Trees that grow on books

Yet another week has disappeared under our noses. Melvin Gonzalez, our Spanish expert, has joined us and on Thursday Mari, Sara and I went to see a man about a tree. Or rather a man about lots of trees, it is Bombadil's intention to plant a tree for every title that we publish.



We have decided to start with dwarf beech trees, as not only are they globally endangered, but the Swedish word for beech is the same as the word for book.



This is the island where we will plant the trees.



UNESCO’s world book day is on 23 April. To mark the event, Bombadil wants, nay, needs submissions from all authors between the ages of 12 and 26 - short stories, poetry, letters, essays – and anything else you can think of, to be published within twenty-four hours! Short or long, fact of fiction, poetry or prose, it's all welcome!

This is a not-for-profit book. We will cover our expenses and then donate the profit to charity. So, we will not be paying royalties, sorry, you will just have to make do with the glory of challenging the idea that publishing is slow and unwieldy and that books take years to produce. That and the satisfaction of seeing your name in print and reaching Bombadil’s audience with your writing! People, pick up your pens, tap on your typewriters and compose on your computers and become part of the Bombadil revolution! The deadline is 21st April. Email submissions to worldbookday@bombadilpublishing.com

In other news, the Bombadil dog currently smells like kippers.

It´s snowing!!

So yes, it´s Monday and the weather is disapointing (suprised?!). It started snowing again, after a week of sunshine. Since all of us have kept our fingers crossed, hoping for some spring to arrive, today´s change of weather kind put at least me off a bit. But hope is the last to leave us someone cleaver once said, and I will not be put down by traditional Monday-weather. Before I would, but no. My hope is still with me!

Tomorrow John is going to Geneva, very exciting! He will be meeting up with some important people that are involved in the big "Turning the tide" project, but as well he will aparently be introduced to some people from UNESCO who started the worldbookday in 1995. Which is VERY exciting since John is the brain behind the 24 hours Worldbook-book that we are attempting to make. It might be a very long Worldbookday at the 23rd of april, but I guess it´s quite cool to be able to put on your resume that you´ve made a book in 24 hours! Quite cool indeed.

Personally I´m a bit nervous, speaking of the Worldbookday. My little baby-project for the Worldbookday is to get libraries and their visitors interactive in their local library. This I think partly can be achived by having people participating in a writing campaign. Basically we are encouraging people through their local library to send us novels, short story´s and poems on the topic "Me&books". Then we´ll publish the national Librarybook of Sweden! I´m not worried about the concept, but about people getting involved, I´m relying on the librarians committment, so yet again, fingers crossed. I like librarians, they are nice so I trust that they will do their best to get Swedish library visitors to contribute!

All for now,
over&out
Sara

Monday, glorious Monday!

Typical Monday today, greyish, soppy weather. The air tastes a bit like dust for some reason and the sun is refusing to come out. As usual I´ve been up a bit to early to drive up to Gyttorp from my hometown Trollhättan. The only thing that is a bit unusual is the fact that my brother came with me this mornong! His name is Erik and has just turned 15, he will spend the week with the Bombadil staff to do his work practice. He has already managed to re-do the layout of the Swedish startpage on the website and got himself a Bombadil hoodie. Not bad, I would say. As his mentor I intend to make him work, a lot. At least one power point presentation and som filming for our shorts. Since we only speak English this is a great opportunity for him to practice speaking English, he is already really brilliant and according to our dear mother, his spelling is better in English than Swedish...Interesting indeed.

On wednesday parts of the Bombadilian team is going to a college in Kinna (south of Sweden) to be interviewed by the students, well exciting!! Gonna be lots of fun to get away from the computer and meet some interested youth.

Another great thing that is happening right now is the preparations of World book day! We will have some different activities during this day and the main thing in Sweden is the "Library-book" as I have chosen to call it. The thought is to get the Swedish libraries more interactive, so we have decided to encourage people to send submissions to Bombadil: poems, novels, short stories etc. The topic is "Me&books" and you will submit through your local library, and then we will Publish the swedish "library-book". The whole event is finishing on the 23rd of April on world book day. So yeah, we've got some great things coming up. During the spring we will be visiting bookshops, poetry festivals etc. so stay tuned!

All for now,
Yours truly
Monday blogger Sara

Fast times, fast books

Friday is here again! Well, it may have been here yesterday actually. Thanks to Mari for reminding me that I am blogging today - oops. But yet another week has flown by; we're well into March and it seems like only a couple of weeks ago that I was sliding from one end of the cabin to the other on my epic and uncomfortable boat journey to Sweden (well, to Denmark at any rate, I still had a ten hour drive through several blizzards until I reached Bombadil Towers).

I'm very busy with my own projects, which I will reveal in the fullness of time. I have been working on the artwork for the Bombadil posters for World Book Day in my spare time. Niklas, having made peace with the pneumatic Ms Anderson, has been busy with some drawings of his own, in the shape of expansion plans on the back of paper napkins.

Back to the UNESCO World Book Day, which is on 23 April. We wanted to do something to mark this event, so we thought about it and decided to publish a world book, comprising of short stories, letters, poems and essays from around the world. To spice it up a bit, we will be starting the actual publishing process in the early hours of the 23rd and aiming to have the first copy of the finished book available by midnight of the same day. Will we succeed? Who knows!

Posted by John