course, drink. This fascinating and colourful history is encapsulated in a book, also called Boardwalk Empire, which provided the original inspiration for the show’s creators. Written by Atlantic City local Nelson Johnson, Ebury are publishing in the UK edition in February 2011.

The book tells the complete story of the rise and fall of this unique city, and explains just how Nucky and his cast of shady associates of Boardwalk Empire were able to take power as they did, and how their legacy affected the future of the city. The series opens on the eve of the coming into force of the Volstead Act, the eighteenth amendment that created ‘Prohibition’. This hangover (so to speak) from Victorian morality didn’t come about overnight, however. The supporters of the Act had been campaigning for years, little suspecting the massive impact it would have on the creation of organised crime, and what the huge boost they would give to the careers of people like Nucky Johnson.

I’m really enjoying working on the UK edition of this book. The history of this era is fascinating anyway, but to have the added excitement of the anticipation of the show makes the project even more fun. We’ve nearly got a UK cover finalised, and can’t wait to hear Sky’s plans of how the series will be promoted over here. So, in the post-Christmas, New Year gloom we have the shining lights of Atlantic City, circa 1920 to look forward to. And who knows, the forgiving shape of those flapper dresses may even prove a handy alternative to the New Year diet!

Liz - Editorial Assistant

It was what my mother used to call a dog day – one of those steamy, cloudy, still days of August when nothing much changes. I was walking to the copse at the end of Clapham Common and, when I entered it, could see it hadn’t altered much since I was last there. Two men with bicycles were waiting patiently for their lovers, one beside a bench and the other near a battered sign. Further on was a blunt looking Scotty dog, busy and alert amongst the undergrowth. There was nothing else remarkable except for the stillness of the foliage, all noise of the surrounding roads dimmed by the moist atmosphere and lack of breeze. I stood quite still, concentrated and enchanted, flashing back down the years to my childhood.

Occasionally, during a quiet school holiday, my mother would say, ‘Let’s go out in the car…’ She and I would set off, full of expectation and enthusiasm, and after meandering around for a while, often seemed to end up down a deep track in a wood. There, she’d turn off the engine, we’d wind down the windows, and go very quiet, smelling the bracken, listening to the invisible birds high up in the trees, watching the sunlight change amongst the undergrowth. It was always a magical moment, filled with joy. Eventually, she’d sigh and say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? It’s so primitive…’

What she meant, I think, was the way you can sometimes feel fully alive when you go quiet and really focus on where you are - often helped by being completely still, in a place of natural beauty.

This is all in my mind at the moment because of the recent visit to London by Zen master, Thich Nhat Hanh. He gave a speech at the Hammersmith Apollo a couple of weeks ago, and some of us went to hear him from the office. He was as inspiring and as extraordinary as ever, demonstrating what real concentration is all about in the way he picked up a glass of water to drink, in the way he spoke for an hour without notes (though he is in his eighties), and in the clarity of mind he used in answering the questions, his face alight. But what I haven’t been able to forget was the way, when he finished speaking, he just left. Whilst others around him on the stage began to move and reorganise for the next part of the evening, Thich Nhat Hanh simply stood up, turned to face the backdrop, and slipped away. There was no bow to the audience, no pause for applause. Nothing. The contrast between him and all the rock bands, mediums, orators and dancers who have filled Hammersmith Apollo before him, was enormous.

That evening I started re-reading his seminal book, The Miracle of Mindfulness. I hadn’t forgotten how practical and helpful is his advice about performing everyday tasks with mindfulness. He makes it all seem so simple. Perhaps it really is. But I had forgotten how very profound are his instructions ‘so we can live each minute of life’. At some point he says: ‘If we’re really engaged in mindfulness…then we will consider each step we take as an infinite wonder, and a joy will open our hearts like a flower, enabling us to enter the world of reality.’

Perhaps that’s what my mother and I were really doing, deep inside that wood, without realising it – getting a dose of reality by fully focusing on where we were. And what I caught a glimpse of once again on Clapham Common last Saturday.

Judith Kendra - Rider Publishing Director

Read an extract of The Miracle of Mindfulness

As we near publication of Delia’s Happy Christmas and I have time to reflect over the last few months, I thought it might be interesting to tell you what we have been up to. Like Christmas, the production of a book is all about the planning. First we need 150 recipes. Then we commission a photographer. Finally add a designer.

