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Best-selling e-book set for paperback release

A novelist and º£½ÇÖ±²¥ lecturer is set to have her best-selling e-book published physically.

The Dress, by Sophie Nichols, was first launched as an e-book in 2011 and hit the Kindle Top 5 list – selling 165,000 copies online. The paperback version is being published on 28 July by Twenty7.

The Dress focuses on the lives and experiences of Ella and her mother Fabia Moreno who arrive in York one cold January to set up their vintage dress shop.

Its success led Sophie, a Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, to write two more novels about Fabia and Ella - The Dream and The Glass, which form the Everyday Magic trilogy.

Sophie says The Dress was the online equivalent of word of mouth success.

As well as writing fiction, Sophie is also an award-winning poet and is programme leader for º£½ÇÖ±²¥â€™s MA Creative Writing (Distance Learning). The course is taught completely online with video tutorials, online workshops, discussion forums and feedback.

Her doctorate is in creative writing as therapy and she has worked with Freedom From Torture on their Write To Life course - helping people seeking asylum to write about their experiences.

Sophie says that publishing is changing, but believes she is working proof that if a story is good enough, it can find its market and be a success online.

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