Here's me sporting a hardcover and a paper back of Road Brother - the American edition.
These are ARCs (Advance Review/Reader Copies) that Amazon will send an author to check that the end product is satisfactory.
This all happens through KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) for authors who are self-publishing something.
I self-publish Road Brothers in the US because it's more profitable for me to do so, and my US publishers have never requested that I let them do it (which is what happened in the UK).
For seven years I just published Road Brothers in kindle format in the US. Formating for paperback and hardcover is a pain in the arse, and I didn't want to learn.
Recently I went through the learning process to publish the collection of Book of the Ancestor short stories, Tales of Abeth. So I thought I'd finally put out hardcopy of Road Brothers. I didn't think there would be a huge demand, but I went for it anyway.
Publishing through KDP is a nightmare. It's very easy to fall into an insanity loop talking to bots that have ridiculous powers to freeze your account and such like.
I submitted the paperback and got an email back saying I needed to prove I had the rights to publish the thing. I responded by noting that they had been publishing exactly the same words in kindle form for seven years and had sold thousands of copies.
A few days later the paperback was released onto the site.
I moved onto the hardcover and got the same email. You can see where we are with that:
The bots want me to produced 14 separate contracts, all a decade or so old, to prove that the anthologies that these stories went into did then release the rights a year or two later.
All while selling the same words in paperback and kindle...
So watch this space, but I absolutely do not have the time to battle through with scans of contracts and shit.
In the meantime, Americans can get the paperback shown. 210 pages of thrills and spills with Jorg and his companions.
And Brits can get the Voyager edition in ebook, paperback or hardback!
Pray for me!
