Husk by husk, crumb by crumb, pinch by pinch. The trail to follow was laid years before, and left for you and you alone. To another’s eye, it was never there. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound

The ability to survive, and even thrive, in a new environment, is immediately tied to one’s facility for adaptation and rapid reevaluation in the face of a changed worldview. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound

The message that underscores all encounters with the land, with the older ways, is that there are rules you have forgotten. The consequences of which will exact a price. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound

I worked on the UK publication/marketing of this book back in the day and reread it last year—farsighted on technology and society, great characters, a damn good thriller.

Inside the deep midwinter, when the days are narrow, we see our footprints, piled one on top of the other. We have travelled these roads before. #12daysofyule #witheredhill #thedevilssound

Hard to reconcile recent Guardian piece on the decline of non-fiction—and parlous numbers I hear from some authors, agents and publishers—with the feeling that qualitatively we’re in a golden age of non-fiction. So many good books in Foyles, could have spent hundreds more without any difficulty.

We begin, appropriately enough, at the end. Where everything is revealed and some things are put to rest. #12daysofYule #thedevilssound #witheredhill

a little update from @davidmbarnett.bsky.social, @georgewalkley.com and I as we reach for the weekend. Tomorrow, we start 12 Days of Yule… www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...

Well, the one advantage of that ridiculously misspelled surname is that it’s easy to find the posts about it.

That feeling when you watch your important seasonal DHL delivery count down online: 4 deliveries to go, 3, 2, 1, — then the van drives off to the other side of the city and the status just says, we're running late.

Please check out the Kickstarter pre-launch page for THE DEVIL'S SOUND, the new immersive audio horrorexperience in the world of WITHERED HILL. Nobody wants your money (until next year!) but if you could sign up for updates, that would be absolutely fabulous. www.kickstarter.com/projects/tom...

Really excited to be helping @tomabba.studio and @davidmbarnett.bsky.social get this story out into the world. It's going to be a fabulously creepy bit of folk horror. Like Tom said, please sign up for updates on Kickstarter so you get notified and help our follower count. And please repost/share!

As a small business, there’s no worse Christmas present than a much larger, multinational client announcing the day before an invoice is due that they are applying their standard payment terms, not following what was on the invoice. 😩

This may be peak Times picture/caption.

First half hour to myself after a long and difficult week. Relaxing with a drink and Sweary Dallas.

Really interesting piece by @andrewtghill.ft.com on the winner of the FT/Schroders Business Book of the Year. “Nervous excitement” probably undersells the reaction of a room full of publishers and writers to the idea of AI inside a book. But it’s an interesting concept. as.ft.com/r/7aa36214-e...

Again… 😩

@willsh.bsky.social Saw this and thought of you... 😀 hbr.org/2025/12/what...

Most of the time when I think about signal to noise, the ratio skews to the latter. The RSA in London is the exception to that: every time I come in, I run into someone I hadn't expected to see in the coffee shop or the library—today, the brilliant @firefinchbooks.bsky.social en masse.

Every December for the last six years, I've written about my books of the year: the 2025 selection is here, including books on information crises, publishing, the digital world, AI, growth, Rome, the Baltic and the best novel I've ever read about startups: www.linkedin.com/posts/george...

Saturday in London

Our policy advisor @georgewalkley.com has filed his latest update and explains what the #Budget means for publishers and rounds up policy developments around EUDR, AI and reading. Read more here👉 buff.ly/IUcP8Ja #publishing #booksky

That old saying about starve a fever, feed a cold. In the last twenty hour hours I've fed mine the first Christmas party of the season, a delayed train, a frozen car, not enough sleep, nine meetings, 1,000 words of budget commentary for the IPG and a webinar. I think I'm doing it wrong. 🤧

I don't think I'll ever feel comfortable hearing my own voice, but thanks to @alisonjones.com for inviting me on to her podcast recently to talk about publishing, AI and my career and writing. extraordinarybusinessbooks.com/episode-471-...