Of course it’s not that simple, but this is where we start – putting the team together. Delia knew exactly who she wanted to work with so my first step was to contact everybody and ensure they were all available during the key dates – photography, layout stage and proof checking. We cleared two weeks in everybody’s schedule for the photography (no easy task as the team was based across three different continents) and this gave me a firm date to work to – so that I could work out the production schedule. It’s best to work backwards from the publication date, but when I did this, I realised that we should have begun work a month ago. Oh well, production will just have to print the book quicker! One other question arose – props for the shoot. Our shoot was just after Christmas so the props stylist had to hunt high and low for these unseasonal items. He did a great job and we recreated Christmas in May for the book.

Christmas means turkey

The next key stage is the heart of the book – the recipes. We used a number of recipes from Delia’s original Christmas book – classics such as Roast Turkey, Traditional Christmas Pudding and Christmas Cake. Delia also wrote many new recipes – Chestnut Cupcakes, for example. These little cakes have become so popular that it seemed entirely appropriate to have a festive version. The Last-Minute Christmas chapter was also a very modern addition, and how useful it will be. We also needed to ensure that all the older recipes were updated where necessary – for example, with the advent of vac-packed or frozen chestnuts, we no longer need to laboriously cook and peel them. A little less butter here and there, a few recipes re-tested and all the suppliers contacted to ensure that we have all the correct contact addresses and delivery dates.

The last few weeks

As we approach the publication date, it’s time to negotiate the huge internal and external interest in this book. Our sales, marketing and publicity departments needed jacket proofs, recipe lists, sample pages. Then, we finalise the jacket finishes and bindings with the designer and our production department. We mock up a bookshelf, inserting our book jacket into a photograph of a shop display of best-selling hardbacks to see how ours compares. Stunning – its simple elegance really makes it stand out against the usual autumn list of celebrity biographies and chef cookbooks. We’re all really excited.

Muna - Editorial Director

This post was originally displayed on Delia Online - visit the site to find out how you can buy the book for 50% off!

If you look to the heavens this Saturday (4 September) you will see the Harvest Moon – a sure sign that Autumn is just around the corner. In Jane Struthers’ fascinating volume of countryside wisdom, Red Sky at Night, she explains:

“The harvest moon is the full moon that appears closest to the autumn equinox (20 or 21 September), and the hunter’s moon is the full moon that appears in the following month (October). Both are special because they rise on successive evenings more quickly than the other moons of the year. This means there is a shorter period of darkness between sunset and moonrise, so there is more light outside for farmers and hunters to do their work.

“They look larger than other moons because they hang lower in the sky, thanks to the Earth’s tilt at this time of year, and they can look redder because the light of the moon is seen through the vast number of particles that are in the atmosphere closest to the Earth.”

And did you know that January’s moon is called the Wolf Moon, and June’s either the Mead or Strawberry Moon? This beautiful book is overflowing with facts like these that were once common knowledge. Dip into the spreads below and remind yourself of life before the internet and blogs (or even electricity).

Charlotte – Senior Commissioning Editor

The Oxford University Dictionary defines ‘bonkbuster’ as: ‘a type of popular novel characterised by frequent sexual encounters between the characters’.

It’s a rather dull definition for what for me is the most gloriously fun of fiction genres. Bonkbusters are the purest (!) forms of commercial fiction: sexy, glamorous and utterly escapist. This is fiction whose sole purpose is to entertain the reader.

The perfect bonkbuster should be sexy and have a glitzy, cosmopolitan background. It should feature strong, powerful heroines, bad-boy alpha-male heroes and villains, at least one super bitch and, yes, lots of bonking!

I’ve been a fan of the genre since I first ‘borrowed’ my father’s second-hand copy of Harold Robbins at an age when I really should have been reading about little houses on prairies. And it’s no wonder that in a world full of doom and gloom, bonkbusters are once again undergoing a revival, with newer writers like Tasmina Perry topping the bestseller lists and older writers like Jackie Collins as popular as ever.

When I first started buying fiction here at Ebury, top of my wish list was to find a new bonkbusting talent. And I’m delighted that we have not one, but two authors carrying on the great bonkbusting tradition of glitz and glam, sex and shopping in 2009.

Out this month we have Tease by the divine Ms Immodesty Blaize. Immodesty is putting the bonk back into bonkbuster with her sparkling debut set in the uber-glam world of showgirls. This is Jackie Collins does burlesque and is a funny, camp, saucy delight of a book.

