Fight LEGALISED artistic copyright theft in the UK!

Sorry for the sensationalist headline but this one's rather important.

If you're a UK-based artist or creator, you really ought to consider signing this government e-petition  to protect the future of your creative works.

I won't go into the background of all of this as it's already been done rather well, over at this blog.

Have a look anyway and see what you think. We think it stinks like rotten poultry.

Smashwords? Enough, already.

A definite case of SLAGIATT ('Seemed like a good idea at the time'), when we decided to bin Amazon's KDP in favour of Smashwords' untried but independent platform end of last year.

We've been patient, and worked at promoting as best we can on the site, but the fact is that stuff just isn't shifting on SW. In fact, all our SW sales combined to date wouldn't even equate to the sales of one book on Amazon over the same timeframe. As 'Getting books out there' is greater than 'Not getting books out there', we have, with immediate effect, removed all of our catalogue from SW and restored our Amazon KDP Select for every prose fiction title. We had wanted it to work out differently, but you'll never find out if the grass really is greener or not until you've jumped the fence.

Not only that, but all titles will be offered free between Sunday 28th, and the 2nd May. Despite the Kindlegate controversies and the fresh appeal of a new platform, the hard fact appears to be: books shift faster on Amazon, for better or for worse, and several of our titles will now be exclusive to that platform.

Wordpress Blog Botnet Seems to be Warming Up

Recently noted in the IT news that some number of Wordpress bloggers still using the old 'admin' login may have been compromised by the latest wave of Internet criminal activity.

This article: http://www.itpro.co.uk/security/19621/wordpress-botnet-attack-could-pave-way-larger-site-takedowns reminds us all to be ever-vigilant and avoid complacency at all costs, especially as more and more people are relying more than ever on their online services to conduct communications and business.

10k views...and rising!

Today this very blog attained the milestone of 10,000 pageviews.

Many thanks to our followers and all our visitors, guest posters and commentators over the past few years.

We hope to be posting some new content before too long and in the meantime, here's to another 10k.

Whoops! Amazon Kindle Bug Has Just Deleted Your Entire Library...

Seems that somebody at the Big 'A' has made a boo-boo...

Read the IT Pro news article here.

While it seems the content is still live and downloadable via the Amazon Cloud server, can you really be bothered downloading an entire library of hundreds of books again this weekend?

Apple's Legal Antitrust Problem

While browsing the tech and IT news this evening I came across this interesting article on Apple and the pending e-book antitrust legal case in the US.

Curious to see if this one makes it to the court, and what the long-term ramifications for e-book publishing elsewhere might be.

Klylii: by J. I. Stuart

Chaz recently contributed cover art and design to a new book by a fellow writer of sci-fi sagas, J. I. Stuart, who was featured some years ago in the early Fenriswulf Books anthology release, A Surfeit of Mandrake.

Those short stories were later expanded into a full-length piece which is now available as the first in an epic series: Klylii:The Awakening of an Alien Superbeing.

The book is published by Snipe Publications, and is currently available on Kindle, right here.

'The Klylii. Who were they? What were they? Where did they come from? Did they even have a home planet? Why would they need a one hundred kilometre long starship? Where and when and how could they have built such an incredible fabrication. And what was their interest in Mark John Richards an average middle class, middle aged, middle management executive living out his middle-life crisis in Middle England?

It was an ordinary evening like hundreds before, walking the dog before bedtime. But for one man, nothing was ever going to be the same again. It was only the beginning of the most fantastic adventure ever!

The first volume of the Klylii Sagas – the space epic to end all space epics!'