I haven’t posted anything on here for a while as I’ve been busy with filming and writing, photography and building stuff.  But today the first copy of my book in paperback form arrived for proofing and I have to say that it’s quite a strange – and blogworthy – moment.

When I published Through the Square Window on the Kindle platform earlier in the year that was quite something.  I moved from being one of those people who talked about writing a book to being one of those people who had actually written a book.  And I had published it.  Ok, so the fanfare around the launch was mostly a bit of a buzz on Twitter and a few shouts on Facebook, and the posters on the tube and busses were noticeable entirely by their absence, but it was a launch of sorts and people started buying the book.  I was a published author, and people who weren’t me seemed to like what I had written.

But fan as I am of the whole eBook concept, there is something very traditional about a physical paperback that is missing in a download.  Now I’m a firm believer that the way things are going it won’t be long before the majority of commercial fiction is distributed in electronic format, but we are not there yet, and we seem to be even further from a time when it is possible to hand out copies of your eBook when you meet your friends or your clients.  The paperback is not quite dead.

So when I got the chance I worked out how to self-publish (in the UK, and to actually make a profit, which was a bit of a challenge I can tell you), and set the wheels in motion to get Through the Square Window available in paperback form. And that is what arrived today.

The funny thing is that until I held it in my hands I had no idea really how big a book it was.  Had I written something that was actually quite short, or was it about right for the genre?  Actually as it turns out it is bang on the money; at 18mm thick in standard form factor it sits nicely in the hand, and looks worth a read.  It is an actual book.

And the other main thing that separates physical books from their e-counterparts?  Every physical book published in the UK has a copy lodged in the British Library, in physical form for at least 40 years, and then in scanned archive form theoretically forever.

It is very weird to think that if someone in two hundred years wants to read my book they will now be able to do so.

Now that’s publishing.

Graham

ISBN: 978-0-956990-0-9

Tags: Book, Crime, Paperback, Peter French, Thriller, Through the Square Window, writing

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