Friday 20 January 2017

It's a New Dawn, It's a New Day and I'm feeling...

Hello and welcome to the first blog on the new website for Britain's Next Bestseller!

For those of you that don't know, BNBS's creator and director, Murielle Maupoint, decided to step back from the business she had so successfully created in order to focus on other things. To use a cliché  and cut the long short, Kelly and I were fortunate enough to engage in conversation with Murielle about her plans and desires for the future of BNBS and agreed to take over the running of the business.

BNBS published my debut novel, Hellbound, after 65 literary agent rejections. No one would touch it with a barge pole, but Murielle and BNBS decided to take a chance on it and simultaneously not only made my literary dream come true, but proved that Hellbound was a canny thriller after all!

For this reason, I have always believed in BNBS and what it stood for; using crowd funding to help readers decide which books should be published whilst using it as a tool to help revolutionise the industry.

Under Murielle and colleagues guidance, they published over 30 titles, some of which have gone to great acclaim, some of which are in the process of having movie scripts based upon them, a few of which are in the throws of being published internationally.

Mine and Kelly's main focus is to continue supporting all those authors who have gone before whilst finding new and dynamic talent to take the literary world and BNBS forward in 2017.

We already have some amazing titles lined up, including a re-release of Rob Enright's exceptional revenge thriller, 'One by One', debut author Charlotte Teece's powerful apocalyptic drama, 'Toxic City', educational and amusing children's book, 'Percy the Pigeon' by Katie Budge, Paul Ferns' moving and powerful autobiographical book 'Galloping with Dolphins' and many more. And we managed to secure the rights to Stephen Sayer's first crime thriller, 'By Any Means Necessary' right at the start of our tenure which was a fantastic honour and a great way to start off the next phase in BNBS.

We also have a small, but dedicated and talented team on board, including Noelle Holten, esteemed and well respected blogger (crimebookjunkie.co.uk) the world over as our commission and manuscript advisor, Karen Chilvers, author of Tzu Kingdom alongside Gill Eastgate, as Head of Marketing and the multi-talented Siobhan Marshall-Jones as our proof reader/copy editor. There are also a few further announcements to make soon regarding a few other special additions to our growing BNBS family.


We have developed further options for authors, maintaining the crowd funding option via the globally recognised Kickstarter, whilst including print on demand options and a Kindle only package with inclusive social media marketing at a competitive price.

We have already received a number of manuscripts and have the honour of having BNBS approved for promotional affiliation with the writing marketplace experts, Reedsy and Mark Dawson's Self-Publishing Formula, the number one place and gentleman to go to for any and all questions and education regarding marketing yourself as an author and a brand. Those customers who use Reedsy tools via the BNBW website also receive a $20 discount.

It is a very exiting time both Kelly and I, BNBS and all the authors involved. I promise there is a lot more to come, including a few special surprises we have lined up!

So, look around your house, in cupboards and in the attic. Is there a manuscript there, gathering dust? Who knows, you could be Britain's Next Bestseller...