Our socials have been somewhat silent and our newsletters few, as we have had our heads down and noses to the grindstone for the past few months getting to grips with a number of seed changes for the Emporium, not least a change of premises . . .
As our mail order continues to go from strength to strength we have outgrown, rather bittersweetly, our beloved former HQ at No. 41 High Street. With every surface taken up by stock there was no longer room to swing a flea, let alone a feline. At Christmas we couldn’t move for mailbags full of orders, and Royal Mail’s lithest post personnel were struggling to get in the door. Quite frankly things we’re getting silly, especially from a health and safety point of view – oh how our fire officer would despair!
It was timely then that the building’s resident owners and Discworld Emporium founders Bernard and Isobel also decided to put the old girl on the market in favour of somewhere more practical to call their home. The time had come for Discworld to leave the building, and the first few months of the year were spent moving premises to our new residence just down the road, and still in the heart of Ankh-Morpork’s twin town, Wincanton. The Turtle Moves – but not very far!
Of course it was incredibly sad to leave No. 41 and to see it empty. A hallowed hall of literary import for over twenty years the place is more than just a building, but a trailblazing point of pilgrimage for geeks and book nerds, No.41 is a place where stories were shared, friends made and romances ignited. Where incredible millinery ducked under the door, and folks queued down the road for a fix of novelty postage stamps and perhaps a glimpse of the author himself. A place where Bernard and Isobel took a chance on putting up a young Ian and Reb who once hid at the top of the stairs excitedly earwigging a meeting between a famous author and a prestigious media company, completely unaware of how bound they would become to this wyrd little shop.
Although initially feeling slightly at sea in our considerably newer sand comparatively clinical new home, now we’ve got the place filled with all our stuff we feel right at home. Our fire officer no longer fears for our safety, and we are certainly feeling the benefit of having more room for the creative juices and fruit to flow, and for our children to play, read and learn the ropes of the family business! Our new headquarters are in a building rather fittingly called ‘Guild House’ where we have enough room to swing not just a cat, but two children. At last we can enjoy plenty of daylight, and most importantly, we have room enough for all our books. Almost.
Our downstairs quarters house our design studio, mailroom, book room and stock rooms galore. Upstairs, we are blessed with studios for prints and photography, plus a big bright communal area with a kitchen for frying up a bacon sandwich, and lots of space for the little ones to play while we work, not to mention and celebrate birthdays and special occasions!
In a small but delightful coincidence our lovely neighbours are the TP group (not a Pratchettarian Cult, unfortunately, but clever sorts who work on military defence-tech.) Although our offices are not open to the public we have had fun adding little Discworld touches to our new digs, covering it in original artworks from our various Discworld Publications that have previously been hidden away in storage, plus lots of ephemera from the old shop. We are now most definitely not open to the public, but having worked hard to restructure our operations we are hoping to have more free time to spend out and about attending conventions and events with you all!
We also sadly said goodbye to our long-serving team members Sarah and Eilis earlier this year, who have moved on to begin adventures new. These ladies have been part of our fabric and family for many a year, and we are missing them hugely. The task of finding and acquainting ourselves with new staff who would be equally as wonderful has been quite the undertaking. Add in a succession of not-so-minor health wobbles and personal catastrophes all going on all at the same time, and it’s certainly the Truth that that times have been interesting!
Despite the trials of the year and falling behind on our releases, we have managed to unleash a few major products this year, including the Mappa Discworld art Print Edition and Two new puzzles being The Witch Trials and The Glorious 25th of May which were released on the day of the Glorious Revolution, both exquisitely illustrated by David Wyatt of course! ‘Glorious’ Art prints of these incredible artworks are also available for those of a less puzzling bent!
We are particularly proud of Discworld Denizens collections of miniature figurines released in June. sculpted to our designs by Shaun Main, Discworld Denizens are little figurines with BIG personalities from the badass to the gorblimey! The first collections were the City Watch and Unseen University collections which have gone down the proverbial storm, and we are itching to unleash the next figures in the series which will be coming to your shelves this Hogswatch!
