Wednesday 17 October 2012

Monday 1 October 2012

English

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.”
 - George Bernard Shaw

When I first published Redemption Protocol, I felt confident that, in no time whatsoever, Amazon (other ePublishers are available) would enable the publishing of multiple editions of a book in different languages that, particularly in the case of American English and British English, would be differentiated by a specific language tag, thus no longer requiring the language to be inelegantly specified in the title, and furthermore, that these multiple editions would be accessible from the same sales page by simply selecting the preferred option (the reasoning being, of course, that there are Americans in the UK, and Brits in the US, and who was I to deny them the correct spelling of chromaticity?). This being the case, I reasoned, surely it made sense to release both a US and a UK English version of my book, in order to serve my (at this point, solely phantasmal) readers better.

I was wrong.

The only correspondence that I have received on the matter of my varying language editions were queries as to why I did it. That aside, those motivated to comment merely observed that it ‘looked a bit odd’.

I agree.

Thus I am removing the rather odd duplication of my titles and, by implication, the aesthetically distasteful suffix that details their language, by unifying the books around what is by far the more popular choice of my audience, to wit, American English.

This week, at some nebulous point, the UK English editions will vanish, the US English editions will drop their awkward suffix, the changes will ripple out across the known universe, and peace and joy will suffuse all humanity (in reality, perhaps two of these things will happen, and there is some prospect of a third within the next eight weeks, or at least, I hope there is).

If anyone fervently wishes for a UK English edition, then all I ask is that you buy five thousand copies and I shall address it forthwith. Joking aside, do let me know.

In the meantime, I shall indulge my anglophile tendencies with terribly British (and perhaps terrible) blog posts such as these.

Recidivist Paradox. Nearly... there...


I’m delighted to announce that after some great reviews by test readers, Recidivist Paradox, the third book in the Contact series, will be out soon. Hell, I might even tweet about it.

Thanks for the great feedback on the first two books, see if you can spot the mild retcon from book two to book three, and I hope everyone enjoys it!

On another note, I’ve had lots of emails with great questions about the series, and as well as replying to these in person, I’m going to post some on this blog. I'll start with the most popular question, which usually goes something like, ‘if I get on board with this series, does it have an ending so profound, so powerful, so personally transformative, that it will have been worth investing in it?’ Something like that, anyway.

Spoiler. Damn right I do.