Books, book shops and rogue jackets

January 25, 2015

I was interviewed last week at the Bognor Observer. We talked about my novel, Past Imperfect, and other aspects of my life including my cancer treatment. That wasn’t part of the plan, but once the journalist picked up on it, he wanted to include some detail in the article. I’m looking forward to seeing it in print, which will be next Thursday. Hopefully the article will appear in the Chichester Observer too: a sister newspaper. Although I don’t expect people to rush out and order the book; I hope it will provide a link to my back-list titles on Amazon and perhaps register my name amongst readers of fiction in the area. It could also help as I build with the Chindi group of writers I am now associated with.

I found myself popping into bookshops in Bognor as a result of a proposed new role for me within the group. I have been asked to look into ways of getting our books into local bookshops and retail outlets. I’m not sure that it will be too successful. Of four shops I found on Google in Bognor, only W.H.Smith offered of a chance of sales. One of the shops was stuffed with old paperbacks and was not interested in what I had to offer, while the other two had closed down. Next week I’ll be checking half a dozen shops in Chichester. I hope they are all open and willing to stock our books.

Quite by chance I opened my author page on my Amazon UK account a couple of days ago and found three, rogue book jacket copies of three of my paperbacks. Each was a plain design, no pictures, title in brackets and my name printed surname first, comma, Christian name. The publisher was CreateSpace and each jacket showed an ASIN number, which is a Kindle number, and each with a price higher than £14. I’ve contacted CreateSpace who have replied asking for the ASIN numbers so they can look into it. I suspect copyright infringement, but what loser would want to sell my paperbacks at £14 when I sell them at considerably less?

I am in the process of uploading Rosellis Gold to CreateSpace and am now battling the usual problem of getting the jacket to fit the template. This means learning Photoshop; something I don’t really have time for. The Kindle version is on Amazon, and after I have battled with the jacket, I’ll get round to putting it on Smashwords. Only four more titles to go; then I can get down to the serious business of writing. Wish me luck!