Friday, December 30, 2011

The Winter Update

It's been a while since we last posted, but we're still here. To that end however, we've decided short of any huge announcements, we'll be only blogging updates quarterly.

As 2011 comes to a close, it's very obvious that ebooks are beginning to eclipse sales of our trade paperbacks. As more and more devices come out that support ebooks, especially with the ever present Kindle App for Android, etc., we're seeing about a 4:1 ratio of sales of ebooks vs. trade paperbacks. Will there ever come a time when "real" books are no longer published? Consider that it's been said that CDs will be gone within 5 years in favor of total electronic music distribution, it's very possible that the only physical books you'll find are special printings.

Stephen O'Connor's outstanding work "Spy in the City of Books" has been nominated for an IPPY, that's the Independent Publisher Book Awards. Two years ago, Larry Brooks' "Whisper of the Seventh Thunder" won best suspense novel so we're hopeful that Steve can reel in a second award for our little publishing business.

In 2012, we'll be cutting back to just a few books published, primarily gearing our efforts towards marketing the fine books we've already released the past three years. The biggest release will be "Mill City Stories: Tales of Lowell & The Merrimack Valley," a compilation of stories from local authors past and present. We're going to donate all the profits from this book to a veteran's charity and kick it off with a release party at the UMass-Lowell Conference Center on June 8th. More on that as we get closer. We also have a huge announcement about an unpublished piece by a well renowned author for the book that we'll let slip once we work out the full agreement.

Mike Girard's "Psycho Chicken & Other Foolish Tales" is now available as an audio book. Right now it's only available as a 6 CD set for sale at Fools' shows, but we're working on a digital download through our website. It's even funnier to listen to Mike read it (with music and sound effects) than it was reading the book on your own.

We're also hoping to do another Murder Mystery event with some of our authors in 2012. Look for more info for that in the future.

Have a great New Years and we'll update no later than the spring...unless there's huge breaking news...and that's quite possible!

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