October 2011

Months have slipped by since we posted a News item – months that have been very busy for us. Moorhen Publishing has been re-structured and re-focussed; this new website has been launched, as has my personal website at www.bjburton.co.uk.

Trading conditions on the High Street are very difficult with more and more bookshops under threat. It has justified our decision to only publish books of local interest. That has no detrimental effect on national sales, but greatly increases the potential local outlets to include gift shops, tourist attractions, post offices, cafés and pubs.

Our latest title Tinners & Sinners shows the wisdom of that approach. Written by Cornishman Andrew Ferris, and set in his home area, there is no shortage of outlets selling to both locals and tourists and the book has got off to an excellent start.

We have resisted moving into eBooks as they seem to be yet another nail in the coffin of the local bookshop, but the vast sum spent by Amazon in marketing its Kindle have made this a now irresistible force and its time to embrace the new technologies. Using my first two books as guinea pigs we are making our existing titles available as eBooks and, as an experiment, a forthcoming self-publishing guide and my next novel will initially only be available in that format.

There will be a lot more comment on eBooks (and many other topics) in the blog.