Coming in August is Silk by Rupert James, a fantastic bonkbuster meets blockbuster novel, set in the world of high fashion and high profile divorces. Silk is the ultimate glitz and glamour novel, a fantastic holiday read…Rupert is bringing a fresh 21st century spin to this classic genre.

But, for the benefits of those who’ve looked at me blankly when I’ve tried to explain that Silk is Lace for the 21st century, here’s a whistle stop tour through the best of the classic bonkbusters. (And for those who already know their Scruples from their Rivals, do let me know if I’ve missed any of your favourites…)

The Valley of the Dolls – Jacqueline Susann
It’s still the darkest of all the bonkbusters - and some would argue it’s not a bonkbuster at all. (It was most recently published by feminist imprint Virago in the UK.) It’s set in the dark underbelly of showbiz, following the adventures – romantic, professional and pharmaceutical – of three women as they try to achieve fame and fortune. A cult classic.

Scruples - Judith Krantz
The ultimate sex and shopping novel. It’s even set in an up market department store where the mega-rich shop, gossip and have liaisons…. There’s a sequel – the unimaginatively titled… Scruples Two. But look out instead for Krantz’s rather fabulous Princess Daisy, a royal bonkbuster!

Lace - Shirley Conran
Ask most women over thirty to name a bonkbuster and this is the one they’ll mention – swiftly followed by memories of one specific ‘goldfish’ scene. This is also one of the first ‘dirty’ books I remember being passed around at school. It’s the story of one girl’s search for the mother who gave her away as a baby. It also spawned a gloriously trashy 80s mini-series (‘Which one of you bitches is my mother?’) Lace 2 is the search for Daddy.

Riders; Polo; Rivals; The Man Who Made Husbands Jealous - Jilly Cooper
Jilly Cooper is the queen of the British bonkbuster but still best loved for her series of home counties-set books, featuring polo playing cad Rupert Campbell Black. Women of all ages fell for Rupert - the sexiest bad-boy hero in bonkbusting history. (And partly inspired, according to Jilly, by Brigadier Andrew Parker Bowles, ex-husband of Camilla! But don’t let that put you off…)

Jackie Collins
For many, Jackie remains the reigning queen of bonkbusters. Her list of titles is seemingly endless and she’s still going strong. Some of the oldest are still the best, however, start with Hollywood Wives, Chances or Lucky.

The Carpet Baggers - Harold Robbins
Robbins is the god-father of blockbuster/bonkbuster fiction and The Carpet Baggers is the best of the bunch. According to the New York Times: ‘It is not quite proper to have printed The Carpet Baggers between the covers of a book. It should have been inscribed on the walls of a public lavatory.’ What more do you need to know?

Olivia Goldsmith
Her later books were far more chick lit than bonkbuster but do check out The First Wives’ Club, which is a wonderful bonkbuster revenge fantasy. (And has an iconic and cheeky ‘testicles as golfball’ cover. Also, Bestseller which is one of the few novels set in publishing that actually rather good, albeit in a gloriously silly way!

The Thorn Birds - Colleen McCullough
Australia’s wonderfully epic contribution to the bonkbuster genre. A young girl falls in love with a priest.

Master of the Game - Sidney Sheldon
Highly prolific author (over 300 million books in print) but Master of the Game is a good place to start. A big sprawling blockbuster novel that spans four generations of one family, from diamond stealing in South Africa to the rise and fall of a multi-national business. Sheldon sadly died in 2007 but in 2009, Tilly Bagshawe will take on his mantle with a sequel Mistress of the Game.

Ebury opened its arms to the huggable Justin Lee Collins yesterday. He took time out from learning to ballroom dance, high dive and Mexican wrestle for TV to come and chat about his hilarious coming-of-age memoir Good Times! which we publish this Autumn. Our deeply serious and highly professional brainstorm included such weighty discussion points as hugging and ‘how about a karaoke night!’

Justin then regaled us with stories of how be got to where he is now. By accident. How he went from the M&S years where he was told to ‘walk faster’ by his boss. Bad times. To street jamming in spandex and wrestling in lycra and manhandling Alan Carr on national TV on a weekly basis. Rock on!

Justin then met the whole Ebury team over drinks where there was a bit of singing, a few spontaneous hugs, and chats all round before Justin had to head off to ITV for the press launch of his new chat show The Justin Lee Collins Show.

As he left the building our flustered MD was overheard saying ‘I’d only just come into the room when, before I knew it, I was being given a big beardy kiss!’

Rowan - Editor