We're delighted to announce our forthcoming second book, The Way Forward: Finding Sovereignty and Wisdom by Xuemo, translated by Riccardo Moratto. This is the first in a planned programme of collaborations with Xuemo and Professor Moratto, to publish Xuemo's non-fiction titles in the English language. We'll be taking things one book at a time, but the hope is that we'll be able to publish an array of such titles over the next few years.

We work hard here at Tithebarn Press to get coverage in the media for the press itself and for our books. This week yielded our first foray into the realm of print journalism, and while it's a small step in many ways we wanted to share it with you. The Broadclyst Broadsheet is the quarterly parish newsletter for the parish that includes Tithebarn (which is where we're based, hence the name).

We're delighted to share that Malcolm Murfett is on today's episode of the New Books in History Podcast, talking to Charles Coutinho about Eden's Alternative to Appeasement. You can listen to it here. Many thanks to Charles and to the New Books Network for their support, at this early stage in our publishing we're happy for any opportunity to expose our books to a wider audience.

You might have noticed I've been a bit quiet for a few weeks. Partly that's because it's the school summer holidays, partly it's because I've been working away on a couple of things we're not quite ready to announce yet. Watch this space... This week, however, I do have a couple of bits of news to share. The first, as alluded to in our title, is that following on from our…

“I always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it. It is never of any use to oneself.” Mabel Chiltern in Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband "Oh, great, a clip show. I hate clip shows. They're just a lazy way for the writers to cash a paycheck while recycling old jokes." Homer Simpson Over the past ten months or so since our website went live I've posted a number of pieces offering unsolicited advice on a range of aspects of book publishing.

Just a quick one this week, as I've had quite a lot of editing to do, and lots of history magazines to email about potential reviews (watch this space). For those of you who've been frantically waiting to have a copy of Eden's Alternative to Appeasement on your Amazon Kindle, your long dark teatime of the soul is over and you can acquire your copy at your local Amazon website.

Astonishingly, to me at least as it's all I've talked about for approximately two months now, there are still some people in the world unaware of the existence of our fantastic first book Eden's Alternative to Appeasement. This is of course a huge part of our role as a publisher, to find ways to make our books visible. In an attention economy it's a challenge that we're trying to deal with in every way we can.

I make a point of ending each of our updates with a call for book proposals. This week I'm going to start with one instead. If you'd like to discuss a book project with us, please get in touch at proposals@tbarnpress.com. But what are you looking for? This is always a good question to ask your prospective publisher. And conveniently it gives me the opportunity to set out what our publishing aims are.

I may have mentioned once, or twice that we've now published our first title, Eden's Alternative to Appeasement by Malcolm Murfett. It's an immensely proud moment for us, and we want to share it with as many people as we can. So this week, we thought we'd lay out the reasons why we think reading this particular book is such a worthwhile use of your time.

I promised something big this week and I'm sure this will not disappoint. Malcolm and I sat down last week for about half an hour over Zoom to discuss Eden's Alternative to Appeasement. It's our first foray into attempting to produce video content to promote our books, and while I've been left with no desire to make a full pivot from books to video, I am very pleased with the result.

I was very pleased to spot this week that Eden's Alternative to Appeasement is now available in paperback from Waterstones, Kinokuniya and Kyobo bookstore. I'm keeping a full list of links for all the sites I know of where it's available here and of course the best place to buy it from if you're in the UK or US is at…

As we mentioned last week, Eden's Alternative to Appeasement is now available to buy in paperback and ebook. This week we also released the hardback, so do encourage your library to buy a copy! The best place to buy the paperback if you're in the UK or US is at our direct purchase link bit.ly/EdenMurfett where we offer a 20% discount.

The story of Anthony Eden's push to persuade FDR's administration to be more assertive in the Pacific in the late inter-war period.

We're absolutely thrilled to announce that you can now order paperback copies of Eden's Alternative to Appeasement by Malcolm Murfett, if you live in the UK or USA. Just click the link below to order your copy at a 20% discount — £20/$28 plus p&p. Eden's Alternative to Appeasement: The Anglo-Ameri .... Murfett, Malcolm Buy Now We're expecting the book to also be available from all the major online retailers (and available to order from bookshops) imminently, but it takes a few days for data to cascade through the system.

This is the first and most important (and exciting) part of this week's update. You can buy the ebook of Eden's Alternative to Appeasement from the kobo store here: . It should also be going live shortly on other ebook sites — most notably Amazon — over the next week or so. We'll certainly mention in future updates as it starts appearing in other major outlets.

It's been a long week in some respects, we've been through a few rounds of Eproofs to ensure everything looks the way we want it to in the final book. Inevitably I spot something new and small, but just annoying enough to want it changed every time a new proof comes through, and then we have to wait for the next one.

Well, that headline is not quite technically accurate to how the process actually operates, but it's the most succinct way to explain where we now are. So where exactly are we? The final book files have been submitted to our platform provider and they will shortly generate final proofs. Once we've checked those for any overlooked or introduced errors, we'll approve them and wait for the printable files to be generated.

