These days books come in lots of formats: audiobook, ebook, perfect-bound paperback and hardback are probably the most common. At the moment, we only publish paperbacks and ebooks, although we plan to expand into audiobooks in the future.
We don't sell our ebooks directly at the moment. We could sell downloads directly on the site, but we don't have the expertise to deal with any technical problems our customers may have so we feel that is unlikely to be a good experience for them or us. There is an excellent fulfilment company that will deal with this aspect of things for us and we may partner with them soon, especially if we move into audiobooks as they will also fulfil audio download orders.
For now, you can follow the link to 'Buy Ebook' and it will give you a choice of your favourite platforms to buy from, including Kindle, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and many others.
Our ebooks are also available to all the major library services, so you can ask your library to stock them so you can read them for free. (If they have any problems with this, please put the library in touch with us.)
We do sell paperback books directly through our fulfilment service Bookvault, which is known for the excellent quality of its printing and service. Our paperbacks are all print on demand, so the copies are printed to order, which is why you will have to wait for a few days before your order is dispatched. Traditional publishing relied on large print runs that had to be warehoused and shipped around in quantity and often still works that way. Unsold copies are often pulped or otherwise destroyed in considerable quantites. That is obviously undesirable, and not something we would ever want to do.
You can also buy paperback copies from Amazon, which will be printed by them, and from Waterstones, Blackwells, Barnes and Noble and Foyles online, printed by IngramSpark and delivered by major distributor Ingram. You can download an book's ecard to take to your local independent bookshop who will be able to order a copy for you through Ingram, as will your library if they agree to your suggestion to stock one of our titles.
There are other advantages to print on demand. With large print runs, most books sales eventually stabilise at a point where it is no longer viable to print and house a large quantity of new copies and they go 'out of print.' Print on demand titles need never go 'out of print' as long as the rights owner keeps the work available. Another benefit is that, though our books have been rigorously edited and proofread, sometimes unforeseen changes are needed, and with print on demand these can take effect from the very next copy sold.
The most well-known feature of print on demand is that it makes tiny publishers like us, single-author businesses, and even hobby authors viable. It means that a vast range of qualities and types of book are now available to you, the reader, and that it is an independent choice that has not been filtered by the tastes and unconscious biases of traditional industry professionals. There are loads of exciting new books out there to discover, and some of them can be bought right here at Castle Sefton Press.