Where are the British Entrepreneurs?

Blue Hour Publishing has been going for about eighteen months now (where has the time gone). We  have tried Amazon Select and decided it isn’t for us. We were thinking of moving to Smashwords but opted for draft2digital instead.  As the one who puts all the books on line and keeps track of who has sold what, I like the way the d2d site works. Clean, simple to follow and not overloaded with information about other books. They may be dealing with thousands of authors but you feel like the only one! I don’t want to know about what else is available. I can find that out in other places if I want to. Well done, d2d. Please don’t change your website too much!
     But what really gets me is, why are all these companies based in the US. I have nothing against the way they work, apart from having to spend time and money contacting the IRS, but why hasn’t anyone in Britain come up with a company to help indie authors get their books into the ethersphere? Surely it can’t be that difficult.
     I didn’t see the programme myself, but was told that an indie author had approached Dragon’s Den for support while he wrote some books. He got turned down. Wouldn’t we all like to be supported while we got noticed?! But I wonder if someone had gone with the intension of setting up a company to convert and publish ebooks they might have been supported.
     And NO! I don’t want to do this myself. I haven’t the energy, knowledge or connections, but surely there must be someone out there who could do this. I’m not talking about a company that wants to put books put on its own platform but someone who will do the same as Smashwords and d2d. Or maybe all our technical people have crossed the pond or gone to Australia!

 

New Venture - New Author

A while back we announced we were adding Books For Children to the Blue Hour Publishing family.
Well the wait is over and very soon our very first Book for Children will be released.
    Meet our new author Bertram George on his own page here 
    He has written a whole series of books based around fairy story characters we all know and love, adding a new slant on them. Added to the stories are some wonderful illustrations done by the author himself. Just hope the ebooks can do them justice.  Look out for some of them here.
   In the meantime, his first book will be coming very soon. Watch out for this!

New Release - Silent Love

Blue Hour Publishing is pleased to announce the release of Kristen Stone's SILENT LOVE.

The story of the growing love between Sara, the niece of Cathy and Stan and the new recruit to their animal sanctuary, David, who is totally deaf.
    David has spent his childhood unloved and almost ignored by his parents.
    Sara is a bright, independent young woman who almost runs him over on her way to the sanctuary.

Once again Kristen brings us a story that is hard to put down.

Available at these places

Amazon.com            Amazon UK                   Kobo


Barnes and Noble             Nook

Two More Titles Gone Large!

We are pleased to announce two more of our books are now available on Nook, Kobo and Apple. they are:


SHADOWCHASER by Stephen R Hulse
Occult thriller which follows Martin Thorn as he battles the supernatural to keep humanity safe.

Nook

Kobo

Apple












AND the eco-thriller from Kristen Stone EDGE OF EXTINCTION

The story of people fitting for the right to live.


Nook

Kobo

Apple











Watch out for more releases coming soon!

Which Symbol Should You Use?

This debate has been raging for a long time, how long I’m not sure, but I’m here to keep it going.
    What sign do you use to indicate speech? “ or ‘ ?
    Many new writers, myself included, tend to use “. We were taught in school that that was the sign to indicate dialogue. The other sign is an apostrophe and could be used to quote something within dialogue and little else.
    When I was learning to type and throughout my typing career I was taught to use “ for quotes and dialogue. “ was over the 2 and ‘ was over the 8 and both were simple straight quotes, none of this facing the letter it was attached to.
    Ah, but you be old and went to school a long time ago.
    Both facts are very true. BUT I asked my granddaughter (16) what sort of quote marks she was told to use in her English lessons in this day and age. After looking at me somewhat blankly she said “. So it’s not just the people who were taught in the days of board rubbers and ink monitors who think like me.
    It has become the Established Publishing standard these days to use a single quote (or an apostrophe) to denote dialogue. (By “Established Publishing” I mean the big boys.)  But when did this happen and why?
    I have trawled through old books I have and some use “ while others use ‘. I recently read an ebook version of The Hobbit, which, according to the notes had been taken from an early version. That had “ in yet, yet a printed copy I have of The Lord of the Rings has ‘.  So was this down to the publisher? And yet… I have The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy both Guild Publishing editions, printed by the same printers and yet one uses “ and the other ‘. And one of the very first books I bought as an adult, “Islands In The Stream”  by Ernest Hemingway and published in 1970 uses ‘.
    Another weird thing I have noticed… I have a tablet with a touchscreen keyboard. Very clever. It automatically shows capital letters after you put in a full stop followed by a space. And with those capital letters it gives you an option of “. Once you have started your sentence it goes to an ‘. Sadly it doesn’t go back to “ until after you have put a space after the full stop. As “ is only used for speech and nothing else, this begs the question, why Microsoft think it is important but publishers don’t?
    Is this important? Does anyone care? Well, you do get the odd nose turned up when some people find the ‘wrong’ sort of quotes being used. As if punctuation marks are more important than the words. And yet many of the smaller publishing houses still use it.
    I think using double quotes makes the dialogue more noticeable. I’ve recently gone through a book with my editor’s hat on and found the story brilliant, the typing perfect (and that takes a lot of hard work, even with spell checkers) but sadly lots of speech marks missing. Now this particular author was using the ‘industry standard’ single ‘. I wondered if he would have missed so many when proof reading his work if he had used “ which stand out a little better.
    Me? I will stick to using old fashioned “ until I’m forced kicking and screaming into using the apostrophe for speech.
    Oh, and as an afterthought. I have a copy of “Eats, Shoots and Leaves” by Lynne Truss. Wonderful book on punctuation. It was published in 2003. And all the way through it the good lady uses “ both for speech and quotes. Maybe I should ask for her opinion?  

The Blue Hour is now available

We are pleased to announce The Blue Hour has joined Shattered Dreams on Nook, Kobo and Apple

See the links below or use your usual shop.

Nook

Kobo

Apple

Expanding Our Reach

Blue Hour Publishing is pleased to announce that over the next few weeks/months all our books will be available on Nook, Kobo and in the iBookstore.
The first to be available is the ever popular book by Kristen Stone - Shattered Dreams.
Get your copies through your regular supplier for your reader or click on the following links.

Nook

KOBO

Apple

Happy reading