These are exciting times at leftword.com. We've just added two new functionalities to the site.

The red circle

If you've come to the leftword.com site over the last three or four days, you've probably noticed this little red circle with a question mark:

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This is a help desk icon. It appears on every page. What it does is enables you to send in your questions to us.

When you click on it, this is what you'll see:

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All you need to do is fill up the email id field and subject line, and then type out your question.

What kind of questions?

All kinds, really. Tell us if you face any problem with the site. Tell us if you notice an error. Ask us about our publishing policies and plans. Ask us for help in submitting manuscripts. If you find that a book you need is marked "Out of Stock", tell us about it.

(One of you did that — and we were able to get a single copy. Such joy.)

And there might be other things you want to ask us.

(One of you asked us about where to buy a particular documentary film. We didn't know. But we did find a place to download it from. Legally. Such joy.)

And maybe you don't have a  question, but a suggestion. Or criticism. Post that too.

So go ahead. We promise to reply. Within 24 hours.

The LeftWord blog

We're pleased to announce the start of the LeftWord blog. Three entries from the blog will always sit on top of our homepage:

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The first two blog posts will be interviews with our authors, discussions about books, reviews, lists of favourite books. Some of our recent posts include a review by Ambassador Fabian of Vijay Prashad's book, and an interview with Vijay about the Communist Histories project.

We also welcome guest posts on books, the world of ideas, Marxism, etc.

The third post will always be the latest letter from our two editors, Vijay and Sudhanva.

We invite you to read the August letter. It tells you what we have published recently, what we will publish later this year. On that latter, you'll see books by Teesta Setalvad, Prof. Manikumar, P. Sainath, Ambedkar's book on Communism introduced by Anand Teltumbde, and more.

As excitingly, you'll see what we plan to publish in 2017 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution: a new edition of John Reed's Ten Days That Shook the World with a cracking introduction by P. Sainath, Prakash Karat's introduction to Lenin, and more.

Plus: our books are available as e-books. Have a look at them (cheaper and faster to get!).

Our last paragraph is worth highlighting:

'As we often say, you are a part of our LeftWord Books family. We count on you to read our books, review our books, make our books part of your conversations. Please tell us what you think of the books you’ve read and give us your thoughts on what we plan to publish and what we should publish. We rely on your input'.

We look forward to hearing from you. We want the LeftWord blog to be not so much about our books, as about our worldview.

That is the essence of LeftWord — to produce books, but also to change the world!