Big book releases this year have been the paperback version of a Life With Footnotes, the official Terry Pratchett, summed up perfectly by quote on the cover from the Telegraph: ‘Spins magic from mundanity in precisely the way Pratchett himself did’. Rob really tells it ‘how it was’ by illuminating the real Sir Terry Pratchett that those closest to him knew, with all his quirks and equal strokes of awkwardness and genius that oft came hand in hand. Our thanks to Rob for recounting our small parts on Terry’s stage and congratulations for winning the 2023 Locus Award for Non-Fiction and the 2023, and British Science Fiction Association Award for Best Non-Fiction!
This will be followed in October by A Stroke of The Pen featuring ‘lost stories’ discovered in no small part by Jan and Pat “Lord of the Uber-fans” Harkin after trawling through old newspapers in search of forgotten stories by Sir Terry written under a pseudonym. We are so chuffed that it was Pat and Jan, stalwarts and pinnacles of the Discworld fandom and friends of the Emporium (and indeed the author himself) to have brought these stories to the world’s attention. Thank you Pat and Jan!
Now that we are back on track, and through he fog of recent challenges, it’s shaping up to be another ‘Terry’ good year for all things Pratchett. We have also been treated to Good Omens 2, new paperback editions of the Discworld series, plus a new Discworld Calendar for 2024 featuring the artwork of Paul Kidby. Most excitingly for us however, was the release of Royal Mail’s official Discworld set of postage stamps and ephemera! Of course, Terry Pratchett characters have featured on royal mail stamps before, but this is the first, and quite frankly overdue release entirely dedicated to Discworld. As proud purveyors of Discworld stamps since 2004 it was a thrill to be asked to contribute the words to this collection, which we’re sure you will agree were enough to make Stanley Howler explode with excitement!
Thank you all for your patience in waiting for new releases, and here’s to more magic in the months ahead – in the meantime . . .
MIND HOW YOU GO!
Don’t forget to keep sharing our wares on the socials, and tag us @DiscworldEmporium on Facebook and Insta, and @DiscworldShoppe on Twitter.
Where to start . . . well, it’s been a verra, verra long time since we’ve sat at the keyboard for a dose of bloggery, and much has changed here on roundworld since our last post in March 2020, just days before the declaration of a global pandemic and two years of madness and sadness that followed it.
“Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
– Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky
The Emporium is no longer the same place as its was before the global enbuggerance of Covid-19, and many of you will be aware of the closure of the Discworld Emporium’s Bricks and mortar shop in Wincanton (read our original article here). Over lockdown our founders Bernard and Isobel had a taste of retirement, and it was found to be delicious, so at a combined age of 150 the Pearsons decided to step down from Emporium duties to spend a little more time with their families and begin a new chapter in their story. After 30 years in Discworld, and 20 years since opening the Discworld Emporium, the time seemed right.
Thanks to being in the business of distractions (mostly jigsaw puzzles and books) the Emporium’s mail-order arm was inundated with orders over the height of the pandemic, and our shop floor completely transformed into a bustling mailroom. With Pearson’s retirement and a booming online shop to manage, we made the difficult but sensible decision to move exclusively online. Our hallowed building is still our home and headquarters, but our ‘real’ shop is closed to the public for the foreseeable future.
Of course, Brexit also occurred in January last year. UK leaving the European has continued to present a mammoth-poo-sized pile of administrative, logistical and customer service challenges for our little literary shop as we contend with considerably more complex customs requirements and consequences.
To continue shipping to the EU we have taken on more team members, a brand new postage system, and built our brand new website to make shipping and accounting for global tax a smoother experience. At last we can utilise the EU’s International One-Stop-Shop to include country-specific VAT at checkout for orders under £135 to minimise additional charges on delivery. We hope that our European customers can once again enjoy receiving Discworld books and merchandise with minimal stress, because gods know we’ve had quite enough of that over the past couple of years!
