My publishing empire

Having read an article in the paper exactly a week ago which gave me the misguided impression there was money to be made by publishing books on Amazon Kindle (on a second reading the article makes it quite clear that there's very little money to be made doing this, by the way), I have managed in the last week to publish 10 books. Sorry, got carried away.

I started by putting my comic Hot Rod Cow out there (just 77p, or download a sample for free), and it's been joined by Sinnerhound. Added to those comics, which have been in print for the last year already, I've published two comic-related items for the very first time:



The Tock is a bedtime adventure story for kids which I wrote on New Years Day 2009. I illustrated it over the next couple of days, only in pencil, then showed it to a few people, including publishers an agents whose biggest comment was that it was too long for a kids picture book. It wasn't until a year later that I got round to inking it and, on those folks' advice, edited it down to a smaller page count. But I didn't like it shortened, and it was clearly going to be prohibitively expensive if I published it at its full 64 page length. Well now, thanks to Amazon Kindle, the whole book is available at its full length, the black and white pages looking perfect on a Kindle or iPhone screen and I'd encourage anyone to read the free download I bet you'll want the whole thing.

The Immortal Partie - A Mr Hawk Investigation is a full colour comic strip that I wrote way back in 1994 and which the brilliant artist John Erasmus illustrated in wonderful painted colour. Because it's in full colour it's always been a challenge to publish, with any printed copy being a bit expensive for what was, originally, just a 10 page story. However, redesigning it for the Kindle screen, I found that every single panel of John's artwork, which we'd laid out in a rigid 9-panel-per-page grid, merited filling the screen, giving us a 90 page work of art which reads perfectly on Kindle, iPhone, iPad etc. I've read it on my iPod and it has quite simply never looked so good before. Again I'd urge you to read the free download. I guarantee this story - a murder mystery featuring severed hands popping up all over Leicestershire - will make you want to read it to the end.

Of course my comic strip works are just one side of my publishing empire. I've also published 6 volumes of sitcom scripts, from the archives of The Sitcom Trials. Enjoy...



Breaking News: The Lavender Millbank Mob is currently #66,564 in Amazon's sales ranking. Could do better.