Oh hello everyone, hello Sparrow and Dadioflex, thanks for the interest. Thanks for buying the book, thanks for your kind words about the play, Neil, and good luck to you, too. Aww, disappointed you don't live in Paris, Zelda.
The story behind this book and my second novel,
Being Light, is that the first was originally published by Victor Gollancz before it was taken over by Orion and began to specialise in fantasy/sci fi. George Orwell's publisher! I nearly died of happiness. The second was published by Orion but shortly afterwards my editor left, the books went out of print and I doubt that another publisher would be interested in making the investment required to re-publish them.
I spent the intervening years working on other projects (theatre and various TV projects that are in development) but I am working on another novel which my agent will send to mainstream traditional publishers.
However I can't bear to think of my first two novels going out of print so I have set up my own imprint, Tyger Books, to publish them as ebooks and print editions.
In the UK we have to pay/charge VAT of 17.5% on ebooks, hence the odd pricing. Having said that, the price will change on the
Tyger Books site in the next couple of days so the books are priced at £1.99 and $2.99. It's now $2.99 on Amazon but will go up. The list price for other retail outlets will be something like £2.99 and $5.99 but they have scope to discount by up to 50% (which they usually do).
The new print edition will be out shortly but there are still copies floating around from those companies who specialise in remaindered books - they charge 1p or whatever for the book so they don't have to pay royalties or sellers' fees to Amazon, and £2.50 postage for a 90p stamp. Still, so long as people are reading the book, I'm happy. Thanks for buying it, dadioflex. You're getting one of the few remaining originals!
I'm interested in what you say about reading the original text, Zelda. I have been dithering over this. My plan is to have a version with US text
available on Kindle as I believe most buyers are still Americans and might prefer familiar spelling. But the print version will be the UK text just because that's the original text. It seems daft to bring out a special US edition if I only sell a few copies. I'm going to see how it goes after a couple of months.
I am writing in haste because I'm just heading out to the other side of London for a mentoring session with a lovely Iranian poet - I'm helping her get her work into print - and I'm aware that I have written too much!
Thanks
Helen