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Canongate plans e-book giveaway for Brooks

06.06.11 | Graeme Neill

Canongate is planning to give a limited number of free e-book copies of Grow Up, the debut novel by 19-year-old Ben Brooks, ahead of its paperback publication in July.

The publisher released the e-book this week, priced £2.49, with the paperback to follow on 7th July. Along with the giveaway, Canongate is planning a Twitter competition with the NME, video interviews through Twitter and a competition to find new young writers, which it is judging jointly with Dazed and Confused. Writers between 16-19 will be able to enter a fiction piece of no more than 3,000 words through the Don't Panic marketing agency website. Judges on the competition are Brooks' editor Francis Bickmore, Dazed and Confused deputy editor Tim Noakes and Brooks himself. The winner will receive editorial advice and help with building their profile online, as well as the story or extract running on the Canongate website.

Canongate's head of publicity Angela Robertson said: "Ben is part of a growing number of writers who are using the internet to get their writing out there and to build a community and following.  Before the rise of Twitter, Facebook and the popularity of blogs, it was much harder to get noticed. Now however we are now seeing the same DIY ethic amongst writers which music artists have been practicing for years."

• angela robertson
• Ben Brooks
• Canongate
• digital
• ebooks
• Graeme Neill