Happy Hogmanay!

(Image credit)

Whether you're fireball swinging in Aberdeen, or 'burning the clavie' in Moray we hope you have a Happy Hogmanay!

But what is Hogmanay? 


In Scotland it is New Years Eve, the day before the New Year. Most celebrations don't kick off until Hogmanay night into the early hours of the New Year and with January the 1st and 2nd being public holidays in Scotland this is probably time enough for people to recover from the Hogmanay celebrations.


When the clock strikes midnight it is customary to hug and kiss the person next to you and wish them a happy new year. If you're at a party - or indeed at the Edinburgh street party - then you'll probably find yourself singing Auld Lang Syne, a traditional Scots poem by poet Robert Burns which is set to traditional folk music.

Whatever your plans are - and wherever you are, we wish you a Happy Hogmanay and a Happy New Year, all the way from Scotland and from North Highland Publishing.

November Recap.

We were delighted to attend the book launch of 'Latter-day Pioneers' at the Alloa library on the 26th of November.

George Stewart (pictured), the author of the book, and North Highland Publishing had been working very hard to bring the book to publication and we were delighted to share in the excitement of the book launch. It is an interesting and exciting book which chronicles the early beginnings of the Latter-day Saints church in Scotland to the present day and George shares his view from Scotland in the book.

The book is avaiable on Amazon, at the Kindle store, here.

We've had an exciting run-up to Christmas with the publication of another book about Scottish identity with Ken Pratt's 'The English Student' which, yep, you guessed it can be bought at the Amazon Kindle store here. 

Tuesday Book Club: What To Expect.

If you missed out on last week's post here about our great new on-line Book Club. 

Every first Tuesday of the month we will release an eBook as part of our Book Club. It will give you, the reader and lover of books, author interviews, Editor recommendations, a chance to share your views and opinions with other readers - and even writers! 

So join in, be a part of something great that's happening at North Highland Publishing and in your eReader! 

For the month of July we're reading the book, available here, "The Land Beyond the Green Fields." 

The timetable for the Book Club is as follows:

Week One: Introduction. 

We will announce the book here on the blog, provide you with the link to the eBook store and catch up with you next week.

Week Two: Reading Week.

Once you have downloaded the book you should begin reading straight away. Every second week in Book Club will be a 'Reading Week' to prepare you for Week Three.

Week Three: Reading and Reviewing Week.

Time to finish up reading! This week has more of a focus on reviewing that month's book. This doesn't have to be lengthily so long as it relates back to the book. Write as much, or as little, as you like - all reviews are at home here!

Week Four: Recommendation Week.

By this week it is expected that you'll have already put a review forward and completed the book. It is time to give your recommendations! Would you tell a friend about the book? Would you like to see more or less of a character? Or perhaps you couldn't put the book down - we want to know it all!

Good luck - and remember to catch up on this month's Book Club book HERE.

London Book Fair, 2011.

Back in January I wrote about our experience with the 2010 Book Fair here. 

 April came around yet again for another year and off to the Book Fair some of the North Highland Publishing Team went.

This is one of the biggest events in the book publishing calendar with an estimated 23,000 publishers, journalists and other experts from the industry from all over the world in attendance. This years focus was on the emerging world of digital publishing. 

Underlying this focus is the perception that a change from paper to electronic books is approaching. 

In the UK, electronic book sales make up about 5% of the market, whereas in the United States, it is up to 10%, with Amazon US stating that it sold more e-books for its Kindle device than paperback books in the last three months of 2010. This, combined with the the pressure put on independent booksellers by giants like Amazon, Google and Apple, means that publishers of all kinds are having to adapt quickly to this changing market.

North Highland Publishing was fortunate to attend seminars on self-publishing, electronic publishing, marketing of Ebooks and many other seminars while at the Book Fair.

The most insightful Masterclass was delivered from Acorn Independent Press -  a brother and sister team who specialise in self publishing - who discussed how the recession and technological advancements had made an impact on the World that is known as self publishing and explained the boom in authors who are self publishing.

