About Me and the Site
My name's Julie and I've been running Global Grey for around twelve years. I format all the ebooks myself, as well as maintaining the website.
Originally from the North of England, I left home at the age of 15 to seek my fortune in London. I didn't really find it (yet), but I did get married 3 years later, and throughout the next 10 years, had 4 amazing children. I also have a granddaughter, even though I'm clearly too young to be a grandma :/
I live with 1 of my children, (my other 3 have all moved out) and 2 cats.
My hobbies include reading (no real surprise there), scary films, musicals, spending time with my kids, and crocheting. I have a tendency to be a bit absent minded; I'm a bit of a hermit; I'm awesome at procrastinating; I have a childlike fascination for all things new; and my dream is to live near the sea.
I got divorced in 2000, and between then and now, I have run a couple of websites, the first one being about conspiracies. Which was also called Global Grey.
The second was a more spiritual one, which eventually led to this incarnation that is Global Grey ebooks.
It started off as a hobby and my aim was to set up the site as a place where people could find and download quality ebooks. The original idea definitely came from a love of books in general. I found that a lot of ebook sites either focused on purely fiction, or more niche areas such as the Occult. I wanted Global Grey to be a place where people could find Sherlock Holmes books, and at the same time, pick up a copy of the Book of Ceremonial Magic, if they so wished.
I also felt that, at the time, ebooks were not afforded the same standards as print books, and were often in terrible formats, with no cover page, no table of contents, and rather haphazard spacing of paragraphs and chapters. So that became another main aim of this site; to produce and publish ebooks that were of a good quality; that were readable, nicely laid out and well presented, and that had footnotes and illustrations correctly placed, when applicable. All of the ebooks on the site are formatted by me. There used to be some facsimile PDFs on here which were taken off recently, and which I am working my way through, converting them to Global Grey editions.
As time has gone on, I have learnt more about producing ebooks, and as I update my process, I try to update the existing books as well, so everything stays consistent.
There are long term plans for the site and new books are added almost every day, although sometimes I do get distracted with working on other things.
None of the books on the site are DRM protected.
The website itself, I code by hand. I used to run it on Wordpress, but now it's a static HTML/CSS website that takes me a little more effort to maintain, but which I feel is so much better for me and my visitors.
I love doing this site. It really is my passion. I get to deal with books every day, which is amazing.
If you want to contact me about the site, then you can do so at julie@globalgreyebooks.com.
