writerlywitterings

In the past I’ve spent ages wittering on (as I do) about the difficulty of getting a book into print.

Now I’ve had an idea. I’m working on a new literary festival (more on that later) with some friends, and one of the jobs we’ve had to do is find a decent small printer who can print and bind short runs of books. And we have found a fabulous firm who not only does so with a really professional job, they aren’t overly expensive.

Investing money in this kind of thing is not easy. However, I know that there are lots of people out there who wanted to get a copy of ACT OF VENGEANCE as a printed book, and who didn’t want to see it only as a Kindle edition. Well, the good news is, it’s going to be going on general release shortly, so it’ll be on Kobo and Nook, hopefully well before Christmas. But at the same time, I don’t have money to invest up front for an effort like this. So, before I throw lots of borrowed money into getting the books printed, I thought I should try a crowd-sourcing effort. That means asking people to commit to the £10 cost of the book and postage at another £3.00. That postage is a guess, incidentally. I’ve no idea how many pages the printed book would come to, so I have no idea what the weight would be. For postage to America it will almost certainly work out as up to double that – but it’ll still mean that the whole book will be a lot cheaper than most hardbacks.

So, what do you think? A hardback, unique and very collectable Jecks book for from £13 to £16 or so. My first modern spy thriller, and it’ll be printed in a short run of 100 copies. That should mean that the value will quickly rise for collectors.

For anyone who is interested, please contact me on Michael.Jecks@gmail.com and we’ll see if there’s enough interest to justify this rather silly digression for me!

And while I’m talking about such things, I have books for sale.

Yes! Books, glorious books!

I currently have very limited space indeed in my office, and a desperate need to make more. So, dear, kind readers: if you haven’t yet bought a Christmas present for Auntie Maud, or need something to tempt a twenty-something away from her iPod for a day or two, how about buying a signed copy of a Jecks book for your loved (or if not loved, those tricky people for whom it’s hard to know what to buy) ones!

What’s the deal?

You tell me what you want, and I’ll give you a straight price for the book, postage, packaging, and including a message of your choice. While stocks last, any spare promotional cards or bookmarks will be thrown in free of charge.

Paperbacks, trade paperbacks and hardbacks for many of the titles are available.

Of course, some people prefer to buy gift tokens and give their family ebooks. You already know about the first thirteen titles being ebooks, I’m sure, and that all the books from Simon and Schuster are already electronic. There are also the wonderful (I think) collections of my short stories: FOR THE LOVE OF OLD BONES and NO ONE CAN HEAR YOU SCREAM, which would grace anybody’s Kindle. I’m looking at how I can also get these onto Smashwords, which would mean I could get them available on Nook and Kobo etc. Watch this space.

Getting this kind of translation sorted is not easy, and does take a computer illiterate like me a lot of time and effort which I can ill-afford. So if you are keen to see these books on Nook or Kobo (or other formats, please let me know), then do write to me. I’ll be very interested to hear from you.

That’s all for now.

Take care and happy reading!