 And with known "marketing gurus" like Seth Godin opting out of traditional routes to publish, this comes as no real shock or surprise that the demand for self publishing has risen. Seth made an interesting point on his blog about traditional publishers by saying;

 "I honestly can't think of a single traditional book publisher who has led the development of a successful marketplace/marketing innovation in the last decade."

As far as I can deduce self publishing (and more so electronic publishing) is the innovation; it is current to technological advancements and how customers interact with technology and it allows the author to control what services and products they would like to use for publishing, promoting and selling their book; from electronic publishing, to hard back and POD (print on demand) the options seem far more catered to individuals who have, not unreasonably, individual needs and wants when it comes to publishing their books.

  As demand increases for self-publishing, it will be interesting to watch the shift between traditional and self publishing, especially for first time authors who may otherwise be chewed up and spat out in the big conglomerate publishing house.

Check out our FACEBOOK to see the rest of the London Book Fair photographs.

Happy New 2011 from North Highland Publishing!

 Naturally, we’re very excited for this upcoming year.

The 11-13th of April will be the London Book Fair. Due to that volcano this year we were very sad to be unable to attend the 2010 Book Fair in London – which we had booked tickets for! Such is life, but we hope to be at the 2011 Book Fair, which will feature in it’s run-up, a Masterclass in How to Get Published, being run by author, Peter James.

2011 looks set to be the year of the eBook. With more and more purchases being geared towards e-readers than ever before, interest in eBooks has increased. Last year saw the release of the iPad from Apple and the Kindle e-reader from Amazon. And of course the launch of our site.

Let’s have a great 2011 and that our authors, customers and potential authors will help us to make it a successful year.

Our Story.

Roy was born in Glasgow where he attended school at Allan Glens, followed by university at Dundee. He has worked for the Scottish Government in its various guises and for a number of private organizations. This has included working in the Education sector and the International Relations unit, and has been responsible for marketing in Scotland, UK, North America and the Nordic countries.

Elizabeth was born in Helensburgh and raised in Clydebank. From a young age she has been involved with creative writing and is now a keen reviewer of current literature.

She has completed a course in Social Care at West Lothian College, as well as holding down a number of roles in the care sector that involved private sector organizations and working with Local Authorities. Elizabeth has also experienced the joys of being self-employed for eight years and knows the challenges that this brings!

They have been married (to each other) for over thirty years.

With a lifelong interest in literature we always felt that we each have a “book” in us. A few years ago we decided to take the plunge and write the books that we had always planned. We then started to look at how we would approach publishers and agents.

We investigated a wide range of options including print on demand, self publishing, submissions direct to publishers and working with agents. All of these offer options. We decided to use the growing marketplace for “eBooks” to allow us to put our work “out there”.

While there are a number of sites that will offer you a self help solution to getting your book available as an eBook we decided that we wanted to offer a more personalized service to give a professional review and finish.

We started the company (North Highland Publishing Ltd Company Number SC371879) to offer this professional service. We bring together a range of publishing professionals from editors, graphic designers, proof readers and other publishing services (such as print on demand) to offer a one stop shop for those looking to develop their writing.

We then take this work and sell it on our eBook store. This is marketed by us and the eBook store is there to allow easy access to the marketplace. We also work with other publishers to offer their works as eBooks.

Our website was launched in December 2010.


 We welcome your views and thoughts on how we can best help you to achieve your goals in writing.

Welcome to the Blog.

Welcome to our new look blog!

I'm Cara Quinn and I'm the blog co-ordinator for North Highland Publishing.

 I'm delighted to be introducing you to our new blog ; North Highland Publishing: The Blog.

In this blog we'll cover what we, North Highland Publishing, the company offer and what we are doing.


And as an appendage to this, we'll also be discussing other self-publishing related topics.

Some of the topics I will address in future blog posts: the self-publishing market and how to promote your work and what North Highland Publishing has to offer to you as well as looking into who we are and what we do.

Don't forget, follow us so 
you can keep up to date with our posts, news and updates!