Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales
Help us to establish Drala Jong - a Buddhist Retreat Centre in Wales

Saturday 30 July 2011

We have no stock, but supplies are unlimited

This is the paradox of print-on-demand.  We have no stock, but supplies are unlimited.

We print on demand with Lulu (http://bit.ly/stores-lulu-com-arobooksworldwide) for books and Zazzle for art (http://bit.ly/zazzle-com-arobooksworldwide).  This means that your order goes to Lulu and Zazzle and not to us.

Lulu print books as close as they can to the delivery address to minimise shipping.  This means that orders for the USA are printed in the USA, orders for Britain are printed in Britain.  Lulu themselves are based in Raleigh, North Carolina.

Orders at Amazon, Barnes & Noble and other web shops are dealt with in a similar fashion.  Books are printed and shipped to order.  Orders from bookshops work a little differently.  We receive information from Gardners and then place an order on Lulu for shipment.

So although we have no stock — and we rarely see a book — we have an unlimited supply.




Tuesday 26 July 2011

Deborah Magone on 'an odd boy' by Doc Togden

‘An Odd Boy’ unfolds like its butterflies, one spectacular sentence after another. I love the meeting of two worlds old and new – in a child who becomes a man. I love the references to song quotes relevant to the each part of the story. A delight to read!
— Deborah Magone









“At a mere 5 foot – three inches, this little Blues Rock Mama can belt a tune in the style of Big Mama Thornton, Deborah blends it all together to form her own ‘whimsical and walloping’ vocal style while strutting her stuff on guitar.” http://deborahmagone.com/



Volume 1 of an odd boy by Doc Togden is published by Aro Books worldwide

Excerpts can be read on Doc Togden's Facebook fanpage and at anoddboy.com

Monday 25 July 2011

Pay With A Tweet - Spam or not Spam?

I came across Pay With A Tweet some time ago and I thought it was very innovative.  It allows an organisation to make something available - a report, a sample book chapter, an ebook and so forth.  If you want the item you pay for it by tweeting about it.  This means that it becomes known to all your Twitter followers.  It looks like a great way to make something well known in a short amount of time.

Sunday 24 July 2011

an odd boy - launched!

Today saw the launch of an odd boy by Doc Togden.  We held the launch on Facebook and had about 60 people online able to ask questions of Doc Togden.  The full transcript of the event is here - http://on.fb.me/docaobv01evt .Many thanks to all those who took part. 

The direct link for anyone who would like to purchase a copy of the book is http://bit.ly/docaobv01lul. The book is currently available at its 20% discounted launch price.


Sugar Blue on 'an odd boy' by Doc Togden

… like all the beautiful love stories I've ever read in a few paragraphs. Incredibly touching. The love and daring of a young boy in search of the Muse at an age when all dreams can be made real and the joy of art lives in the heart and doesn't boggle the mind.
— Sugar Blue









In the mid 1970s, Blue played as a session musician on Johnny Shines' Too Wet to Plow (1975) and with Roosevelt Sykes. Blue met Louisiana Red and the twosome toured and recorded in 1978. Taking advice from Memphis Slim, in the late 1970s Blue traveled to Paris, France. This led to him playing on several The Rolling Stones tracks. Trombonist Mike Zwerin backed Blue on his solo debut album, Crossroads (1979). Following the release of his From Chicago to Paris (1982), Blue joined Willie Dixon's Chicago Blues All Stars. In 1984, Blue's track "Another Man Done Gone", appeared on the compilation album, Blues Explosion. It won a Grammy in 1984 for Best Traditional Blues Album. Blue appeared with Brownie McGhee in the film, Angel Heart (1987). Blue's next album Blue Blazes was released in 1994. It was followed by In Your Eyes (1995), and Code Blue released in 2007. On January 26, 2010, Beeble Music released Threshold, Blue's latest album. Taken from Sugar Blue's Biography on Wikipedia



Volume 1 of an odd boy by Doc Togden is published by Aro Books worldwide

Excerpts can be read on Doc Togden's Facebook fanpage and at anoddboy.com

Thursday 21 July 2011

Book Launch Event - an odd boy - Doc Togden

We're very happy to announce the launch of an odd boy on 24th July at pm BST (which is midday in East Coast USA and 9am West Coast).

Please join the author for the Facebook event at http://on.fb.me/docaobv01evt


Volume one of an odd boy is a memoire of an eccentric aficionado of Bach and Blues, poetry and painting. A portrait of the artist as a lad, set in the experimental cultural ferment of the late 1960s. It is a coming-of-age adventure, both surreal and innocent, humorous and poignant, depicting an era when the Arts set a generation’s imagination on fire. The author’s life is a rare roulette wheel of childhood wonder and tragic debacles; a debilitating stammer and a powerful singing voice; bad luck and fierce good fortune. At 16 he’s travelled far in human experience from the midnight expedition he made to the crossroads at the age of 12. 

Read more about the book here http://bit.ly/docaobv01

Read excerpts at anoddboy.com

Tuesday 19 July 2011

A Book Shop on the Blog

Aro Books worldwide books are available from Lulu, Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk and many other online and offline book shops.

We've included the Lulu shop in the Blog so that you can browse the shop immediately.

http://aro-books-worldwide.blogspot.com/p/book-shop.html

Monday 18 July 2011

C J Tozer on 'an odd boy' by Doc Togden

The first few sentences let you know that you are about to start a journey of discovery to a destination that no sat/nav could plot a course for, even the ordinance survey would have a problem locating exactly which route will be followed and where upon the lines of latitude and longitude you will arrive.

