Happy New Year

Welcome back everyone. I say welcome back as from my perspective this is when the office gets back to ‘normal’ with Juliet coming back to work and Tasha popping in to say hi (she’s on maternity leave). My son has also decided to take on the role of Social Networks and has come up with some fresh ideas which I like. He appears to have taken control of one of the desks in the office and lots of posters and ideas have started appearing everywhere.

For some clients the Christmas break is a good time to catch up with the racing and start to read through notes and the early comments starting to creep in ahead of Cheltenham and Aintree.

I am thrilled that the ‘come back’ of Marten’s Winter Guide has been so well received. I imagine people like this publication as perhaps they have more time to sit and read it plus with less pressure. With our major meeting books like the Cheltenham Bulletin Book it’s a different type of read as there is a lot of current information and decisions to be made about betting.

Drum roll please…… for the first time ever we have published a book on Amazon for Kindles! We did this as a trial run ahead of Cheltenham. Unfortunately the layout options in this format are not as we would have liked and are quite basic but we are going to bear their guidelines in mind when working on our Cheltenham Book. If you have a Kindle and haven’t bought it yet please click here or just visit Amazon.

I tried to persuade Marten to ‘go away’ in January. Clients I speak to on a regular basis often ask when he takes a break and I inform them rarely. Even at his annual Wimbledon break he will still be working. I thought I had succeeded when back in December he agreed to go away if I booked somewhere and to be honest it was going to be a writing holiday so not even a break but alas he has chosen to stay here. I appreciate there are worse places than The Lake District but a break is good for anyone.

I have coordinated my diaries with our dates for marketing based on the big fixtures and as I suspected Steve has had to start on the Cheltenham marketing more or less straight away.

It’s going to be odd next season as this season is the final one for producing The Preview. There are just 13 editions left until we stop the service. It’s been a good few years but we need to create some breathing space somewhere and unfortunately that is where the space can be found.

I have done quite a lot of research and proof reading recently for Marten which I have enjoyed. A lovely café has opened under the office where I work which means I can easily pop downstairs and have a little break from the office to do proof reading while enjoying a lovely coffee. It was our saviour while we were dispatching Winter Guides as we were so busy we ordered lunch and coffees from there to save us losing anytime walking into town. What a treat!

Wishing you a wonderful 2015, please keep popping by and keep in touch. We will be letting our clients know first about an exciting new book we are working on soon…..