BLOGFLASH... Severing Ties...

Last October I temporarily broke from the novel writing and ventured into the mystical (to me) world of e-publishing with the help of Trestle Press.  Pretty soon into this exciting phase of my writing journey, warning bells began to tinkle... but, alas, not loud enough it seems.

I won't ramble on, as I'll later point you in the direction of a fellow writer who has done the most balanced and pertinent post to date on this subject... and believe me, there are a lot of people talking about this!

The upshot is that Trestle Press are being heavily criticised for allegedly using ebook cover artworks without permission. I've never been one for bad-mouthing folk, so I'll bite my lip, hard, and leave it at that.

However, I am extremely proud of the reputation I've worked hard to build, both as a writer and ezine editor, so I've emailed Trestle's Giovanni Gelati and asked him to withdraw 'Manchester 6' from sale.  I also asked Gio for sales details and payment.  For the record, I actually supplied the photo used for my cover.  Unfortunately, some highly respected writers have been sucked into this controversy.

Personally, it's a bummer, as my ebook seemed to be consistently selling, which is one good thing, I suppose.  Other authors, I know and respect, had more than one ebook with Trestle, so I'm genuinely gutted for them.  They've since jumped ship.  I just hope the stormy seas calm down soon...

The whole episode (which is fast becoming a 'series') has left a very sour taste.  It's a steep learning curve and no doubt we'll reassess matters, then endeavour to have our ebooks back on the market.  I have every faith that our strongly knit online writing community will support the innocent authors involved.

I'd be interested to hear what you think of this 'mess', so please do feel free to comment below.

Anyway, that excellent post I mentioned is from Luca Veste, and is much more articulate and comprehensive than mine.  Read it here.

Pondering,
Col

LIVERPOOL 5... MANCHESTER 6... now THAT'S entertainment!

What a game that was!

Yep, the secret's out (unbeknown to me, all over Facebook, while I was still editing the bloody stories - and, yeah, they're bloody alright!). So, after dragging my feet on the ebook lark, I've finally succumbed and am so proud to say, my own collection is imminent... MANCHESTER 6 will be out in the next couple of days.

I've been thinking about it for a while, after seeing a lot of my good buds bringing out ebooks.  My issue was simply not wanting to disrespect my agent, Nat Sobel, who I'm still working with on a prospective crime novel series.  So, I asked for Nat's blessing and, he said, "Go for it". Things moved fast then...

Thursday afternoon I emailed my proposal (for a series) to Trestle Press. An hour later their head honcho, Giovanni Gelati accepted, and by the evening 'Gio' (he's me mate now, innit!) designed the snazzy looking cover.  I was up all night editing, tweaking, cutting, tightening the six stories, and, after doing a blurb and bio, by the early hours of Saturday morning, it's all been sent to Trestle.

As us Mancs, say, "Am well chuffed".

I felt Trestle would be a good choice as many of my trusty writer buds are already with them. Which brings me to LIVERPOOL 5.

This developed for Luca just hours after I posted the interview with him below.  So to update his rapid rise to 'Authordom'... his collection is available to buy, for the price of a bag of chips, over at Amazon... here.
I love chips, so have already bought mine. What? You didn't know Amazon sold chips? They're doing everything now... e-chips are amazing... eat all you want 'n' yer don't get fat!  No? Okay, good night.