Happy paperback publication day to The Art of Baking Blind

So, after months of anticipation it's finally here: the day this little beauty hits the shelves as a paperback and hopefully finds a wider reading public. This was the present delivered earlier this week and I have to admit to giving a private squeal in my kitchen when I opened the box of embossed and stickered copies of my book.

All those discussions about fonts and colours and levels of embossing have been worth it for a photo doesn't do these novels justice. You need to stroke the cover and peek inside to appreciate the level of effort the Hodder design department has gone to to make this look enticing. As pretty and exquisite as a French macaron, the hope is it will prove just as irresistible.

Of course we can't know how it will sell but, thankfully, the supermarkets and shops seem to have liked it. Today, The Art of Baking Blind will appear on shelves in Waitrose, Tesco, Morrison's and Asda; it'll be in the WH Smith paperback chart, and on tables in WH Smith Travel; and there will be copies in Waterstone's and independent bookshops, too. 

The novelist Patrick Gale has just tweeted pictures of a box of copies of his 17th novel, A Place Called Winter. The excitement never fades, he said. I can't imagine writing 17 books but I can well understand that that tingle of exhilaration never truly goes away. Now, I just have to hope that potential readers feel a smidgeon of the excitement I do.