Easter came early on in our school holidays down here in Devon, with Good Friday the first day off school we were plunged straight into the long weekend. The weather is currently beautiful here, and with every grass verge sprouting bluebells, whitebells and the odd pinkbell, East Devon is full of colour. I am therefore spending a large portion of the days this week trying to persuade my sons to go outside and enjoy it.

We're thrilled to announce that we've settled on a cover design for Eden's Alternative to Appeasement! As well as our "blurb" text for the back cover: As Foreign Secretary in Neville Chamberlain’s Cabinet in 1937, Eden didn’t believe in appeasing the German and Italian dictatorships or the militaristic Japanese regime. Instead, he wanted to confront their  aggression head on. Faced with growing Japanese assertiveness, including the launching of an undeclared war on China in July 1937, Eden appealed to the US for help.

Following on from last week's update, this week is more of a status report. I decided posting nothing at all might be a slippery slope to abandoning what I find to be a useful discipline, so instead I'm just going to say a little about what I'm up to. Think of it as a kind of realtime version of my…

This week I'm going to take a break from offering publishing advice and instead give a short update on what is happening here at Tithebarn at the moment. Suffice to say it's been an exciting first quarter so far. To begin with, I'm thrilled to announce that we've signed our first two authors. More on the first of these in a moment.

Last Thursday was World Book Day. As a parent I always find it inspiring to see all the children at my sons' school get excited about their favourite stories and characters. Walking into school we saw scores of exuberant kids dressed as characters that someone somewhere was once just siting in their study -- or coffee shop, or office -- and making up.

I have been asked this question quite often, both in my current role at Tithebarn Press, and back when I was a commissioning editor at Routledge. At first glance it might seem like an obvious opening to pitch whomever my current employer happens to be, but I've always preferred to take the long view. People can usually tell when you're giving them the party line, and even if they can't in the moment, it may become apparent to them later that you weren't straight with them.

Over the past two weeks, we've looked at how book projects begin and how manuscripts are transformed into books via the production process. This week we'll continue by looking at what happens after a book is published. As before we'll be using our example of Sarah Connor and her potentially world-saving book Resisting the Rise of the Machines: Will Skynet “be back”?

Last week we looked at the publishing process from 10,000 metres, before talking about how we get a project started. Continuing with our example of Sarah Connor and her magnum opus Resisting the Rise of the Machines: Will Skynet “be back”? this week we will be going through the Production process step by step. I should say that the details of this may vary a bit from publisher to publisher.

One of the challenges of having spent nearly twenty years working in publishing, and mostly working with people who tend to have some sense of how it works, is that it can be hard to step outside of your own context to explain it from scratch to somebody who really does not have a frame of reference for it. I attended a careers evening at the school where my wife works recently, mostly to talk to the pupils about academic publishing and editorial work.

In the last of our three week series, we're carrying on where we left off last week, continuing to look at the challenges involved in publishing images in your book, and how to manage them. We're concluding by looking at issues around image quality, and the particular challenges that relate to selecting a cover image. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading the previous two weeks' posts first, then here goes:

This week we're carrying on where we left off last week, continuing to look at the challenges involved with publishing images and how to manage them. If you haven't already, I'd recommend reading last week's post first. This week we're going to look particularly at managing copyright issues: Managing Copyright I won't go into all of the permutations and pitfalls here, and it's worth keeping in mind that I have no legal training.

This week we're bringing you the first in a 3-week series looking at the issues around selecting and submitting images for your book manuscript. We're not going to cover absolutely everything, and as always your mileage may vary, depending on the publisher you work with, but here we go with part one: One of the things that surprised me when I started my career in publishing as an editorial assistant (EA), was how much of my time was spent worrying about images.

Last week, while thinking about the future of publishing, I touched on fundamental questions about the continuing importance of reading. I mentioned that I'm a bit baffled by just how much video has come to dominate over audio and written content, which I personally tend to prefer. To a certain extent I have to accept that things have moved on since my adolescence in the early 2000s, when most online content was (by necessity) written, and podcasts were a new and exciting alternative to broadcast radio.

I've been working in publishing long enough to know that anybody who tells you they know what the industry will look like on a ten or twenty year time scale is probably either deluded, or trying to sell you something. Quite probably both. In fact predicting the future in publishing is actually quite paradoxical. The short term is in some ways quite predictable -- because it takes long enough to publish a book that our planning horizons are typically 6-18 months into the future.

The start of 2026 marks four months since the public launch of Tithebarn Press. The change of year feels like a good time for reflection on how far we've come already and where we're hoping to get to this coming year. If we're tracking progress over 2025 then we really need to go back to May, when I reached out to a handful of authors I'd worked with at Routledge to ask them how they would feel about a new independent academic publisher.

I'm taking a little break this week to spend time with my family, with just a couple of bits of manuscript to look at. A significant proportion of my regular readers won't be celebrating Christmas, but for those who are -- whether you're roasting chestnuts on an open fire, or throwing another shrimp on the barbie -- have a peaceful and refreshing break.

