Would that be a vanload of books?

OH the excitement. I think actually naming the excitement by name goes someway towards killing it mammoth-dead. And yet. The books are coming. Today. This very afternoon. Of course you believe me about as readily as you'd believe me had I claimed that Mr Charles Pooter c/o George & Weedon Grossmith, who mostly lives in my rucksack, had peeled himself off the printed page and taken up residence in the recycling bag. But you're WRONG, you see, to doubt me, you're wrong, and this time we win, because Ceci telephoned the printers and they confirmed that the books are en route to us right now, as I type.

They mentioned nothing about a delay-induced discount. On which point it is perhaps best to remain silent.

So currently I lie in wait, like a wolf, for the man to come with the van and the trolley and the clipboard. I hope Gav gets here soon, because there might be some heavy lifting involved, and I don't much fancy it.

In other news, the poetry book that the chaps were wrangling about yesterday (see previous post) is now fairly well corrected and more than moderately wonderful and will be send to the printers - not the same printers - on the morrow. You can see a picture of it on the front page of the website. And the time, I think, has come to introduce you to Leaf's new format. We are branching out somewhat into A5 books, mostly because we can. Our material will remain essentially pert and bite-sized, being poetry and micro-fiction and jolly old short stories. Razzamatazz & Other Poems: The Leaf Books Poetry Anthology 2006 is to be the first in a hopefully significantly longer line of A5 Leaf books. We do love our dinky little A6 pocket-sized booklings, and we do intend to make more in the future (the upcoming flip-book for starters), but the good old A5 format does have many advantages that it would be undeniably shirkworthy not to recognise and celebrate in a solid and papery form. First off, they go better on shelves and in shops, having height and bulk and legible spines and all those things that booksellers seem to value. Second off, they have more in the way of stature and import and properness and good old legitimate reality about them. And thirdly, and perhaps most significantly, you can fit more authors into them. We rather like publishing as many new and established and essentially perfectly spiffing authors as is humanly possible, so really we feel that Leaf and A5 are destined to be fairly happy together. That's what we think anyway.

Of course, we're always fantastically keen to know what you think as well. So tell us. Comment. Talk to us, sometimes. I THEE IMPLORE.

That'll do. Don't want to sound desperate.

(We might take photos of the books tomorrow. We shan't be able to express our joy in mere words. Well, no. Obviously we shall. Words are our trade. We simply choose... not to.)

Sam.