Bettany Press ebooks

[lizarfau]

Anyone here who likes the Chalet School or Jane Shaw's Susan books might be interested to know that Bettany Press are releasing their backlist as ebooks. Their list includes a biography of Elinor M Brent-Dyer, the harder-to-find Susan titles, feminist theory on girls' school stories and a couple of books written by me. Here's the press release about the ebooks:

Bettany Press is pleased to announce that, due to popular demand, the majority of our titles are now available for the Kindle from Amazon.

We expect to have the whole of our backlist available by the end of the year, and will be publishing all of our future titles for the Kindle as well as in paperback. Whether you want to save shelf space or money - our ebook titles are half-price or less compared to our print versions - or simply want to have some of your favourite titles with you on your travels, there is a Bettany Press ebook for you.

No Kindle? No problem! Amazon offers free Kindle apps for laptops, PCs, notebooks, tablets and phones, and stores your books so they remain available if your device changes.

NB: All of our titles also remain in print, available to order from your favourite bookshop or dealer or directly from our website http://www.bettanypress.co.uk" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false; - don't pay inflated secondhand prices on ABE Books when you can buy a new copy at list price.

OUT NOW FOR THE KINDLE @ £6.90 (inc VAT) / $9.99 US plus sales tax

Chalet School interest

Our non-fiction includes: Helen McClelland’s popular biography of Elinor M. Brent-Dyer, Behind the Chalet School; and The Chalet School Revisited, a collection of essays edited by Rosemary Auchmuty and Ju Gosling and published to commemorate the author’s birth centenary in 1994.

Our fiction includes Jean of Storms, Brent-Dyer’s only adult novel; The School by the River, her rarest title; Helen McClelland's Visitors for the Chalet School, the only 'fill-in' novel to be taken into the Chalet School series by the original publisher Harper Collins; and Two Chalet School Girls in India by Priyadarshini Narendra, a contemporary reworking of Brent-Dyer's famous missing manuscript.

We also publish Margaret Moncrieff (Helen McClelland's) time-slip novel, Time and Again, set in a Scottish music school.

Don't forget that you can also find Ju Gosling's PhD thesis Virtual Worlds of Girls: An ebook about girl power, girls' school stories and the future of reading in an electronic age (1997) free online: the accompanying film The Chalet School Revisited (1994) will soon be available free on YouTube to mark the publication of our ebooks.

Jane Shaw interest

Jane Shaw’s ‘Susan’ books are a unique mixture of school story and holiday story, all of which have a strong comedic streak throughout them. Bettany Press is pleased to republish the three rarest titles — A Job for Susan, Susan’s Kind Heart and Where is Susan? — along with Susan and Friends: the Jane Shaw Companion (Alison Lindsay, Ed.), which combines biographical and geographical essays with the collected ‘Susan’ short stories.

Apart from these rare exceptions, the originals of Jane Shaw’s books are still relatively easy to find from specialist bookshops and dealers, and at extremely affordable prices. This makes them ideal for new children’s book collectors, as well as for existing collectors who are looking to add a new author to their collection.

Books by Liz Filleul

To All Appearance, Dead is a murder mystery set in the world of girls' school story collecting. First Term at Cotterford is the first is a new contemporary girls' school story series. Both unmissable!

*We are now taking pre-orders for the print version of the second book in the series, Christmas Term at Cotterford: email us at mail@bettanypress.co.uk for more details or to be notified when the book is released for the Kindle.*

Disability interest

Unseen Childhoods: Disabled Characters in 20th-century Books for Girls (coming shortly), edited by Helen Aveling. Disability is largely absent from children's fiction throughout the twentieth century. In this ground-breaking study, authors examine the rare appearances of disabled characters in books written primarily for girls, and ask to what extent they are stereotyped, offered as role models or included within/excluded from their fictional communities.

NEW! Abnormal: How Britain became body dysphoric and the key to a cure by Ju Gosling. SPECIAL PRE-PRINT PUBLICATION PRICE OF £3.45

[Anita Bensoussane]

Anyone here who likes the Chalet School or Jane Shaw's Susan books might be interested to know that Bettany Press are releasing their backlist as ebooks....

"We expect to have the whole of our backlist available by the end of the year, and will be publishing all of our future titles for the Kindle as well as in paperback. Whether you want to save shelf space or money - our ebook titles are half-price or less compared to our print versions - or simply want to have some of your favourite titles with you on your travels, there is a Bettany Press ebook for you.
No Kindle? No problem! Amazon offers free Kindle apps for laptops, PCs, notebooks, tablets and phones, and stores your books so they remain available if your device changes."

Interesting news, Liz. It's good that out of print books from the backlist will be made available electronically and that the electronic books will be half the price of the print versions. My only worry is that ebooks will be promoted to the detriment of printed books (I don't mean by Bettany Press in particular, but by publishers in general).

We also publish Margaret Moncrieff (Helen McClelland's) time-slip novel, Time and Again, set in a Scottish music school.

That sounds intriguing. Is it a one-off novel?

Books by Liz Filleul

To All Appearance, Dead is a murder mystery set in the world of girls' school story collecting. First Term at Cotterford is the first is a new contemporary girls' school story series. Both unmissable!

*We are now taking pre-orders for the print version of the second book in the series, Christmas Term at Cotterford: email us at mail@bettanypress.co.uk for more details or to be notified when the book is released for the Kindle.*

I recall you mentioning To All Appearance, Dead before and I like the sound of it, Liz. Again, is it a one-off novel? And is it aimed at adults? About your Cotterford series, are you aiming to write a certain number of books? Sorry for all the questions but I think I'd like to try these.

[lizarfau]

Hi Anita,

To All Appearance, Dead is a stand-alone as is Time and Again (which I haven't read, but I like the sound of it).

Cotterford is a series - it's aimed at girls aged 10 to 100+, but boys aged 10 to 100+ can enjoy it too. The staff feature quite heavily in the books, compared to other school stories - excepting the Chalet School, perhaps. The third one is written in draft form. The main character, Louise, is 14 in the first book, and I'd like to think I'll be able to keep publishing Cotterfords until she finishes school.

I understand your concerns about the ebook; I work in-house at an international publishing house and we're moving towards publishing more ebooks, too. Publishing is changing very rapidly, but I don't think we'll see the end of the printed book for a very long time.

[Anita Bensoussane]

Thanks, Liz - that's very helpful.

[dsr]

"Time and Again" is a really excellent novel, I'd thoroughly recommend it. Great characterisation, very well plotted. One of the rare books where I read it through, then went back to the beginning to read it again.

If you can't get it on paper, I'd definitely recommend you get the electronic version.

[Moonraker]

I have been corresponding with Liz Filleul via Facebook - never realising until now that she is our very own lizarfau! I had obviously forgotten about these posts.
I can't recommend the Cotterford books strongly enough - I only wish there were more! I have just started reading To All Apperance, Dead and am loving that too. The school-stories conference reminds me so much of our own Society Days, with guest speakers and booksellers setting up stalls. How great would it have been had Tony booked the whole event into an hotel for a few days!

Do give these books a read, you won't be disappointed.

[lizarfau]

Thanks, Moonraker!

It's good, though, that you never had a murder at the Society days!

[Moonraker]

Now there's an idea!