Friday 23 April 2010

BACK AT THE DESK

Back at my desk full time at last -- I'm afraid my recent surgery slowed me down more than I'd expected. And, of course, I'm now fighting a backlog.

But while I was pretty well zonked, a lot's been going on at BB, thanks to Tireless Tony and my admirable and hard-working editorial partners Hugh and Sam, with new releases, other books waiting in the wings and others in edit.

It's great to see that, even with a man down on such a small team, we never miss a beat. Whenever I panic, Skovia reminds me, with a nurse's cutting common sense, that Menton cemetery is full of 'indispensable' folks like me.

Submissions have been flooding in lately, so those are at the top of the list for me to handle over the next few days. Sadly, few will make the cut. There's nothing quite so soul-destroying as wading through synopsis after synopsis, sample chapter after sample chapter ... and then having to send out so many thanks-but-no-thanks letters to hopeful authors.

Much has been happening during April on the ebook front at BeWrite books, too. You may have noticed on the new www.bewrite.net site that we're now offering an ePub version of several titles. Tony's working hard to convert the entire BB catalogue so that all books will soon be offered with the popular ePub option as well as PDF. It's a big job. Other formats of titles will continue to be available from our list at Smashwords.com. We've set ebook price everywhere and in all formats at $5.99 per title -- four bucks below the $9.99 price-per-ebook that Amazon set and which has recently caused near warfare with publishers who want to charge more.

Also, for those who've asked, there will be a PayPal buying option on site within the next few days.

We're well ahead on partnering up, too, with all the new main players in the ebook retail field. Watch this space for news on that front.

All BeWrite Books titles will soon be with Kobo, by the way. If you're interested in ebooks, I highly recommend this fascinating forty-minute video talk by Kobo VP Michael Tamblyn for the very latest -- and quite surprising -- research and statistics:


Anyway ... now to dive into that slush pile.

Back soon. Neil 

4 comments:

  1. Neil, good to hear you are back on deck. Take it easy. Cheers,
    Brian

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  2. Hello, Neil. I found you via MobileReads. I like the site.

    Sorry to hear about your surgery - if you mentioned it in one of the forums elsewhere, I'm afraid I missed it.

    Good luck with this, your recovery, and all the rest of it.
    Helen

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  3. Hya Helen: Great to see another author here. I'd love to link your own excellent blog, but I'm pretty new to Blogworld, so I've got to find out how first ... TONY. YOU THERE???!!!

    And thanks for the good wishes. Really, I only go through these occasional surgical bouts for the sake of sympathy and waitress service.

    Cheers. Neil

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  4. I'm here and Helen's blog is posted in the "links" section now. T

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