Leopold Borstinski's Blog, page 32

Want a free early view of Powder?

Now that Powder has got through the editing phase, it is now in pre-order at Amazon due to go live on November 19. But I’m giving a select few the opportunity to read it before anyone else has the chance.

I will send a free copy to anyone who volunteers to leave a review on Amazon after they receive their free edition. All you need to do is apply and show me a review you’ve written before for another book and we can take it from there. If you don’t want the opportunity then that’s fine: you will have a chance to buy it at a later date!

As you can imagine, I reserve the right to choose who invite to join the ARC team but I’m interested in opening up the team to as many people as I can.

Enjoy!

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The heroin is in the bag

I know I’ve been silent for a couple of months and, for some of you, that has been a blessing but I’m pleased to announce two items.

First, I have completed Powder and I’m looking to launch it around Thanksgiving – or towards the end of November if you don’t live in the US. The story itself wasn’t a big fight but time was my enemy, at least until end-June/July. We leap forward into the 1970s and find out what Mary Lou does with the proceeds from the biggest bank haul and two children to take care of. Staying at home and making wise financial investments is very much not the answer.

Second, I’ve already started on the final installment of the Lagotti Family series called Mama’s Gone. We find the Lagotti children grown up and fighting for their mother’s attention as well as vying for top dog in the mob empire. And as the title implies, there is no happy ending for Mary Lou so don’t complain when there isn’t one. All things going to plan, it’ll hit the streets around March 2019.

Finally, if you’d forgotten, The Case is available to buy exclusively on the web site at a 25% discounted price to its Amazon launch price.

Hope you’ve had/having a good summer.

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The Case Discount Offer

Jake knew coming out of retirement to help a Mafia Don was never going to  be an open and shut case…

I am pleased to announce The Case is available exclusively at a 25% discount from the Leopold Borstinski website. The price will be maintained until the novel gets launched on Amazon and will not be available anywhere else until then – and this will be the lowest price I shall be selling it: £3.75 is the price of a decent coffee anywhere in the Western world. It’s for sale in Kindle format, but if you’d like it as an ePub then let me know and if there’s any demand, I shall happily create an ‘iBook’ version.

So if you enjoy a light-hearted gumshoe story spanning a man’s life – or you like pulp fiction about a briefcase – then this novel has been written for you.

Fill your boots!

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Silence is golden, right?

Apologies for the radio silence the last couple of months. There have been personal reasons for my lack of posting and it may well carry on for another month or so.

Although there has been nothing publicly generated by me, the good news is that I am about halfway through the first draft of Powder. I must admit I was hoping to have finished it by now, but want don’t get.

There was also talk from me of making some books available direct from this website at a discounted price compared to when I publish officially on Amazon. That idea hasn’t gone away but I need to do a little bit more pre-press work on The Case before I can upload it. If I’d had the time to finish Powder, I’d have had the time to publish The Case.

My hope is that my postings will be back to normal frequency by the end of May 2018 and that, by then too, The Case will be available for you to purchase and download. Until then, make sure you grab a copy of The Getaway – if you haven’t already done so – and keep on keepin’ on.

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eBooks are rubbish or great: take your pick

A wonderful spat kicked off recently about the worth of eBooks. In the one corner, we have the Hachette Livre, who says they represent the death of creativity. Steeped in the vested interest of a hardcopy publisher, the argument he offers is that there is no creativity in eBooks despite the stated promise they were meant to deliver when they entered the popular conscience.

The reality is that eBooks are just electronic versions of hardcopy publications which add nothing to the reading experience (apart from the weight/size advantage and the fact that they can be cheaper to buy than paper versions of the same work).

In the opposite corner, we had the claim that eBooks represent a revolution and Hachette should stop complaining. The argument is that they are easier to carry around and, with Amazon as a catalyst, they have completely changed the world of book publishing.

My view? I remember there was a Sony e-reader back in the 80s or 90s so the eBook is nothing new. The revolution was provided by the download access facility of the world wide web. Amazon then piggybacked off that technological  leap and took advantage.

Are eBooks so different from a paper version? Not often and it is a function of the means of production that publishers – of any type – are going to want to create two processes for the same product. That doesn’t matter. The existence of online sales platforms – Amazon, SmashWords, B&N, Apple’s book store – are where the revolution started and enables me to deliver my product in a relatively cost-efficient manner.

What do you think?

