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Tuesday 1 May 2018

Living in Interesting Times

There is nothing quite so interesting as being on the very brink of signing a contract with a publisher for a second book, only to discover that said publisher has just gone into liquidation.



Actually, there are probably quite a lot of things far more interesting, but this was sufficient for me.

Endeavour Press published my fourth novel, Shadows, last year. I was on the point of signing a contract for a second when word came through that Endeavour had gone into liquidation. Which was, I thought, a little bit of a nuisance.

Fortunately, it turned out that the liquidation was voluntary, which meant no one was going to lose their royalties and could keep their titles ticking over, if they so chose. The directors of Endeavour were going their separate ways and authors could choose which one to go with. I've gone with Endeavour Media, which will continue to publish Shadows as an e-book and I have now also signed a contract for the e-publication of its companion, Long Shadows.

However, I thought I would use the opportunity of total chaos, to rethink the paperback publication. Endeavour concentrates on e-books and deals brilliantly with them, but though they offer a paperback option, it is available solely through Amazon. I may be wrong, but I suspect that a lot of people who prefer paperbacks to Kindles would really like to buy from good old-fashioned book shops, while they still exist. So, heart in mouth, I have decided to bring out the paperbacks myself, through FeedARead.com.

It does mean that my books are now both conventionally and self-published. I wait to see whether I've opted for the best or the worst of both worlds. Am I mad? Probably, but I am willing to play with fire, and since one of the bonuses of self-publishing is that I can choose my own covers, here are my brand new paperback covers.


  

and to compare and contrast, here are the Endeavour covers for the Kindle versions.


I shall not ask you to vote, but the books are available here.