BookBlast® Limited was established in 1997 as a writing agency, handling new writing, anthologies and niche subjects. Over the years, as the publishing landscape has changed, BookBlast® has been renovated and reimagined. Now it is best described as a creative company sitting at the intersection of publishing, authorship and technology.

Our portfolio of literary businesses – written and digital – includes Francophone translation & editing services for publishers and authors; and the rights management of literary estates. The imprint, BookBlast® ePublishing, produces ebook and POD editions of titles by trailblazing women of the fifties and sixties.

The online journal The BookBlast® Diary has showcased independent trade publishing and world writing in translation with a focus on France since 2015. The first BookBlast® 10x10 Tour of live nationwide events showcase independent trade publishing around the regions was held in 2018.

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The BookBlast® 10x10 Tour in association with Waterstones

Click HERE to hear the 10x10 Tour podcasts

Ten risk-taking, innovative publishers and their authors, poets and translators visited nine major cities across England over ten weeks in Autumn 2018. The tour inspired readers to sample writing and ideas from the Middle East, Europe, Africa, Asia and the Caribbean — more HERE

@LisaAppignanesi — “Congratulations from @RSLiterature on your great tour.”

Visibility for the publishers and their authors-translators was enhanced, with their books displayed in participating Waterstones flagship stores, and reviewed or included in round ups in the quality broadsheets including Sunday Times Culture, Telegraph Review, Observer and i-newspaper among others.

Browse the BookBlast® 10×10 Tour catalogue

Our celebration of independent publishing was launched in February 2016. Indie trade publishers bring variety and value to our cultural landscape — more HERE

At BookBlast® we are unashamedly Francophone, bringing you Gallic flair and literary #FCUK

Testimonials

MacLehose Press — "Brilliant work. And what work. Huge salutes."
Les Fugitives — "The BookBlast Diary is great – as I'm sure many writers, readers and publishers have told you before."
Starhaven Press — "Enterprising. Dedicated. Tireless."

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BookBlast® Translation

Trade publishers and authors can join forces with translators via BookBlast to create books from French into English.
We can help you find the best translator to work with you to create a saleable book for the French market.
We can ghostwrite or mentor publishing projects, and troubleshoot “stuck” manuscripts.
We can evaluate and/or translate French-language texts, supply readers' reports, and apply sensitive copy editing to your translation.

More info: Translation

A selection of titles by 1950s bohemian beauties Gael Elton Mayo & Lesley Blanch are available from BookBlast® ePublishing.

Far To Go and Many To Love: People and Places (Quartet Books) is the companion volume to Lesley Blanch's posthumous memoirs, On the Wilder Shores of Love: A Bohemian Life (Virago).

The French edition, translated by Lucien d'Azay is published by La Table Ronde, Paris, under the title Croquis d'une vie de bohème. Figaro Littéraire — "Fine, perceptive writing."

An earlier memoir is now available in the US. “Written in 1968 and reprinted by NYRB Classics this past July, Journey Into the Mind’s Eye, Blanch’s hybrid work of memoir, travelogue, history, and literary criticism is startlingly ahead of its time . . . idiosyncratic and sparklingly entertaining” — Nina Renata Aron, Los Angeles Review of Books.

The Mad Mosaic by Gael Elton Mayo is her first-hand account of World War Two and the fight for freedom against authoritarian populism. It is ominously relevant to Western democracies today. Kindle & POD paperback