BOOK GIVEAWAY & E-BOOK PROMO

BOOK ONE OF KATHLEEN HERBERT'S NORTHERN KINGDOMS IS ABOUT TO BE REPUBLISHED

From this ....

..... and this

To this:

To be entered into the draw to win one of the first copies of the new edition, leave a comment on this cover below. The photograph, by Ian Carroll, is meant to capture the atmosphere of the following passage:

He looked up and saw a figure in a grey gown, gold hair streaming across its shoulders, watching him with wide grey eyes. It was as if sunlight, clear stream and grey stone had shaped themselves into a girl. He had the wild thought that the Goddess herself, the Lady of the hill circles and the holy springs, had risen from the stream to his aid.

Previous reader comments have already affected the design, but it will not be fixed for another week or two, so you have a chance to make your influence felt. This is of course, just my rough idea- proportions of back, front and spine will be decided by the number of pages, and graphic designer Kate will work on exact positioning, style and colour of text.

TRIFOLIUM BOOKS' EBOOK PRICE REDUCTION
I have decided to reduce the price of the following three e-books too on Amazon for a limited period only: you can now buy them for around a pound, or under two dollars. That's cheaper than a cup of coffee! Hurry before I change my mind!

The Boy with Two Heads                   Paths of Exile                             Moon in Leo 

If you go to our website, and buy your copy from the links on each author page, we get a tiny proportion of your payment! The more we get, the more we can pay our authors!

 

PRICING OF E-BOOKS

Now, while I am offering one of my e-books as a free download, seems an appropriate time for me to add my few penn'orths to this contentious debate. This article and its comments in today's Telegraph got me thinking.

Let me start with my experience as a publisher, so that what I say can be put into context. I run a new and very small- OK micro- family publishing business. Trifolium Books UK has been in business now for just over 18 months.


I started the business initially because I was not prepared to spend hours, days and weeks of my life trying to find an agent and/or publisher for my friend Kathleen Herbert who had been a highly successful, mainstream published, author in the 1980s. Some of the story is here, thanks to Deborah Swift, and my full reasons for setting up the company are here.

I use new technology- Print on Demand- for my books, which has many great advantages- no wasted copies, no remaindered books, excellent quality printing, world-wide distribution, just as many copies as anyone wants- but one disadvantage: each individual copy costs more than your average trade paperback, and a lot more than mass market 3 for the price of 2, books. In all other ways, I am exactly the same as a traditional publisher: I offer editing, design and promotional services to my authors and don't expect any money from them!

Pricing of the books on Amazon and the world wide market is related to the cost of production, so longer books cost more- and actually this seems very fair to me. I price the paperbacks so that Amazon and the big distributors get what they need and demand; so that I can pay the authors a fair royalty; and so that I can have a tiny chance of making a small profit in the very long run. At the moment, I am happy not to lose money- but then, I don't count my time, nor does any other member of my family team, so it's a bit of an artificial picture. I have no problems with local bookshops- I can supply them on a sale or return basis so that they can sell them at a slightly lower price than Amazon etc.

Now comes the contentious bit- pricing the Kindle versions. Apart from our time, there are up-front costs of the print version- upload, proof copies, revision fees, ISBNs, physical copies for author, designer, British Library etc and enough copies to cover promotion, reviews and local suppliers. When I've done all that, the digital conversion and upload for Kindle (again, apart from time) is free, so I can sell the e copy cheaper. In the case of Moon in Leo, Kathleen and I feel very strongly that we want the book to be read, as it has such a powerful message for us all today.

This is an opportunity for me to offer these books at a lower price- especially as some of them are rather long. For example Moon in Leo has to retail at £11.99 on Amazon, or I would be paying to publish it, so I can offer the digital version at an affordable price, sell more copies and pay the authors a straight 50% of the takings, which will probably go higher if and when I sell more.

I know that I am lucky enough to have a pension that means I don't have to earn money from the business I am passionate about- at least in the short term. So- I am a traditional publisher in some ways- though not a mainstream one, and like the big publishers, I act as a gatekeeper.

