eBooks - The first year ...

At the weekend Birlinn celebrated their first year in eBooks, and what an exciting year it has been! Since we launched with 40 titles, we have continued to release digital editions of our titles now until over 150 eBooks are available to download. 

In a year, we’ve sold over 150,000 eBooks, had a Kindle number one bestseller in The Final Curtsey, and seen a revitalisation of our crime backlist with Ken McClure, David Ashton, Gillian Galbraith and Shirley McKay all appearing in the Kindle top 10 at some point in 2011. We’ve partnered in successful, exciting and innovative promotions with companies such as Apple, Starbucks, Kobo and Hi-Arts and sold eBooks all over the world - who knew there were Wojtek fans in Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, Bob Servant fans in Botswana or McGonagall fans in Korea?

The app!

But we’re not resting on our laurels. This week we launched our very first App, Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh, everything you need to know and more about the bestselling 44 Scotland Street series. It’s a free download with audio clips, extracts, an interactive map, and an exclusive never-before-published short story. 

The Sky's Dark Labyrinth

And we have more Apps in production. We’re currently working with the British Lions for an incredible multi-platform Christmas release, and partnering Stuart Clark with The Science Museum, London for an amazing collaboration on the Sky’s Dark Labyrinth trilogy.

And, of course, we will continue to release more of our titles—a fantastic mix of fiction, poetry, history, sport, humour, current affairs and biographies—as eBooks, all of which are available on the most popular eBook retailers websites (www.amazon.co.uk, www.waterstones.co.uk, www.kobobooks.com and the iBookstore). 

Keep an eye on www.birlinn.co.uk for the latest titles available as eBooks, or find us on Facebook and Twitter!

Birlinn is delighted to announce that Professor Charles Withers, one of the authors of Scotland: Mapping the Nation, has been awarded the Founder's Medal for 2012 of the Royal Geographical Society. The Founder’s Medal is a Royal Medal approved by the Queen, for the encouragement and development of historical and cultural geography, and counts Sir David Attenborough and Sir Ranulph Fiennes amongst previous winners. Charles is Professor of Historical Geography at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of the British Academy, the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Historical Society, and the Royal Society of Arts.

With his coauthors Christopher Fleet and Margaret Wilkes, Charles created one of the most popular titles published by Birlinn last year, Scotland Mapping the Nation. The book, described by the Times Educational Supplement as ‘elegantly written, thoroughly referenced and exquisitely presented’, tells the history of Scotland from the innovative perspective of maps and map-making.

Congratulations Charles, from everyone at Birlinn!