Buy the Book....and Give to Charity

The book is now for sale in the Alzheimer's Society shop in Sydney Street. If you buy your copy there then 30% of the cover price will go to help the Alzheimer's Society in caring for people suffering from dementia. To find out more visit their website:
http://www.alzheimers.org.uk/

A Second Chance to Advertise in the Book

The book has now been in print for about 2 months and the first print run of 1000 books has already sold out. The publisher, Pen Press, has just commissioned a 2nd print run, but is looking to do another larger print run in the near future.

The book has recently been featured on TV on ITV's Meridian Tonight (watched by 500,000 viewers), had a 20 minute slot on BBC Southern Counties Radio (100,000 listeners), had a full page feature (p.3) in the Argus and also had reviews in local magazines.

All of this publicity is expected to lead to heavy sales during the Christmas period. The book is also selling in 5 Brighton University retail outlets - with a captive audience of 22,000 students in Brighton University alone.

In addition the recently published guide has already received several accolades, including:
“Exhaustive guide to the drinking delights of the most exciting city in the UK” – Attila the Stockbroker
“The BBP guide does an excellent job” – Latest 7
“This guide offers all you need to know, and for an affordable price! Highly recommended!” – Reviewer on Amazon
“It's well worth a look if you see it at a pub, beer festival or bookshop.” – Sussex Drinker
The book is for sale in locations throughout Brighton & Hove and online via Amazon, Waterstones, WHSmiths and Tesco.com.

The price for a full page advert in the main body of the book is £250. All adverts are mono. You have the choice whether to advertise in the various sections of the book: Pubs, Clubs or Breweries. If you are interested in advertising on the website then that is also a possibility.

Please contact us by email or call 07812 583551 if you are interested.

Rocks Magazine Review

"Rocks" magazine gave a short review of the book in their October issue, review extract follows:

"This is a brave and ambitious project considering Brighton has somewhere in the region of 400 places to get pissed. The enthusiasm of the Pub Jury is evident and the time and effort of visiting 300 pubs must be lauded."

Retail Rationalisation

Well, several shops I was selling the book in have sold out and in others it wasn't selling at all, so they were obviously bad places to sell the book. So I did a bit of rationalisation.

The book is no longer for sale in Resident, Wax Factor and Shoppers Paradise Gallery. I transferred the copies to HMV who had sold out. It also isn't for sale in em Space, mainly because it shut down!

Apparently the publisher no longer has any copies of the first print run left and are waiting on a 2nd run from the printer.

So you can now get it in:

The 4 Brighton University Student Union shops,
Blackwells Bookshop (Brighton University, Cockroft building),
The Basketmakers Arms (North Laine),
Both Pussy shops (Kensington Gardens & Bartholomews).

Shops which I am pretty sure still have stock are:
Custard (The Lanes, near the Bath Arms),
Sussex in the City (The Lanes),
Cardome (St James St),
City Books (Western Road),
Barnets Barbers (Old Steine, near St Peters Church),
Tourist Information (next to the Town Hall),
The Pavillion Shop (next to the Pavillion!),
Kemptown Books (Kemptown!),
HMV (Western Road or Churchill Sqr).
Dave's Books (Sydney Street)

I've heard that Waterstones had sold out and ordered more, but not sure if they have them in.
Borders, Sussex Stationers, & WHSmiths haven't stocked it yet, but may be ordering it.

Online you can get it on Amazon, Waterstones and WHSmiths, on various timescales....

Brighton Fans Pub Jury

Here's the votes of the "North Stand Jury", Brighton & Hove Albion Fans, from their chatboard:
http://www.northstandchat.biz/

I took all the votes cast there and added them up:
11 Votes, Basketmakers
8 Votes, Battle of Trafalgar, Lord Nelson
6 Votes, Great Eastern, Caxton Arms
5 Votes, Evening Star, Lion and Lobster, Robin Hood
4 Votes, Conqueror, Cricketers, Greys,
3 Votes, Constant Service, Dover Castle, Hop Poles, Setting Sun, Sussex, Windmill

Everything else 2 or less votes.

Sussex CAMRA Pub of the Year

Sussex CAMRA named the Evening Star as their pub of the year for 2006. Runner up was the Stanley Arms in Portslade.
Ray Bray, Sussex and Surrey regional director for Camra, said the award was, "for the quality of the beers, the way they dispense it and the clientele.
"They use hand pumps. Being real ale, it is better coming out of a hand pump or straight out of the cask because you don't use CO2 or nitrogen.
"You can enjoy the flavour a lot more. Putting CO2 in there destroys it."
The pub is owned by the Dark Star brewery, in Ansty, near Haywards Heath, which this year has won awards for its espresso coffee beer, available in bottles at The Evening Star.
Last year the pub was awarded the accolade of Camra's Sussex and Surrey Pub of the Year.