The price of this very short ebook is related to its length

Is that the main difference between traditional publishers and self-publishers? Is it this gatekeeping (or lack of it) that worries everyone about self publishing? Well let me tell you- I have read some truly awful books- badly written, badly edited, or seemingly not edited at all, full of plot holes, cliches, dull and unbelievable characters, too many trite adjectives and inappropriate similes- and many were self published; but a shocking number were main stream published. I would buy the argument that we need these big publishing companies if they didn't publish vapid and trivial rubbish like books about non existent meerkats and ghost written biographies of teenage nonentities who are the darlings of readers of Hello Magazine. Most TV, many many films, and much recorded music is utter rubbish- but we are grown ups aren't we? Can't we be our own gatekeepers? We can switch off the telly or the radio, and walk out of the cinema. Why, in the case of books, do we need Nanny Publisher to tell us what we can and can't read? OK so we will have to kiss a lot of frogs before we find our book princes without her to guide us, but with books, I think most of us experienced readers need do no more than peck it on the cheek before we commit. There's no need to go for an all out snog with a bad book!

I think though, that the main point is  that the self publishers who sell cheap are damaging sales of mainstream ebooks. I have a feeling that the big publishers are over pricing their ebooks in an ostrich like move to try and make us buy only paper books. It's often possible on Amazon, to buy the real book cheaper. Whatever the true explanation for this it is counter-intuitive  to buy a virtual book which is dearer than a real one.

I buy ebooks for lots of reasons- one is that I don't risk much money to try a new author, and like many of the commentators in the Telegraph I have read authors I might not have come across because of this. Another reason is that, for good reads that I enjoy at the time, but probably won't read again, I am not cluttering up already bulging bookshelves. However, if I read a Kindle book I think is A Keeper- I go straight out and buy a real version- preferably from my local indie bookshop! I did this for Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance and happily payed full price for both versions- but this is a five star  + + + book!

So- how do we small indie publishers know how to price our ebooks? We neither want to under-value the work of our authors, nor put off potential readers. When Julia and I discussed the digital price of The Boy with Two Heads we decided to price it at less than the price of the adult historical fiction so that young people could afford to buy it with their pocket money. In this discussion between author and publisher, who was being favoured? Author, publisher or reader? Or are we all part of the same community? Take a look at my books on Amazon, and tell me what you think.

NOTHING MUCH CHANGES; A NEW REVIEW OF MOON IN LEO

"... the intrigue within today's politics, the suspicion and distrust between indigenous and immigrant communities ..."
 
Recently I have been thinking more about sending out review copies of The Boy with Two Heads, and wrestling with the Kindle edition to think about the other books. However, I occasionally check them out on Amazon, and was delighted to find a new review of Moon in Leo. I print it here in its entirety as it's the first to highlight the book's relevance to today's audience, and it uncannily echoes some of Kathleen's thoughts in her letters to me.

I don't really read historical novels, but "Moon in Leo" came to my attention for two reasons. First, my wife was reading it and I was attracted by the cover and secondly it is set, albeit three hundred and fifty years ago, in the county where I live. Aldingham shown on the cover map is somewhere I used regularly to visit.
Right! So what did I make of the book? Well, it is well researched redolent of the period. One word "guffawing" (page243) jarred a little, I thought it a more modern word, but discovered it had been around for about hundred years at the time this book is set, so one-nil to Kathleen Herbert!
Here, I have no intention of providing a précis of the plot, but make a suggestion! Forget, as you read, when it is set, instead reflect on the intrigue within today's politics, the suspicion and distrust between indigenous and immigrant communities and as you read, you will come to the conclusion that not much changes – we just call things by different names.
This book had a number of problems with me; I've put it that way around deliberately. First, for my taste it is too long at 400 pages, and the font is quite small, I'm getting old and my attention span is not what it once was. Secondly, there are (again for me) too many characters. However, the publisher provides a handy list of characters at the front, to which I repeatedly had to refer. It would though, have been better if this list had been alphabetical.
The holidays are coming up, so go off to Spain, but take with you a small slice of Cumberland in the shape of this novel. It is excellent value, beautifully written and will provide you with an entertaining and educational insight of times gone by. Click on the "Buy" button and be hugely entertained.

