Electronic Book Adventure

Over the next few weeks there’ll be considerable mention on this blog of my first novel, ‘Midnight Blue’.  Considerable mention too of the whole subject of electronic books.  My current novel, ‘In The Trees’, came out as an e-book on Amazon Kindle earlier this year, published by Faber & Faber, but I’m ‘doing’ ‘Midnight Blue’ myself.

I’ve been a published author now for twenty years. I have a wealth of experience of the publishing world and have seen many changes.  I’ve learned what publishers are good at [editing - if you’ve been blessed as I have by working with some of the best], and what they’re not. Increasingly I’ve seen authors being forced to take upon themselves the task of marketing if they want their books to sell.  I’ve done it myself and, given the hard work I’ve put in, it would be reasonable for me to see more in terms of reward.

 Publishing one’s own e-book gives an author a degree of freedom they’ll never acquire from mainstream publishing.  That’s the theory any way – and one I’m planning to test.  I’ve long cherished the idea of a twentieth anniversary edition of ‘Midnight Blue’ and I’ve decided to bring it out myself and see how that works. 

This is an experiment. A toe in the water, as it were.  I’ve absolutely no idea how I’ll get on but it’ll be interesting to see.  ‘Midnight Blue’ is a very special book to me - one I’m more than keen to bring out again with a sense of celebration, not just because of the brilliant accolades it garnered around the time it won the Smarties Book Prize, but because it marked the start of my professional life in publishing.  I’d been writing since I was a child, and had had a book of short stories published in my early twenties, but I’d never tackled a novel and it was the success of ‘Midnight Blue’ that set me off.

So do follow this new venture on my blog and see how I get on.  I promise that I’ll give it to you all - the highs [let’s hope there are highs!], the lows and everything in between.  I’ll also be blogging on http://www.authorselectric.blogspot.com/ starting on 21^st September, by which time I hope my newly edited-for-Kindle ‘Midnight Blue’ manuscript will be ready to go online, if not online already.   In fact, if you’re interested in e-books, look up that website anyway.  It’s worth a browse around.  A really good site.