As Seen on TV!

If you missed it you can catch it on http://www.meridiantv.com/ using internet explorer

Select Your Town from the left hand column and select Brighton News from the right hand side of the video window.

Or watch it on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gl4sARW2cnQ

Where Can You Buy the Book?

Seems like in the rush of publicity that people are having trouble buying the book, so I thought I'd do an update of where it is now on sale.....
New Additions are: the 4 Brighton University Student Union shops, Blackwells Bookshop (Brighton University, Cockroft building), The Basketmakers Arms (North Laine), both Pussy shops (Kensington Gardens & Bartholomews).
Shops which I am pretty sure still have stock are: Custard (The Lanes, near the Bath Arms), Sussex in the City (The Lanes), Dave's Books (Sydney Street), em space (Sydney St), Wax Factor (Trafalgar St), Cardome (St James St), City Books (Western Road), Resident Records (Kensington Gardens), Shoppers Paradise Gallery (upstairs, Kensington Gardens), Tourist Information (next to the Town Hall), and The Pavillion Shop (next to the Pavillion!).

Shops where there may still be copies are Barnets Barbers (Old Steine, near St Peters Church), Kemptown Books (Kemptown!), and HMV (Western Road or Churchill Sqr).

I've heard that Waterstones have sold out, but have it on order. Borders, Sussex Stationers, & WHSmiths were resisting stocking it, but I'm hoping they've been asked for it enough times over the last few days to get it in.

Online you can get it on Amazon, Waterstones and WHSmiths, on various timescales....

ITV Meridian Tonight TV Interview!

Well, it feels corny to say it, but it seems that media interviews are like buses. I wait 3 months and then 3 come along at once! Yep, it seems that Meridian Tonight saw the Argus article and wanted to do one on the Brighton Pub Jury!

Yep, after having had a launch event for the media, where no media people turned up, they are now super-keen. It just goes to show that you shouldn't give up - if I hadn't got a friend to take photos and write the pub crawl article up, then I wouldn't have got any of this.....

So, who am I to say 'no' to the TV? So some of the jury went along and did a TV interview this lunchtime in the Basketmakers pub. The cameraman shot from lots of strange angles to maintain our anonymity, which is either going to look great or really crappy.

Anyway, so we and basically everyone we knew, sat down to watch Meridian Tonight, tonight, and we were rewarded with stories about an escaped bird with a 5 foot wingspan, a family going around the world in a bus (one day - the bus was a long way off moving anywhere!) and a haunted house (that wasn't haunted). Hmm.

Well, it seems that there were some "technical difficulties". Lets hope they get resolved and the article goes on tomorrow night!

According to the ITV Meridian Annual Programme Statement, over half a million people watch Meridian Tonight! Come on!

Argus Article

The book had an awesome feature in today's Argus - a leader photo on the front page and then nearly the whole of page 3 dedicated to the book. As someone told me, "You can't buy publicity like this!" Big thanks to the Argus!

For those interested (me): Argus circulation is about 41,000 per day (data from the web, please tell me if its wrong!)

"Friends crawl around 300 inns to produce definitive guide"
"The jury's in on the best pubs"

Live Radio Interview Result!

Well the interview went great - it seemed like about 15 mins, including a bizarre diversion into talking about chocolate bars. Very exciting being in the studio and talking, with the thought that thousands of people were listening in!

Unfortunately, no-one seems to have recorded it, and the "Listen Again" function doesn't work, so it looks like I will never actually hear the show! Anyone out there hear it? And even better, anyone got a recording?

For anyone interested (like me) BBC SC's audience is:
Reach: It is listened to by 272,000 people (11%) each week.
Hours: Each listener tunes in for 8.6 hours per week - a total of 2,350,000.
Share: In its area, it has a 4.5% market share.
So with any luck about 50 thousand people were listening as it was the early evening slot, which is hopefully one of the peak listening times. wow!

Radio Interview!

I'm going to be on BBC Southern Counties Radio tonight, on a slot about 'local authors'! 6.30pm ish.
Nervous....

Hanover Beer Festival

Some of the pub jury took the opportunity to run a stall at the Hanover Community Beer Festival on 29 & 30 September 2006.
We had 2 excellent nights, sampling a wide range of real ales and selling a few books into the bargain.

The Pub Jury also ran the raffle for the Community Centre, raising over £70! The prize - a copy of the book of course! (plus 4 pints of real ale!).

It was good to meet lots of people and talk about the book and lots of pubs, also to meet quite a few off-duty landlords, some of whom were not very happy with the reviews that their pubs received! Oh well, you can't please everyone!