Fingers and toes crossed

I have just spoken to Paul, the amateur publicist for works on behalf of Richard's authors, and boy do I wish I had gone to that Winchester Book Festival. It seems that there were representatives there from Amazon, Booksurge and Authorhouse and Paul ruffled the feathers of all three - which is probably not difficult to do! When Amazon admitted that they are planning to implement their controversial Booksurge policy in the UK, Paul's words were "over my dead body", or words to that effect and promised them one hell of a fight (he has a lot of contacts in the media that he would not hesitate to use). He compared the quality of Booksurge books to one of his own, printed by Lightning Source and was able to prove that the LS, which is five years old and has been handled by well over 100 different people, is far better quality, since unlike the Booksurge one, the pages are all intact and not coming away from the spine.

As for Authorhouse, well my opinion of them is well known. It seems that Authors OnLine have a growing reputation within the POD world for turning out good quality books, which is making them a wee bit jealous. Authors OnLine as a company are really going places, with their X-Books website, and many other innovative ideas that are helping to raise their profile. They have had several major successes this year, including I am proud to say, my own work.

Paul's new book has just been published and is making inroads in Waterstones stores. He has 4 book signings already lined up, and is trying to work out a deal with Waterstones to get the book into more of their stores. Peter North, the new independent author advisor at Waterstones Head Office, has looked at Richard's site, and from what Paul says, he is very impressed with the range and quality of titles. He tells me that they are looking at stocking (this will be core stock, buying direct from Richard) several of Richard's titles, including my own, which is of course already stocked and selling well in almost 90 of their stores.

I always knew that it was only a matter of time before this book began to get noticed, and it seems that it may finally be about to happen. Fingers, toes and everything else then crossed to see what transpires.