This is an amble of wonderment in a young lads life as he grew up in the green belt that surrounds London, turning the woodlands and meadows into a Carrollian theme park that he shared with his young friend Alice. The constant battles with his father, two generations divided by mis-understandment, one in a world that was and the other in a world that would be. On his search for the essence and understanding of a musical form that his birth roots and tribal memories had no perception of he leads you by the curiosity of those first eerie haunting sounds that arrived via the gramophone of an elderly neighbour to the unsuspecting and absorbing ear drums of a young disciple , sounds that would drive him ever onward into adulthood on a quest for that elusive mystery that is 'Blues'

This is a historical tour through the beginnings of the second half of the twentieth century that led to so much upheaval and change in the structure of British society,

For those who had not lived in or taken part in these turbulent days as Britain finally clawed it's way out of the austerity of the post war years, this is a peep hole into a world that modern eyes could not perceive. For those of that generation who can stand up and say "I was there." so much can be found in these pages to stop them sharp with a cry of, "Oh My God! I remember that."

Part one of 'An Odd Boy' is like having the taste of some exotic food on the tip of the tongue, you are not sure of what it is you like but you must try some more and some more, and some more.

This is a book to be read from end to end and then to be shared.



Colin Tozer is a performing Blues musician — veteran of the British Blues Boom — and an Artist. He was born & bred in the Wandle Delta and grew up in Beautiful Down Town Battersea home of the blues and has lived in France for 5 years.
My father had a stack of 78's of all types in this bunch of vinyl, there was a bit of jazz and blues and it made me hooked. The music I play is usually the southern states of the United States, except for a few songs written by myself, but also some traditional English songs. In fact, the primary emotion of the music emanates and extends from the Mississippi to the Appalachian Mountains, to this side of the Atlantic.www.cjtozer.co.uk [Translated from French by Google]



Volume 1 of an odd boy by Doc Togden is published by Aro Books worldwide

Excerpts can be read on Doc Togden's Facebook fanpage and at anoddboy.com

Sunday 17 July 2011

Clear Invoices

Aro Books worldwide is a print-on-demand publisher.  Most of our orders are dealt with by Lulu who take the order and print and ship the books. This saves us considerable effort in terms of shipping and invoicing.

We receive some orders directly or via Gardners Books and then have to ship the books and invoice the customer.  For invoicing we rely on Clear Invoices which enables us to create and send invoices online.

Clear Invoices is easy to use.  Once you have added a customer or a product it becomes available from a drop-down list, so it is a simple matter to compose invoices.  When a payment is received the invoice can be marked as part paid or fully paid.

The system enables us to easily keep track of which payments are still outstanding.

The Clear Invoices service that we use is free.  This is important to Aro Books worldwide as we operate on a charitable basis – all work is donated and all proceeds are donated to our parent charity Sang-ngak-chö-dzong.








Monday 11 July 2011

an odd boy : you can't accidentally drink reindeer urine

you can't accidentally
The odd boy lay down by the football field – took out a slim volume of Mallarmé, / The centre-forward called him an imbecile – it’s an odd boy who doesn’t like sport. / Sport, Sport, masculine sport – equips a young man for society, Yes, sport turns out a jolly good sort – it’s an odd boy who doesn’t like sport.
Vivian Stanshall—Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band—Sport (the odd boy)—Keynsham—1969

My father would have concurred with Vivian Stanshall – but missed the irony. I came to realise, as I grew older, that my father always missed irony – and that his humour was mainly of the slipping-on-a-banana-skin schadenfreude variety. He enjoyed ‘Benny Hill’ – and was irritated by ‘The Goon Show.’

In later life I gained access to my medical records. They were of no interest apart from the one remark made by a Doctor Page in 1957. The remark read: ‘an odd boy ’ – and so I was.

No treatment was suggested – and no comments were made as to whether I had recovered from the malady. I was 5 years old when I was described as ‘an odd boy’ – and at the age of 12 my male classmates started noticing the fact. They noticed that I didn’t enjoy competitive sport – and it eventually roused their ire. I’d been injudiciously open about the fact that I found the whole ‘team’ business distinctly loathsome.



Volume 1 of an odd boy by Doc Togden will be published by Aro Books worldwide in 2011

Excerpts can be read on Doc Togden's Facebook fanpage

Friday 8 July 2011

Joanna Lumley on Relaxing into Meditation

We have received a lovely endorsement of Relaxing into Meditation from Joanna Lumley

Miss Lumley says of the book:

"This is a wonderful introduction to relaxation and meditation - its message offers peace and tranquillity in this stressful world"
Joanna Lumley 






Joanna Lumley, OBE, FRGS is an English actress, voice-over artist and author, best known for her roles in British television series Absolutely Fabulous portraying Edina Monsoon’s best friend, Patsy Stone, as well as parts in The New Avengers, Sapphire & Steel, and Sensitive Skin. She is a former model and Bond girl. Her distinctive voice has been supplied for animated characters, film narration, and AOL's “You have email” notification in the UK. She has spoken out as a human rights activist for Survival International and the Gurkha Justice Campaign, and is now considered a “national treasure” of Nepal because of her support. She is an advocate for a number of charities and animal welfare groups such as CIWF and Viva! She has won three BAFTA awards and a British comedy award. (Wikipedia).



Relaxing into Meditation by Ngakma Nor'dzin is published by Aro Books worldwide, ISBN 978-1-898185-17-8. It is available from Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, Lulu.com and all leading bookstores. For more information please see the book's web page http://bit.ly/nrprim