I should begin this week's update by being clear about my terms. In recent years the word "blurb" has commonly come to refer to what most of us in the industry call "endorsements", that is to say recommendations by third parties that are reproduced on or in your book in order to help sell it. This is not what we are talking about today -- although we doubtless will talk about them in future.

It probably won't surprise you that this can be one of the thorniest questions for publishers and authors to discuss. Authors often get very set on a particular title that appeals to them, whereas publishers typically have a very prescriptive view of what a title should and should not say. Alternatively, some authors don't have a strong sense of what their book should be called and while this can be less diplomatically challenging, it can also lead to remarkably long exchanges batting ideas backwards and forwards between author and commissioning editor.

We've been talking about proposals and reviewing for some time now, and so I thought this week we'd go into a bit more detail on manuscripts. Specifically, what it is that we at Tithebarn Press do with manuscripts once they arrive. I should stress that whereas in some of my recent updates I've talked in quite broad terms about how academic publishers in general behave, this post applies particularly to us.

Last week I wrote about why you should say yes as often as you can when asked to review book proposals. This week, on the basis that if a job is worth doing it is worth doing well, I thought I'd write about what this actually involves, and how to be a model reviewer. As always, your mileage may vary with different publishers, but most of these points will be fairly universal.

Over the past few weeks we've talked about how the proposal review process sits at the core of academic book publishing. The entire process depends upon academics giving up their time to enter into good faith criticism of book proposals. This week I wanted to talk a little about why reviewing is a good thing to do, what editors are hoping to see from their reviewers, and answer some common questions I've been asked about this over the years.

Last week I wrote about what the review process is for, this week I'm going to talk about the response stage. This is the part of the process where we send you your reviews, and ask you to provide us with a response. This is a vital stage in the process, and also illustrates how distinct the book proposal review process tends to be from the journal article review process.

One of the things we've had to consider quite carefully at Tithebarn Press, is what the function of reviews is in our publishing and how we go about undertaking them. I'm delighted to say that this has been especially on my mind lately as our first formal book proposals are now coming in. It's an exciting time for us, but also one where we are establishing the pathways for our key procedures.

I've written previously about when to propose your book and of course you can always refer to our book proposal form as well as our guidance notes to help you complete it . After last week's tips on writing your manuscript I thought it would be helpful to highlight some major do's and don'ts for putting together your book proposal.

This is in an area where I've picked up quite a few tips over the years. As always with such things your mileage may vary and there is no right way to go about writing a manuscript. Getting advice from a publisher about writing is rather like getting advice from a Catholic priest about sustaining a happy marriage: we've never done it ourselves and yet we spend our professional lives trying to help other people do it.

For some readers, the answer to this might seem obvious, or irrelevant. At a certain point in your career you can have the confidence that whenever you're ready to talk to a book publisher they'll be ready to talk to you. For others, though, I know this can feel like a fraught question. Too early and you might not be taken seriously, or find yourself committed to something major before you're ready.

This is a question that, as a Commissioning Editor, I was asked with some frequency. It's easy when your job is to commission books to take it for granted that writing and publishing books is a good thing to do. As a bibliophile my instinct is to see books as a self-evident good. That said, I do think there is value sometimes in taking a step back to ensure that the path we are on is a sensible one.

When we were first trying to articulate the kind of books we wanted to publish "rigorous" and "readable" was the most succinct form of words we could come up with. As you can see from how often our website and other public facing materials use them, they still are. So what exactly do we mean by them? Perhaps it's worth starting by saying we originally formulated them as "rigorous but readable".

If you've read through our brief summary of why you should publish with us, you'll have seen a reference to our personalised approach to publishing. Sure, that sounds great - who wants an impersonal approach to publishing - but what do we really mean by it? You work one on one with me throughout I am the commissioning editor, content editor, copy editor, typesetter, cover designer, inventory manager, marketing manager and salesperson for your book.

I’ve long been fascinated by the paradox of the sea - and really this applies to any large body of water, be it a great lake, or a navigable river, as well as the open ocean - that it is at once a barrier and a conduit. From a military point of view, sea borders tend to be defensible because of the high cost in blood and treasure of attacking across open water, but also vulnerable when an enemy is prepared to deploy in strength potentially with war machines that would be unthinkably large to manoeuvre on land.

Migration I am myself a migrant. I am less of one than I used to be, if that’s possible to say, but I remain a migrant. I spent most of the first 24 years of my life within about fifteen kilometres of Oxford, and then proceeded to spend the next twelve and a half years about eleven thousand kilometres away in Singapore.

The great joy of the English literature degree course I took was that it gave us a great degree of freedom to read whichever authors we wanted, as long as we could write something halfway intelligent about them. Much of the time we were constrained only by time period, and when it came to thematic papers, not even that. I would take every opportunity to read and to write about the funniest authors I could find.