Booky Gadgets

When you work in publishing, one can't help feeling the immense pleasure of being utterly UTTERLY swamped in books, I have books on every surface of my bedroom, the bed itself is surrounded on four sides by shelves and windowsill, desk and wardrobe, all of which have books on them. If there weren't shoes in the draw under my bed, there would be books in there too, but lets not get crazy and start throwing out pumps.

There are still a million books I want to read, and every birthday and Christmas, or just because, I am ALWAYS pleased to take a book as a gift. It is a definite winning gift for me. A book? Brilliant. I honestly love getting a book, especially if it is on my wish list. ;) 

But I've been thinking that there might be some other bookish things that people might like that are not books, and I'm not talking about Kindles, that is just a very fancy, very thin library. I'm thinking Gadgetry and accessories. So if you have a bookish friend with a birthday coming up, and you're not sure about what book to get them, why not try one of these:

Prism Glasses

Reading in bed is one of life's little luxuries, but sitting up to read can crick your neck and numb your tail bone. Or you lie on your side and read everything side ways. I would love to try prism glasses. especially at the bargain price of £6.79 on amazon. Buy here.

Transparent Book Weight

So, this is an awesome design by the geniuses at TENT. But after some research, you can't buy it anywhere, and it is almost £50 to buy it from Asia and get it to the UK! If you're ready to invest you can buy it here. I've wondered though, if it would break all your paperback spines...

A Thumb Thing

want want want want. Reading on the tube standing up has opened my eyes to the problem of one handed reading. This is how not to get an achy thumb! There are mixed reviews on Amazon, mostly about the size (medium is very small apparently) and some reports that it might damage your books. hmmm. 

Book-scented Candle!

From the Etsy shop Frostbeard studio, a husband and wife team make Bibliofile style candles including potterhead tea lights that bring the smell of your favourite books, movies and games into your room. And they're soy. Buy it from Etsy.

Magic Book Clip

Similar to the thumb thing, but I feel like this would be more of a textbook/student gadget. for when you need to prop open a book for reference for long periods of time. Buy it here!

Mark My Time Book Mark

This is meant to be to make reading fun for kids, with the Mark My Time bookmarks, you can time how long you read for, an hour here and hour there with an alarm that goes off when the hour is up. It also means when you only have ten minutes to spare before running out the door, you can lose yourself in the book without glancing up at the clock. 

The BookSeat Pillow

Another nifty solution to the crick in the neck. £35 from Amazon. There are a couple of complaints that it isn't weighted well enough and added some bean bag beans to help it stay in shape. Lots of people use it to multi-task while eating or standing and cooking, or knitting. A handy gift for anyone with RSI injuries or recovering from surgery.

Readers Night Stand

You can get these on Amazon for about £30. I think they're a great idea. Although, I do need a drawer for all the things I need every day, tweezers, sleeping pills, kindle charger...but perhaps that could all live in a box...Have a browse on Amazon.

Book Shaped Light

This clocks in at the most expensive at £95 or $160! But I just love this design. I think it would be the best bedside light ever, forget the glare of desk lamps, it casts a gentle light, and when it is closed you can just put your book on top or pop the Lumio into the bookshelf, so you can use the top of your bedside table for other things, like more books...If you buy a Readers Night Stand. Lumio is a Kickstarter success story, by designer Max Gunawan. There are a couple of things I'd be interested in learning about the Lumio design, if I ever get one, I would definitely review it with my thoughts.

Sadly I do not own any of these nifty things but I wish I did. Consider this my Christmas list.

Interning at Movellas

I was an intern at Movellas in June 2014 for three weeks. If anyone is interested in publishing internships Movellas is an awesome place to start. Movellas is a teen story-sharing community. In a nutshell, teens can write and publish their own stories on the site. Other teens read, comment and offer constructive criticism. The company has gone from strength to strength and now has over 250,000 active users a month. Users post 5,000 comments a day and there are 10,000 hours of daily engagement on the site.

So why choose Movellas? Well, there are a couple things that you want from an internship:

1) A really cool team. If you can't get along with the people that you're working with then it is really tough to drag yourself into work every day. I loved working at Movellas.  At the moment the team is in Soho, central London in a very trendy office. There are five members of staff who are all lovely and the benefit of being one of five is that the CEO of the company is there as well as your direct bosses. Publishing is a small world, so it is always good to be noticed by the whole company rather than just your manager.

2) Expenses. Preferably, you really want to be looking for paid internships, especially in London as it is pretty costly. But often expenses only internships might be the only thing available. Paid internships also tend to have a more rigorous interview process and want people with more experience.  Having said that, Movellas want good interns to work for them. They can be a great place to gain that experience. PLUS digital publishing is a very good place to start out and could give you the edge over other people. Movellas pay travel and lunch expenses which is V. generous considering it is all London prices. They were also understanding and flexible about peak times and peak prices.

3) Cool Factor. Movellas is swimming in cool. But what I mean by Cool Factor is totally subjective. you have to enjoy the work that you are doing and that means being interested in what the company is doing. Movellas has alot of exciting and new things happening at the moment and it was easy to be enthusiastic and pleased about the projects they are working on. You need this in any job, if you're not excited about where the company is going, you're unlikely going to enjoy your time there. For me that meant getting excited about Movella's engagement with their users.

4) Work. The worst thing in the world, is going into an internship and the whole experience being a waste of time. Movellas always have things for the interns to do, if you lend yourself to one particular skill or another, they will ask you to do more of it.

Movellas was such a great opportunity for me, I learned so much and highly recommend it as an internship placement. Movellas is awesome. As Google would say: +1

Here are just a few things I got to do while at Movellas:

I wrote a blog post introducing a Movellas author getting published on amazon: http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406241216248575/movellas-author-gets-published-on-amazon

A round-up for sugarscape.com of 8 alternate endings to The Fault in Our Stars
http://www.sugarscape.com/main-topics/book-club/1047192/top-8-alternate-endings-fault-our-stars-fan-fic

Announced the winners of competitions: The Forever song.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406271135518662/the-forever-song-illustration-competition-results

My TFIOS movie review also featured on Movellas
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406181650227291/movie-review-4-the-fault-in-the-stars-spoilers

Composed a quiz.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406201433401186/are-you-a-john-green-super-fan

Was hilarious.
http://www.movellas.com/blog/show/201406251758255238/funny-friday-face-the-boggart

I proofread and edited the full manuscript of The Last Girl by Riley Shasteen. I also helped to publish it through Amazon Kindle.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L8CUD6A