This is what Kathleen wrote to me:

I have looked over my novel about Furness during the Popish Plot- which is firmly based on truth… during these last weeks, the story has suddenly become incredibly topical- … for the background  we have:

• a King called Charles, with a complicated marital and family life
• a society of the rich and famous who produce a new scandal with every edition of the newspapers
•   a government that is not only stale but starting to smell     
• an established religion that has run out of steam, and numbers of cults that are boiling with enthusiasm- some for good, some for evil, both inside and outside Christianity     
• and a large number of “alternative” Englands that are barely suspected to exist by “official” England     
• It’s 1678, but change the clothes and it could be today.

And later:

I wrote a novel about the different folk who have come to our islands (for good, bad, fear, food, etc) and how they are still coming. I put the story into the past, so no folk could be insulted or unhappy or frightened.

AMAZON ISN'T EASY!

I talk to Amazon a lot- by email, by live chat, and even by phone. They are always charming and polite and promise to do something. However, getting something changed on the mighty Amazon is like swimming through treacle, or as an acquaintance whose word-hoard I envy, once said, "It's like pinning jelly-fish to clouds."

I have had two problems with them recently. One concerns the fact that they list The Boy with Two Heads as out of stock, when we know that people have ordered it from local bookshops, and we ourselves have a (rapidly diminishing) pile of copies. They also say they don't know who the publisher is. Well, durr- they've been talking to me! Me- the publisher!

However, it does say that The Boy with Two Heads is #31 in Books > Sports, Hobbies & Games > Other Sports > Sporting Events > Olympic Games

Yay!- it's in the top 100 already (or in a top 100) and this is in spite of the fact they say it's "out of stock."

The message is- don't be put off, order it anyway, and we hope and believe you will enjoy this lively and gripping new read.

The other problem is potentially more serious. When you search for Carla Nayland's Paths of Exile on Amazon.co.uk, you will not at first see this striking cover,

but the one that went out of print some time ago. You can still find the Trifolium Books 2011 edition, but t you have to expand the information in the formats box by clicking on the + sign. Obviously, I would prefer that you buy Trifolium Books' edition, but not just because it's got a handsomer cover, and a better layout, but because I will be able to pay royalties to the author. As the publisher of the earlier edition, Quaestor 2000, has ceased to trade, I have no idea who now receives the profits from any sales, but I guess it won't be the publisher, and I know it isn't the author!

So the message here is simple too- if you want a copy of this gritty and gripping book, buy either the edition on the right, or the Kindle version of the same edition.

Amazon I hope will eventually get the message that they should not be selling out of print POD books!

"...with a little help from the Trifolium Blog"

I have to come clean here- I am posting this review from a friend who didn't manage to post it on Amazon. While we are at it, I have noticed discussions on various blogs and lists about how useless Amazon reviews can be. Apparently, no-one believes them if they are all 5 star, and the first few are in any case almost all from people who know the writer. Well- yes, I managed to figure out who most- but not all- the reviewers of Moon in Leo are, but I didn't ask them to give it five stars! And, refreshingly, Nan Hawthorne's review, quoted elsewhere on this blog, is posted with only four stars on Good Reads. Does this mean we've arrived at last?

Anyway, this is what my friend, Mrs B S, a voracious reader, thinks:

I had expected to find Moon in Leo a difficult read as I am not very good around history in the 16/1700s and also have no understanding of the occult etc. However, to my surprise, with a little help from the Trifolium Blog and the good old dictionary I slowly read my way through the start of the book and was soon enjoying the characters and the gripping story. I loved and lost myself in the descriptions of the surrounding countryside. The ending was lovely and the sort I always opt for! All in all I would thoroughly recommend this book. Congratulations to the Author and the Publishers.