Cool news - part two

As with all the best sequels, there's been a bit of time between our last post and this follow-up. Call it being a tease. Call it building suspense. Call it being downright slack...

But we're back now, folks, with this, our first blog post of 2010. To be honest, I've held off for a reason. The back end of last year was stupidly busy, with us publishing our first book, me finishing writing and then doing publicity for The Manx Giant, and then there was a short break away, the usual Christmas panic and mayhem. You know the sort of thing.

However, the overriding thing was this - we needed to wait for confirmation on cool news part two, and indeed, cool news part three.

Part two is now in, and here you have it. We have been approached by an acquaintance who is very supportive of what we're trying to do, which, for new readers of this here blog, is get an indie publishing house off the ground from a standing start. Absolute ground zero.

Anyway, this acquaintance/benefactor has offered to support us financially on a project by project basis - which means, in a nutshell, that as and when we need it, we can call in extra funds. This might be to secure a larger than usual print run, should we feel it warrants it; or it could be to secure a book where the design and print work is complex.

It's a good position for us - we retain full control of the business, including the decision on whether or not to publish a book, and the only proviso is an obvious one - if we put a particular project to our benefactor, and they aren't convinced, then they step away from it. No problem.

Ultimately, what this does give us is a bit of flexibility. Without it, we would have had to work from the ground up, with each book (potentially) having to do well before we could move up a grade in publishing terms.

With the benefactor in place, we can climb a couple of rungs on the ladder, which is what we are doing for our third book, which will follow the first issue of Vertigo, now set for an Easter launch.

Book three will be a biography. And that, of course, is where cool news part three comes in. But you'll have to wait for that. It won't be as long a wait as it was for this post, I promise...

And don't get me started on cool news part four. That's just too much.