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Greetings, folks!
Sorry for the web-site coming up and down of late — still working through some kinks on the new host (and not having a lot of time to address them), but hopefully we’re coming to the end of that.
So, what’s new?
Now that you’ve had time to read Final Revolution, we can eventually start teasing you with what’s coming in Odysseus Wept. Odysseus Wept will be the chronological end of the Powys book series. But given that we’ve still got several books up in the air, I don’t know that it will be the last Powys book.
Black Doves is still in the shop — hope to have news on that by the end of the year.
I’ll be starting to work on Prodigal Moon over the next few weeks. This web site stuff has been eating up way more of my time than I’d like.
On the print on demand front, I’ve been exploring other options than lulu.com and finding that the standard paperback size that we all know and love is dying a pretty rapid death — even Amazon’s print on demand service seems to not want to produce books in that size (the roughly 4 X 7 paperback). Our older books on lulu are “grandfathered” in apparently, so they’ll continue to produce those, but we can’t get the distribution we used to get, even if we switch vendors. That may necessitate going to a larger book size (roughly the dimensions of Eternity Unbound, the Powysverse Compendium). Still investigating but I certainly don’t want our non-US readers to have to pay through the nose just to get a copy of one of our books. So frustrating! But adaptation is required for living, right? It’s possible that Odysseus Wept may only come out in two editions — one our standard paperback size for those who want all their books lined up in a row and a larger size that may be a little cheaper for international buyers because they’ll print them locally in your country. Any feelings one way or the other?
Huge shoutout to Phil Merkel who let us sit on his web server for the past six years (and had to endure a lot of grief when hackers not only brought down our site but brought down his, too). I think of everyone in the Space: 1999 community, I get to see Phil in person the most just because our paths cross at conventions — bottom line, Phil helped get the Resurrection audio book out way back when and was one of the key folks who helped get Powys up and running again in 2010.
Okay, a little bit about Odysseus Wept before I go. As you might imagine, the story will be split into two different times — the aftermath of what happened at the end of Final Revolution and then 25 years down the road. Johnny Byrne gave us some guidance on where he’d like the series to go and Odysseus Wept puts that in place. To some degree, Odysseus Wept will obviously be a sequel of sorts to one of our earlier books (not going to say which one in case you haven’t read Final Revolution). But it will also be the culmination of one particular character arc that really started way back in Omega (and to some degree, back in another story, another episode, oh my God I can’t believe he went with that).
Did somebody say Space Brains? That’s the last great mystery to be answered. And it will be.
Hopefully the site issues will calm down and I can get back to other stuff. So thanks for your patience and will be in touch soon.
BL
thanks for the update and all the extra work to keep this site up and running.
and for the book size of the forthcoming novels – I gotta have the standard size paperback. The whole set needs to be uniform when lined up on the shelf.
[quote]That may necessitate going to a larger book size (roughly the dimensions of Eternity Unbound, the Powysverse Compendium).[/quote]
As a counterpoint, I would welcome a different book size, especially if it makes the books more readily available and even decreases the price/cost. I’ve always thought the price of the books through lulu, given the size (both length and physical dimensions), was high. Why not use a company like CreateSpace that prints all around the world? Makes perfect sense to me.
Hey, the site still exists after all! I’ve been using a captphil bookmark for years and assumed it was just dead for the last few weeks. Might be a good idea for someone to mention something about this on the Powys Media Facebook page…
[quote=”blatham” post=3203] It’s possible that Odysseus Wept may only come out in two editions — one our standard paperback size for those who want all their books lined up in a row and a larger size that may be a little cheaper for international buyers because they’ll print them locally in your country. Any feelings one way or the other?[/quote]
The larger size would be appreciated. I still haven’t ordered Final Revolution because the international shipping just makes it too expensive. 🙁
[quote=”kerry” post=3207]I’ve always thought the price of the books through lulu, given the size (both length and physical dimensions), was high. [/quote]
The actual printing cost for those books might not even be as much as $10, based on some stuff I’ve done through lulu. But the kind of print jobs I did there were one-and-done jobs that didn’t require paying an author, editor, cover artist, etc, or paying licence fees. Those are more likely why the Space: 1999 books cost as much as they do, not who’s printing them.
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