Quiet War Ebooks Update

Pleased to announce that the ebooks of both In the Mouth of the Whale and Evening's Empires are at last available from both Amazon and iTunes. In The Mouth of the Whale can also be bought in Nook format, and I'm told that Evening's Empires they should be available on Nook any day now.

Unlike, say Kindle Direct Publishing, where you can upload your formatted book with a mouse-click or finger jab because you are interacting directly with a combined publisher and retailer, commercial ebook publishing is a bit more complicated - especially when a British publisher is dealing with retailers in another country. In this case, two digital distributors where involved: the publishers sent the ebook files to a distributor here in the the UK, which then sent them on to one in the US, which then registered the titles and turned them over to retailers, who processed them and made them available to readers. It was that handover to retailers where a bit of a glitch has delayed publication; the process is usually automatic, but the software stalled, and so the books have had to be pushed through by hand ('pushed through' is the actual technical term, reminding us that the net really is just a series of pipes). All of this activity, exposed by that pernicious glitch, reminds us that mass-market ebook publishing isn't quite as cheap and labour-free as we might imagine.

But anyway! At last all four Quiet War novels are available in both the UK and the US. And the two short story collections, Stories of the Quiet War and Life After Wartime are also available, although only on Kindle. I don't have access to the rest of the pipes, right now. . .

UPDATE 25/07/14 The ebook of Evening's Empires is now available from Barnes and Noble.