Category Archives: Snubnose Press

“My name’s Andrew and my first book’s coming out digitally” and other musings about e books

It’s official. The merits of digital versus print books now shares top billing with ‘why don’t mainstream Australian publishers do more genre fiction’ (they just don’t and probably won’t in the near future, so just get over it and write), as literary conversations I now try to avoid.

This was confirmed for me at an event I attended as part of the wonderful Emerging Writers’ Festival, which ended in Melbourne last week. I’d muscled in on a conversation between a book industry person (they wouldn’t tell me exactly what they did) and another emerging writer whose first novel is due out soon through one of Melbourne’s independent publishing houses.

When I told the industry person my first book was coming out through a digital only publisher in the States, they looked at me and said. “Is it going to be another of those 99 cent jobs? They just devalue you and your writing.”

When the person started to criticise digital books, I suggested they were dealing with an outmoded business model. The person then accused me of being anti-publisher.

As I’ve said on this site before, I love dead tree books. I love their smell, their feel, the companies that produce them, the shops that sell them, the whole box and dice.… Read more

Crime Factory Publications clocks on

Put the night of March 5 in your diaries, people. That’s the launch of Crime Factory Publications, a (very) small publishing company I’ve set up with my two colleagues and friends from Crime Factory magazine, Cameron Ashley and Liam Jose.

A couple of months ago on this blog I mentioned 2012 was going to be a big year for me. In addition to several short stories coming out around the place in the next couple of months, my novel will be out as an e-book around mid-year with Snubnose Press. On top of all this, I’ve now got my own slice of the publishing business (he says, tongue firmly in cheek).

The Crime Factory crew have been discussing taking our work to the next level for a while now. Several factors drove the decision to finally bite the bullet.

First and foremost, nine issues of Crime Factory magazine (of which I’ve been on board for the last four) have given us contacts and access to quality crime fiction from great writers. We don’t always make the most of this and push the great writing we get as much as possible. Starting our own outfit is one way to reverse this situation. We also wanted to raise the profile of the magazine here in Australia where, in comparison to the US, we’re pretty much unknown.… Read more

My manuscript finds a home

This is the blog entry I’ve been hoping to post on Pulp Curry for a long time now.

My unpublished manuscript, currently titled Cambodia Darkness and Light, has found a home.

It’s going to be published as an e-book in the United States next year by the good folks at Snubnose Press.

Haven’t heard of them?

Hmmm, perhaps that not surprising, especially if you are in Australia. But you’re going to. And soon.

Snubnose is a small outfit that specialises in crime fiction e-books, but they have big plans.

They have a great slate of authors planned for publication in 2012, including Heath Lowrance (whose first book The Bastard Hard I reviewed on this site several months ago), Nik Korpon, Chad Rohrbacher, fellow Aussie Helen Fitzgerald and Dan O’Shea, just to name a few of them.

That’s some serious emerging and established indie crime writing talent and I’m thrilled to be able to count myself among them.

It’s also great to get a crack at the US e-book market, which is far bigger than it is in Australia and growing at a rapid pace.

Of course, you’ll also be able to get the e-book here.

The blurb on the Snubnose site describes my book as “a hard-boiled novel about a Vietnamese-Australian ex-cop searching for a missing businessman in mid-90s Cambodia that brings to mind the novels of Martin Limón.”

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