Since November Terry Pratchett’s fans and the custodians of his work have been rejoicing in all things Pratchett in honour of 50 years since the publication of his first book, the Carpet People. Beginning with a 50th anniversary edition of the Carpet People in November, this year-long celebration sees the release of Terry’s official biography A Life With Footnotes on September 29th, along with 40 Discworld audiobook adaptations from Penguin Audio with narration by Bill Nighy, Indira Varma, Andy Serkis and Sian Clifford.
Penguin Random House are also treating us to entire Discworld series being released with new paperback editions. featuring cover artwork by Leo Nickolls. These striking new liveries are designed to entice a new audience to Discworld, and have been created under the direction of Terry Pratchett’s estate and feature elements based on the character designs of Paul Kidby. Purists need not worry though, as the new paperbacks will sit alongside the current Josh Kirby/Paul Kidby covers so there is something for everyone! The Witches collection, Small Gods and the Wizards series are available now, while the Death books will be released in October.
To celebrate #50YearsofTerry we also released our spectacular ‘Anniversary Edition’ Great A’Tuin Figurine. This bigger and more beautiful version of our signature bronze finish Discworld model represents our unique relationship with Terry Pratchett and his incredible creations for which we are forever thankful.
Sculpted in fantastic detail by Rich Kingston in our 30th year of creating Discworld magic, this stunning Star Turtle marks three decades since Terry Pratchett gave Bernard and Isobel the rights to produce the first-ever Discworld merchandise with a figurine of Rincewind as our former company Clarecraft. The cowardly ‘Wizzard’ was the first in an extraordinary series of Discworld figurines and collectables that made us the original Discworld merchandisers and model makers!
This year has been a scramble uphill with scraped knees to get on top of the challenges that came with Brexit and Covid-19. We may not have been able to put many new items into creation, but we hope you enjoy those that we do have to offer! Somehow we have managed to release a new Luggage T-Shirt, Anoia and Gimlet’s Delicatessen Tea towels, Death & Company Puzzle and print . . . not to mention Discworld Stamps. There will even be ‘flaming hot’ and ‘epic’ new jigsaw puzzles coming VERY soon!
Our proudest pandemic achievement however is the Nac Mac Feegle’s Big Wee Alphabet Book, created by our own Ian Mitchell and collaborator David Wyatt.We’ve wanted to create another Discworld publication for some time now, and the Big Wee Alphabet Book is our first effort since The Compleat Discworld Atlas – our final collaboration with Terry – released the year he died in 2015. We are very thankful to Narrativia for enabling and supporting the Big Wee ABC book for Big Jobs and Wee Scunners alike!
After a couple of very challenging years, Terry’s publication anniversary has brought us a year full of joy and reasons to be cheerful. The year promises to be even more jubilant yet, as we also have the Sky Cinema adaptation of The Amazing Maurice to look forward to this Hogswatch along with numerous spin-off book releases and merchandise, and the return of the Discworld Calendar which was sadly absent in 2022. Praise be to Terry’s own publishing house Dunmanifestin, who took up the mantle to produce a beautiful calendar for 2023 with artwork by Paul Kidby!
Most notably, Terry’s biography A Life With Footnotes and Emporium Directors Reb and Ians’ second child are due to emerge in the same week, so it’s going to be a particularly special, and even busier time here at the Emporium as we head towards Hogswatch
. . . but what a time to celebrate our past and future as part of the Discworld family!
We hope you enjoy exploring our new home, and sharing the magic of Discworld with us as we continue to celebrate #50YearsofTerry!
Don’t forget to keep sharing our wares on the socials, and tag us @DiscworldEmporium on Facebook and Insta, and @DiscworldShoppe on Twitter.
THE TURTLE MOVES!