A very interesting new report by @clemicollett.bsky.social @mctd.bsky.social on the impact of AI on the novel. There's much that I completely agree with and that accords with my experience of working with book trade on AI. But I have some constructive thoughts about the framing/communication. 🧵

Well, the upside of today is that from a risk management/planning perspective, it is giving me a very good sense of what proportion of my business systems use Cloudflare... 🤦🏻‍♂️

DUB-LHR

A very good day at the Publishing Ireland conference in Dublin, where I gave a keynote earlier. A really substantial agenda touching on media trends, copyright, metadata, AI, supply chain, EUDR, sustainability, bookshops, backlists, POD, small presses, resilience, weather impacts.

LHR-DUB to speak at the Publishing Ireland conference tomorrow.

Just Dread-Pirate-Roberts-it. Job done.

Interesting conversation with my 17 y/o on the school run this morning. She has total awareness/knowledge of Zohran Mamdani but couldn't identify Zack Polanski. There's something in this about communication and filter bubbles...

Lasting peace, but it would have made for a very poor Diplomacy board.

I read a lot of opinions about AI and the future of work, and this post by @naomialderman.bsky.social is the best I've come across in a long time. It was written for young people the same age as my daughters, and the best compliment I can give it is that I immediately shared it with them.

Really liked this from @profserious.bsky.social: "much of what I thought I knew about how to communicate effectively... get things done... apply effort and use influence, were contingent... my unquestioned assumption that my knowledge was universally true and broadly applicable, was sadly false."

In the first two hours back from vacation: a no-show for the first scheduled meeting of the week, an airline cancelling a flight next week and a parking fine from a client that was supposed to have arranged a permit for a visit to their office. I think it's going to be one of those days...

Back home after a week of travel which let me catch up on viewing. Found Slow Horses S05 a little disappointing. Much preferred Steven Soderbergh’s Black Bag, which I watched on the flight. Any precise, bespectacled spy called George invites comparison to Smiley. Black Bag was style over substance—

EWR-LHR, waiting to push back, already over two hours late and a screaming child in row ahead. This is going to be a long flight.

Grima Wormtongue: “It is time for the Hobbits to ally with the Ruffians…” I suspect Tolkien would have seen Musk, Robinson et al for exactly who they are.

Up early for Brooklyn Bridge Parkrun and a cooldown walk around Cobble Hill and Brooklyn Heights.

LHR-EWR

@zibaldoni.bsky.social You might enjoy this thread.

C'est moi

Very good webinar today organised by @publishersassoc.bsky.social and @independentpublishersguild.com on the proposed Bartz v. Anthropic settlement, with an informative presentation and Q&A with publisher class counsel Oppenheim & Zebrak. Key questions from publishers on eligibility criteria…

Just started a non-fiction book and the epigraph to the first chapter misattributes a Rebecca Solnit quote. Amazing to me that neither author nor editor spotted it. Instant credibility loss.

A hugely important update for authors and publishers: you may not be eligible, it's a defined list of titles based on US copyright registration and date eligibility, not everything in LibGen. But take five minutes to be sure 👉

Oh, well played 👏

It's the perfect time of year to investigate ROADS TO WITHERED HILL, the immersive audio experience developed by @tomabba.studio to accompany my folk horror novel. It's free and you just need to plug yourself into your phone and go for a VERY unsettling short walk. discover.witheredhill.place

Lunchtime reading: issue 7 of @wyrdscience.bsky.social, which just arrived. Might be the best yet. Features on Rick Priestley, Undaunted and Cold War RPGs, an excellent column from @jameswallis.bsky.social and much more. If you like tabletop games and you haven’t subscribed, you’re missing out.

I'm so glad this got reposted into my timeline. It's utterly charming, the nicest game I've seen in ages.

A superb podcast with @alisonjones.com interviewing my friend and colleague @jamesspackman73.bsky.social on books and the business of persuasion—the points about playful experimentation and chains of enthusiasm are pure gold for anyone looking to sell a book.