Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Ch-Changes...

Ahead of announcing our two new titles tomorrow, we've made a few small tweaks to the website; these relate to the page counts of our books.

To explain; in the past few months we've been re-making all our e-book files, incorporating some of the lessons we've learned since we started on this strange adventure two years ago. This means that on the whole we've eliminated superfluous spaces and generally tidied up our presentation. As a result, most of the file sizes have changed (the online shop module will update itself overnight with the new figures) and so have most of the page counts, which are based on the .pdf versions of our titles.

As a rule, the page counts have come out slightly shorter - although THRACE has stayed the same, THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH has come out slightly longer, and for reasons we are completely unable to fathom GHOST STATION appears to have lost 52 pages! In fact it hasn't lost any text at all - none of them has; we can only imagine there was something slightly strange about the layout that we didn't notice in the original version, but which has now been corrected. In any case, page counts are of little use when it comes to electronic books; they're only there as a guide, so that at least you know whether to expect a light read or a substantial blockbuster!

We're sure none of this will matter to most of our readers, but as some of you are particularly eagle-eyed and would probably spot the alternations we thought we had better give you an explanation just to set your minds at rest.

Now, on with preparing to announce the two new books ...

Year Two Week Forty-Seven

Another quiet week, and once again we're gearing up for the end of our trading year by crunching numbers and doing stats. We also have a new DMCA cop who has started chasing illegal download sites and issuing DMCA notices on our behalf - which is of course becoming a much larger job as the number of our titles grows.

Our top seller this week has again been Chris's FOX HUNT, and our average response time of four hours and 18 minutes was certainly not to be sneezed at!

In addition, we were thrilled to learn that a new book we're hoping to publish later in the year is now finished, and a couple of others have taken major leaps forward recently. After a (northern-hemisphere) winter of hard slog for what felt like very little return, we are emerging into spring in a much more positive frame of mind and full of re-awakened energy ... which has got to be a good thing, right?

Year Two Week Forty-Six

Not a hugely busy week, it must be admitted, although we had a modest surge of sales through one of our online distributors. On a purely domestic level, however, Chris's FOX HUNT was again the highest seller through our website, with an average response time of exactly three and a half hours.

We're still gearing up for our new releases, but the jobs that remain to be done on them are now being ticked off one after another. We took a little time out today to prepare a leaflet, which we hope will be distributed by our authors at various conventions and events later in the year, and to start thinking about improvements and amendments we can make as we plunge headlong into our third year of trading; some of these we'll discuss with you here when we have a better idea of what we're doing! Suffice it to say that with the exception of the year end accounts and the actual publication of our two 1 May titles we're about as far ahead of ourselves as we could reasonably expect to be at this stage - which, we're quite convinced, probably means that some kind of apocalyptic disaster is only just around the next corner!

Year Two Week Forty-Five

Thanks to the recent excellent review on Jessewave Chris Quinton's FOX HUNT was this week's runaway best-seller, although our average response time dipped somewhat and was exactly seven hours.

We're pushing forward on a couple of long-term projects, one of which is nearly completed, and gradually pulling things together for not only the publication of our next two books on 1 May but also the formal end of our second year in business; this means bringing our accounts and statistics up to date so that when we have our annual get-together/meeting of minds (essentially a lunch where our authors all meet up - or at least those who can actually get there) we have some solid information to impart. However the essential decision was made a long time ago; initially we intended to try this for two years just to see how it went, but obviously it's going well enough for us to carry on into the foreseeable future!

New Review of 'Fool's Oath'

Elisa Rolle seems to be on some sort of crusade to clear a backlog of reviews, bless her heart, because she has now turned her attention to Chris Quinton's FOOL'S OATH. As mentioned previously, it's often difficult to pick out a quote from one of Elisa's reviews, but this is part of her first paragraph:

The second in the Fool’s Odyssey trilogy if for me the better for now; I liked the previous book, but if I remember well the romance was not as much developed as it’s in this one.

New review of 'Solemn Contract'

It's wonderful to know that some of our slightly older books are still working their way through people's review piles; today Elisa Rolle has published her response to Morgan Cheshire's SOLEMN CONTRACT. As it's in Elisa's own delightful brand of English it's been very difficult to pick out one line to quote on the website, so here's her concluding paragraph:

In a way that is the main point of this romance, it could have been a 100% breeches rippers, Jem could have been the perfect sacrificial lamb, all innocence and big, teary eyes, and Will could have been a 100% romance hero, knight in shining armor and all, but the author decided to play more subdue tunes; the drama is there, the love story also, but it’s all more sedate, less on the face of everyone, and that is probably correct because, even if you are in love, and people can see it, in 1720 Connecticut, living as an openly gay couple was not possible.

Year Two Week Forty-Four

No overall top seller this week - we're constantly astonished by the almost psychic ability of our customers to order equal numbers of a wide variety of titles! - and average response time was tidy but unspectacular at four hours and 27 minutes.

In other news, we've had great fun juggling books which have come back from their proof-readers; we had expected two, and in the end were surprised to receive three all within the same few days. This means things have become very busy here at Megaheadquarters while we sort everything out, but already two books have been returned to their authors for final polishing and the remaining one should go out in the early part of next week.

Behind the scenes, we've also been overhauling our accounts - not the most glamorous occupation but one of the most essential - and reckoning up our total sales, which are accumulating very nicely thank you. We'll be in a position to give you more information about that shortly, but let's just say that we're coming up on an important milestone and we're feeling very comfortable indeed about the future of this project!

New review of 'Fox Hunt'

Guest reviewer Sirius at Jessewave seems to have thoroughly enjoyed Chris Quinton's FOX HUNT and has courteously managed to review it without giving away the secret of Fox's true nature which is, after all, one of the major strands of the plot!

This story has it all – intelligent writing, exciting adventure and suspense and two interesting protagonists.