Promoting Our Authors

Translations & course books

In contrast to many publishers today, Arena Books is active in promoting the longer term interests of our authors on many fronts.

Although we always exhibit at the London Book Fair, a great part of our energy at that event is committed to meetings at the International Rights Centre (IRC) – meetings which need to be planned carefully months in advance. At the IRC we promote the foreign publication and translation of our books on a worldwide scale.

As a result of our efforts we have already succeeded in ensuring that Dr. Armida de la Garza’s outstanding study, Mexico on Film, has been taken up as an essential course book by San Diego University in California; and we are currently in discussion with several defence faculties for a similar arrangement for Dr. Dimitrios Delibasis’ original and vitally important work, The Right To National Self-Defense, a ground-breaking work on the significance of information technology in 21st century warfare.

Meanwhile, Robert Corfe’s thought-provoking book, Freedom From America, is already available in Arabic (front cover illustrated above), having been published by the leading Egyptian publishing house, Dar-Alsalam of Cairo. David Layfield’s topical work, Marxism and Environmental Crises is shortly to appear in Greek under the imprint of a well-known Athens publisher.

Our quality fiction

*Damita Gray at the recent launch of her widely publicised autobiographical novel, Footsteps in The Snow and Sand, on the horrors of Soviet occupation, held at the Birmingham Medical Institute.*

*Christopher Orland addressing a literary society on his recent book.*

Arena Books has now expanded the range of its literary output through the production of quality fiction – some of which seeks to defy the “marketing fads” of the larger publishing corporations which have chosen to arrogate what they questionably claim is the “popular taste.” In promoting new authors as Christopher Orland or Debra Baker, or those with an established track record in fiction as Stig Dalager or Forbes Bramble, we arrange presentations and readings of their work at literary societies.

*Forbes Bramble speaking to pupils at the Colchester Royal Grammar School.*

Our flagship fiction title is The Girl From East Berlin, an epic fact-based romantic novel set in the divided German capital between 1957-1961, with an Epilogue updating the story of the main characters to 2006. Currently our most prominent author, Stig Dalager, is the leading Danish writer, poet, playwright, novelist, and editor of a leading literary magazine, whose works have already been translated into eleven languages.

Book launches

*Audience at the reception held for Stig Dalager’s book launch at the Royal Danish Embassy in London, arranged in conjunction with the German Embassy.*

L. to R. Stig Dalager, Prof. Andreas Gestrich, Director of the German Historical Institute in London (Chair), and Prof. Richard J. Evans of Cambridge University, addressing a book launch for Two Days in July, held at the Residence of the Royal Danish Embassy in Hans St., London.

Book launches are rare events in the literary world today, except for the launch of mass market titles, usually ghosted on behalf of star quality personalities already known in the world of TV, sport, or pop music; but Arena Books, through their own strategic approach, encourages authors to organise profitably their own launch events. These have usually proven very successful in promoting sales on a local or regional basis, and are always complementary to the worldwide publicity included within the remit of our standard publishing services.

Entering our titles for Literary Awards

Perhaps of most significant in enhancing the reputation of our authors is our involvement with the many literary awards available, such as the Galaxy Awards sponsored by a number of different retail chains, those of the BBC, the Booktrust, The Society of Authors, the Costa Book Awards, the Guardian, the Desmond Elliott Prize, the Hawthornden Prize, the Booker Prize, the Duff Cooper Prize, the Somerset Maugham Awards, and many others.

Most Awards can only be entered by publishers on behalf of their authors, but a further difficulty is that many are confined to specific gender or upper or lower age limits, and adherence to the restricted margins of publication dates. This makes it difficult for authors to identify the prize winning competitions in which they should attempt to participate – and moreover to submit their books within the correct time periods.

Arena Books maintains ongoing contact with most the Literary Award agencies, and as soon as forthcoming competitions are announced, we always alert our authors when the criteria is met, and we feel they should enter their books for a literary prize.

The Satisfaction of our Authors

Our sales success and good relationship with our authors is also made evident by the fact we have been called upon to publish further books by the following authors:- Stig Dalager, David Knowles, Richard Pooler, Danuta Gray, Reginald Harland, Gary Ross, Carole McCall, P.R. Brown, Peter Curson and Doug Clelland.

E-books

All our books are now published as E-books, and after several years of experimenting with different price levels, we have now succeeded in setting best marketing prices, and placing all our titles (irrespective of their length) within 3 price levels: viz., Academic (top price); Other Trade (intermediate price); and, Fiction (lowest price).

When we first embarked on publishing E-books in the academic MyiLibrary system some years ago, prices were identical with print editions, as that was the accepted policy at the time. E-book publishing has changed greatly since that time in a highly competitive world. Amazon now leads the way as the guide to pricing E-books – and any publisher who fails to follow their lead, does so at that peril.

All our books are now made available on Amazon Kindle, and can be made available on Kobo and Barnes & Noble if the author wishes. Of course our academic books remain available through MyiLibrary. Our main motive in publishing E-books is still to promote sales of hard copies through doubling display space on websites worldwide and as a medium for advertising through on-line browser facilities. Our E-books usually appear 3-4 months after the publication of the conventional formats.