[ePub] Joffe Books / Not So Noble Books

[Undercover]

http://www.joffebooks.com/

Their covers look good, IMO. Not much experience is stated on the "about us" page though.

They say they'll look at just about anything. I tend to be leery when a publisher wants every genre. I don't know though. Just thought to post in case someone was interested.

 

[Becca C.]

Guy's name is Jasper Joffe, based in the UK.

Their covers are okay, but I'm really not crazy about the unattributed quotes on the fronts. Someone is telling me that this is "The Most Gripping Suspense Thriller You Will Ever Read," but I don't know who. And they pretty much all have them! It's weird...

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

I reviewed one of these books. It had an impressive Amazon ranking in its subcategory, and the author claimed to have sold as many as 80k copies in correspondence with me, IIRC. The book had some merit as a dark thriller in my view, and the author has talent, but I thought it needed stronger editing than it had received.

It had a bunch of somewhat generic-sounding, glowing Amazon reviews, similar to those cover quotes. But people did seem to be buying it...

 

[aliceshortcake]

Almost half of their books are public domain classics, and one of their new books - Woof Hall by Hilarity Mental - is an anonymous parody of a bestseller.

Odd.

 

[Undercover]

I reviewed one of these books. It had an impressive Amazon ranking in its subcategory, and the author claimed to have sold as many as 80k copies in correspondence with me, IIRC. The book had some merit as a dark thriller in my view, and the author has talent, but I thought it needed stronger editing than it had received.

It had a bunch of somewhat generic-sounding, glowing Amazon reviews, similar to those cover quotes. But people did seem to be buying it...

80k copies? That's hard to believe. I search for publishers all the time and this is the first time I came across it. It's buried under pages of Google. If the author was selling 80K copies, I would think it'd be easier to find and heard of more.

 

[Helix]

Joffe Books is run by artist Jasper Joffe as an imprint of Not So Noble Books.

 

[aliceshortcake]

Oh, God. Self-congratulatory or what?

Erik Empson and Jasper Joffe started Not So Noble Books because they saw an opportunity to use their skills and knowledge to produce books which they were passionate about and which might otherwise be homeless in the slums created by mainstream commercial publishing. Books that range from genre fiction to academic texts, books which don’t conform… even to each other. Because who cares about brand identity when every book can be chosen on its merits rather than because it has a big publishing house behind it?

A typical book might involve Jasper thinking of a text and an angle, Erik doing an edit and writing an introduction, the blurb a mere wine cork away, a hitchhiking hipster designing the cover, and their intern tweeting and facebooking about it, while busy buying regular cadeaux of piccoli pensieri to keep our favourite, esteemed author, the tempestuous Ann Abrams at bay. Or any combination of the above.
http://www.radicaleyes.it/notsonoblebooks/about.htm

Yes, because big publishing houses don't choose books on their merits. And I hope Erik didn't edit those paragraphs.

After all that hype I don't get the impression that there's anything particularly non-conformist about the books published by NSNB.

 

[Helix]

They do seem to be over-doing it just a bit.

Not So Noble Books is also associated with The Book Folks.

 

[waylander]

The website is nicely set up and directed to readers not authors which is a good sign.

 

[JaneD]

I did think maybe somebody ought to buy them a thesaurus so they could find an alternative to 'gripping' to describe everything they publish. Then I looked at their amazon uk rankings—seems pretty impressive to me, so 'gripping' must be working. They must be doing it right to get those kind of figures.

 

[Fuchsia Groan]

80k copies? That's hard to believe. I search for publishers all the time and this is the first time I came across it. It's buried under pages of Google. If the author was selling 80K copies, I would think it'd be easier to find and heard of more.

I'm also (always) skeptical, and I may be misquoting, as I can't find the email with that claim. The book does currently have 374 Amazon reviews (many more than when I read it) and is ranked about 5000, much higher in its subcategories, and his other books with Joffe appear to be selling OK.

The writer's plots do seem fairly "gripping" , editing issues aside. I have no idea what the publisher may have done to help him find readers, or whether he did that himself. The covers are nice, though.

 

[Undercover]

I checked out some of the books on Amazon and it seems that they are doing good.

I still wish there was more info on the about page.