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Made up words by a UK politician

One of the things I enjoy are neologisms. Another thing I marvel at is the abuse of language at the hands of the rich and the powerful. Enter the UK’s Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson.

He criticised the European Union as a “teleological construction” implying that this was bad. And this is why – yet again – the man is blowing poop wind out of his nether regions. Anything that is built has a purpose. Why would you make something without doing it for a reason. So teleology is just about having an end-point to the project you are engaged in. A construction is something that is made: like a political structure, a bridge, a fact (constructed to form an argument).

When Johnson attempted to slur the EU by stating that it was teleological, he thought he was being clever and using long complicated words to express a simple idea. He was. What made him stupid was the belief the phrase he chose implied something negative about the European union. He was wrong. It was a cold statement of fact and nothing more.

Military intelligence. Boris Johnson. Collateral damage. What do these three phrases have in common? Nothing: the first one is an oxymoron, the second is a moron and the third is a grotesque phrase which means military people killing civilians and not caring about it.

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Independent booksellers hope to gang up on Amazon

One hundred independent bookshops in the UK have ganged together in the hope of increasing their buying power to compete with the largest sellers. I appreciate that those readers in the US will feel this is the most useless story in the history of ever, but I ask you spend a couple more minutes with me before you give up.

The reason I mention this is that it constitutes an interesting example of what happens when big business comes up against lean, mean entrepreneurs. I love it. Of course, I don’t like the fact that independents were not getting an opportunity to get big name titles like everyone else.

Think global but buy local, right?

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Writers’ Block vs Cup of Tea: A Very British Solution

This is one of those stories which would only reply in the UK, India and apparently China. People’s creativity can be enhanced by drinking a cup of tea. Now let’s be clear: I might be British (okay, I am) but I do not like tea. I am a coffee drinker and completely happy in that state.

But only the Brits (I think it was The Daily Telegraph) would took the mega-leap from increasing creativity to solving writers’ block. And that is what they did – although The Guardian did actually put some effort into the problem and get a journalist to ask some writers how they sort out their block. And quite a few use tea.

I’ve had two bouts of writers’ block and neither was pleasant. Each took about a month to fight through and neither was eased by consuming any beverage. The cause was a lack of preparation on my part so I had no idea what I should be writing. Then personal circumstances took my eye off the ball for a couple of weeks and a month or two flew by.

Put another way, I think the idea of tea as a panacea is total rubbish, but I can understand writers using a liquid comfort blanket to ease their burden and to get out of the dark hole they find themselves in.

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Discounted books, maybe

This is the thing: I’m thinking of offering you 25% off my eBooks.

Here’s the details: first, it takes a long time to get books ready for marketing on platforms like Amazon Kindle but I am sitting on novels that won’t see the light of day for at least another year – if not more.

Second, these books are sitting around metaphorically gathering dust (they actually reside on a cloud drive with multiple backups spread across the globe) and because almost all my sales have come from Amazon as opposed to any other eBook platform, I sell exclusively on Amazon when I publish (it’s a contract situation).

BUT here’s the thing I mentioned at the start: until I commit to Amazon, I can sell anything to anyone on any platform – and at any price.

THE IDEA: I am seriously considering selling Kindle compatible versions of my yet-to-be published novels on my website at a 25% discount to the price I will charge when I publish on Amazon. This offer would be available to my lovely newsletter subscribers and, to be honest, the few souls who bump into the site without me directing them there directly.

Right now, I have The Case and The Death of Penny Pitstop waiting to be read and in a couple of months I can offer The Bowery Slugger. I would charge £3.75 instead of £4.99 and if you were in the US I don’t mind charging $3.75 compared to $4.99 if that helps. I could also sell paperback versions of them if I thought there was sufficient demand – the price would be £14.99 and I’d be able to offer something like a 25% discount on that too (subject to me finding out actual print costs etc).

If you are interested and a newsletter reader, reply to the e-newsletter with a YES! If you are interested and not a newsletter subscriber then go to the website and say something relevant in the comments section to this post.

If you are not interested then do nothing and if you are in the majority, I’ll do nothing too.

Hopefully you’ll be able to fill your boots – in the near future.

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Crime novels from traditional publishers

The Guardian newspaper had a wonderful roundup of traditionally published crime novels, so I thought I’d share it with you.

Buy from any source you think is best; not for me to say.

Fill your boots (but not if you’re only after a freebie).

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