It's always a delight when, some time after a book's release, a brand new review pops up unexpectedly. We've just been made aware of Gerry Burnie's review of Adam's MAKE DO AND MEND which appeared recently on the website Gerry B's Book Reviews and garnered a prestigious "five bees".
It reads with all the credibility of opening a time capsule.
Surely no author could ever dream of higher praise than that? It must make all the hard work of researching seem worthwhile! So thank you, Gerry - and well done, Adam!
Tuesday, 26 November 2013
Tuesday, 19 November 2013
Comcast
This has now come up twice, and we wanted to put it on record in case it should ever occur again. Comcast apparently has 1&1, our e-mail/online shop provider, flagged as a source of spam and doesn't accept file attachments from 1&1 IP addresses.
We've raised a support enquiry with 1&1, who say that it's 'an intermittent problem'. This is all very well, and in the most recent case we did manage to get the file through eventually, but frankly it makes us look as if we're not doing our job - and that's not a situation we're particularly happy with.
Readers who have Comcast accounts need to be aware that there may be some difficulty in completing your order. We'll keep trying, of course, and we'll do our best to communicate with you about it, but in exceptional cases we may need to find an alternative method of delivering your file. Meanwhile, if you have a second account with another provider - anyone who isn't Comcast! - it might be easier all round if you were to order your book(s) from there.
Just a thought!
We've raised a support enquiry with 1&1, who say that it's 'an intermittent problem'. This is all very well, and in the most recent case we did manage to get the file through eventually, but frankly it makes us look as if we're not doing our job - and that's not a situation we're particularly happy with.
Readers who have Comcast accounts need to be aware that there may be some difficulty in completing your order. We'll keep trying, of course, and we'll do our best to communicate with you about it, but in exceptional cases we may need to find an alternative method of delivering your file. Meanwhile, if you have a second account with another provider - anyone who isn't Comcast! - it might be easier all round if you were to order your book(s) from there.
Just a thought!
Kobo
Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that all Manifold Press titles vanished from Kobo's website during the recent purge. Whilst we completely understand Kobo's (and others') intentions to try to establish some kind of control or filtering process over the self-publishing/micro-publishing market, we also feel that there is absolutely nothing about our books that any but the most censorious reader could possibly take exception to. (Not liking them is one thing, but nobody could ever seriously argue that they're either bad or gratuitously obscene!) In fact, as we've pointed out to Kobo, very few of our books are more explicit than 'Brokeback Mountain' which remains on their list.
You'll gather from this that we've raised a formal query about this, and in fact we're doing whatever we can to try to get ourselves restored to Kobo's list (which is, admittedly, not much) - not least because we now have the bizarre situation whereby, for example, Chris's books with another publisher are still available but hers with us aren't, and there is to the best of our knowledge no significant difference in the quality or level of explicitness in the writing of them.
But the scale of the task must be enormous. There must be authors and publishers all over the world protesting that they've been unfairly treated, that their work should be made an exception, and having no idea of the level of staffing resources and expertise Kobo are able to apply to reviewing everything we can only conclude that it's going to take them some considerable time to sort it all out.
We suspect that those of you who've previously bought from Kobo's website are already fully aware of the situation and have made your own decisions about what to do in future. We're certainly not going to suggest any sort of protest or campaign in favour of Manifold Press's titles being restored to their list, which we suspect could be counter-productive, but if you do happen to think that a mistake may have been made in our case - well, a polite e-mail of enquiry to Kobo about our status certainly couldn't hurt. We'll leave you to decide whether or not you think that would be appropriate, and will only add that if you feel inclined to speak up on our behalf we here at Megaheadquarters will very much appreciate you taking the trouble. In any case, we hope to be back in favour with Kobo eventually - so please "watch this space" for further updates in due course!
You'll gather from this that we've raised a formal query about this, and in fact we're doing whatever we can to try to get ourselves restored to Kobo's list (which is, admittedly, not much) - not least because we now have the bizarre situation whereby, for example, Chris's books with another publisher are still available but hers with us aren't, and there is to the best of our knowledge no significant difference in the quality or level of explicitness in the writing of them.
But the scale of the task must be enormous. There must be authors and publishers all over the world protesting that they've been unfairly treated, that their work should be made an exception, and having no idea of the level of staffing resources and expertise Kobo are able to apply to reviewing everything we can only conclude that it's going to take them some considerable time to sort it all out.
We suspect that those of you who've previously bought from Kobo's website are already fully aware of the situation and have made your own decisions about what to do in future. We're certainly not going to suggest any sort of protest or campaign in favour of Manifold Press's titles being restored to their list, which we suspect could be counter-productive, but if you do happen to think that a mistake may have been made in our case - well, a polite e-mail of enquiry to Kobo about our status certainly couldn't hurt. We'll leave you to decide whether or not you think that would be appropriate, and will only add that if you feel inclined to speak up on our behalf we here at Megaheadquarters will very much appreciate you taking the trouble. In any case, we hope to be back in favour with Kobo eventually - so please "watch this space" for further updates in due course!
Wednesday, 13 November 2013
New reviews for OF DREAMS AND CEREMONIES
Having had rather a frantic few days since we published our two new titles on 1 November, we have unfortunately neglected to bring you word of the three reviews of Julie's new title OF DREAMS AND CEREMONIES which have appeared so far.
There were two release day reviews, one by Mark at Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews who said "Once again Julie [...] comes through with a wonderful story… " and one by Ami at Boys In Our Books who said " …I am in love with how Julie Bozza writes… " (Arent we all?!) More recently, Kindle Romance at The Romance Reviews has told us that "If you enjoyed the first story in this series, then this is a must read… " - again, a sentiment we can wholeheartedly endorse.
We'd like to thank all three of these reviewers for their good opinions, and to apologise to both them and Julie for not having posted about them when they were originally received; we'll try to do better in future!
There were two release day reviews, one by Mark at Sinfully Sexy Book Reviews who said "Once again Julie [...] comes through with a wonderful story… " and one by Ami at Boys In Our Books who said " …I am in love with how Julie Bozza writes… " (Arent we all?!) More recently, Kindle Romance at The Romance Reviews has told us that "If you enjoyed the first story in this series, then this is a must read… " - again, a sentiment we can wholeheartedly endorse.
We'd like to thank all three of these reviewers for their good opinions, and to apologise to both them and Julie for not having posted about them when they were originally received; we'll try to do better in future!
Friday, 1 November 2013
Two new titles on sale today!
We're delighted to say that our two new titles, Julie Bozza's OF DREAMS AND CEREMONIES (Book Two of the BUTTERFLY HUNTER trilogy) and Chris Quinton's GAME ON, GAME OVER, are now available to order from our website and online shop.
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We've been a bit lax with the statistical information lately, so for the sake of completeness here are the gory details:
Our best-selling title in September was Julie's BUTTERFLY HUNTER (a perennial favourite!), and for October the best-selling title was Cimorene Ross's THE EAGLE'S WING. Our average response time for the past three months has been five hours 17 minutes.
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We've been a bit lax with the statistical information lately, so for the sake of completeness here are the gory details:
Our best-selling title in September was Julie's BUTTERFLY HUNTER (a perennial favourite!), and for October the best-selling title was Cimorene Ross's THE EAGLE'S WING. Our average response time for the past three months has been five hours 17 minutes.
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