Monday, 27 March 2023

Paperback Now Available

The second, and now final proof for the paperback version of my 2023 Tanzania Safari book has arrived and been thoroughly checked. Everything seems to be in order, so I am happy to announce that it is now available. Initially, it will only be visible on Lulu.com, but I've pushed the button for global distribution which means it should soon be available to purchase through your favourite bookstore - online or high-street - anywhere in the world.

The paperback book cover

It is 78 pages and contains dozens of black & white photos taken during the safari. I'm ordering a bunch to give to friends and family, so you may get lucky.




Wednesday, 15 March 2023

Coffee Table Book Now Available

I've just received the second proof copy of To Endure is To Enjoy? and I'm now happy that I've squashed all the text errors and fixed the cover photo.


As always, these big (13" x 11") coffee-table sized books are expensive and I don't ever expect to sell many - if any - of them. I have ordered a couple for customers already, and managed to take advantage of a good blurb.com discount coupon for them.

Lulu.com have been much slower with the first proof for the paperback. I'll keep everyone posted if as that gets sorted over the next few weeks.

Thursday, 9 March 2023

Such a Long Time

 It's been so long since I had anything to say about publishing that I'd almost forgotten that the Pride Pride website even exists. It is nice to get back from another adventure and to finally have new words and pictures to put into print.

First up is the cover for the latest coffee-table book that details my recent trip to Tanzania. It is in final draft at the moment and the copy should be with me in a few days to check over. As you can see from the front cover, the leopard sighting was truly spectacular.

This time around, there is going to be a proper published paperback. The paperback has the same text as the coffee-table book, just a different selection of photos and those being in black & white. I'm waiting for the first proof to arrive, but the second draft is ready to go once that arrives and this one will, as usual be published and available online globally through lulu and global distribution.

Monday, 20 July 2020

Published and Available

Finding 400 & Beyond is finally available for purchase and should be appearing in bookshop listings worldwide as it is approved by the distributors.


There are multiple versions, with or without illustrations and electronic, to make it as widely available as possible. If you can't find it listed with your favourite seller, then it will always be available from lulu.com.

To find out more, you can take a look at the Finding 400 page on this site for links and details.

Sunday, 5 July 2020

Final Previews and Versions

I had a busy morning uploading the final text for the new book today. There were, once again, many more errors and corrections to be made. I changed a few sentences to read better and have now fixed as many corrections as I could find in a couple of readings

As I mentioned before, I was conscious of the inevitable high price that a book with images in it was going to have. Distribution through lulu.com is a bit convoluted and they have minimum pricing that assures a fixed percentage to the channel retailers. Clearly, it can be much better for me to sell either directly from a local outlet, or directly through lulu as an on-demand thing, but I like the idea of having my books available to everyone.

Sadly, the final retail price of the illustrated book is going to be £34.40. I have, therefore, also made a text-only version that I'm also waiting for a final proof copy of. This will retail for a more reasonable £16.40. Both version should be available in about two weeks.

As soon as I get that sorted out, I'll push a copy out to the e-book channels as well, for as low a price as possible.



Sunday, 28 June 2020

Second Preview Print

Well, the second print of "Finding 400 & Beyond", after the hundreds of corrections and changes the first time around, has arrived and I'm starting to go through it and look for more errors and mistakes. First impressions are much better. The layout has been improved and the bottom margins are now much more consistent which I'm really pleased with.

All the photos are now improved as well. I had to lighten up quite a few of them - this is something that you just can't know in advance, and I had to see it in print to make final decisions on the b/w conversions and brightness levels. Of course, I'm still finding errors -  we're now at the point where the typing errors are missed by the spell-checker. These are now errors that result in words, just not the right words, and are much more difficult to spot.

I expect it will take me another week to go through things before I'm happy to upload a final (hopefully) final version and get a final proof ahead of publication.

I'm also aware that, because I really want to have the photos in the book, the price has crept up more than I would like. I'm wondering about creating a text-only copy of the book. This would allow me to use cheaper paper and fewer pages, bringing the cost down considerably. I also want to play around with e-book options, particularly for kindle.

Sunday, 14 June 2020

Getting Started

With the upcoming release of my new publication "Finding 400 & Beyond" now on the near horizon, I though it would be nice to have  a location online to talk about the things I publish, not just for myself, but for others as well.

Over time I hope this will also be a place for me to talk about travelling, wildlife and the world at large. I'm sure to have things to say on many subjects and travel will, I'm sure, once more be a topic worthy of conversation soon.