Smash It Up

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For the first time in my book writing career, I have been censored. And it's not by who you'd think it would be.

Birdkill is now available on all platforms, both ebook and paperback. That's Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, iBooks and all major ebook retailers. From 1 March 2016 the paperback will be in stock at WH Smith in the United Arab Emirates and available on order from any bookshop in the world by quoting ISBN 978-1523986736.

I use a 'multi-publishing platform' called Smashwords to manage the distribution of the ePub book, which avoids having to deal directly with B&N, Apple, Kobo and all the others. Smashwords has always been core to my distribution, offering as it does an alternative to Amazon which, although I am broadly in favour, does tend towards the Evil Empire a tad too much to make one want to wholeheartedly endorse it as a sole platform.

Imagine, then, my horror when Smashwords came back and informed me last night Birdkill had failed its review process. What was the book's cardinal sin? That it makes mention of the Kindle and other publishing platforms. This makes Smashwords' partners 'uncomfortable', apparently. So in order to pass Smashwords' review process, I had to remove the text at the end that tells readers where they can buy my books.

The wicked words in question:

Please do not link or refer to any other digital download source other than Smashwords. Our retail partners don't want to see links to Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or mention of the Kindle or Nook.

But hang on a second. That's the content of my book. It's my right to publish what the hell I want, isn't it? Surely that's what all this free speech gobbledegook is about? Who cares what their partners are comfortable with or do or don't 'want to see' or 'mention'? It's a fact the book's available on Kindle and Nook. So you're masking the truth here. It's commercial censorship.

You're insisting I don't mention your rivals in my content. What if I want to have one of my characters enjoying reading a novel on their Kindle? Or having fun shopping on Amazon.com?

Amazon, for all its Dark Empire status, has never for any reason whatsoever asked me to amend the content of one of my books.

The UAE's National Media Council (An 'Islamic' Middle Eastern Arab government 'censoring' my books before they can be printed here in the UAE) has never - despite the books containing plenty of content you'd think they'd find uncomfortable to say the least - asked me to amend the content of one of my books. They have never removed or requested I remove one F, C, drugs or prostitution reference. And the books are liberally laced with those.

It took US 'home of free speech' publishing platform Smashwords - ironically the platform I use to assert my freedom of choice - to insist I amend the content of one of my books. To censor me.

It's an apparently small thing and yet at the same time it's a HUGE thing. And - I would submit - it's not a good thing at all.

Footnote: Just for clarity, we're not talking links here. The offending text in the book was:

Available from Amazon on Kindle and in paperback from Amazon, Book Depository or from your local bookstore on order quoting the book’s ISBN.

Also available as an ebook from iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo and other fine online retailers.

And if you can find the line in Smashwords' TOS that says you can't say Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kindle or Nook in your book's end matter, please do put me right. Because I can't...

BOOK POST: Shemlan and the Big C

Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy is about a man with terminal cancer whose journey into his past  to find the lost love of his life stirs up a hornet's nest that threatens to kill him before the disease does.

I so far have not had, but am fully expecting, the reaction 'But I don't want to read a book about someone dying of cancer.'

I genuinely hadn't given it a moment's thought until I hit the 'go' button on the various publishing platforms I've used. But then I've never really set out to make life easy for myself with this whole book thing.

I can even sympathise with that reaction. I suffered it myself to a certain degree when the book was being conceived.

Jason Hartmoor was born when Barry Cook came to stay with us back in 2008. I posted about his visit on the blog a while afterwards and I do heartily recommend you take a read. Barry had been fighting off cancer for ten years and was desperately ill. I had dreaded the visit - we knew we were going to be playing host to a terminally ill cancer patient and had both steeled ourselves for a pretty hellish three days. We were to be totally blindsided by what happened next.

"I didn't stop laughing, or smiling, for the next 72 hours. Not only were our visitors delightful company, Barry was nothing short of inspirational. Although he'd get the odd twinge of pain in his back and needed to take enzymes to aid his digestion, he was more on top of a disease so chronic that an x-ray of his skeleton showed the cancer was so widespread it was like 'someone had thrown a handful of sticky rice grains at it' than I could ever have imagined. He'd been fighting it for ten years and was still beating it back."

And so was born the Roxanol and enzyme popping Jason Hartmoor. The resemblance ends there, Barry was a charismatic, laughing man with enough charm and twinkle for ten. But I had been building a 'challenged' character and Barry's condition - with its inevitable end - wriggled its way into that character. I think Barry himself crept into Hartmoor every now and then - Jason's lighter, more human moments are probably Barry breaking through.

I've often talked about how authors 'steal' people. This is the ultimate example, stealing a dying man. But blag away I did. My only defence is that it wasn't intentional.

I didn't want to make Hartmoor's condition harrowing or graphic in itself, at least in part because Barry had shown me having cancer doesn't necessarily mean every day is spent recalling your last chemo session or the day you first found out. After ten years, it had settled into a sort of 'business as usual' for him. Hartmoor gets tired: he fatigues easily and has to depend on The Hated Stick more than he would like to - increasingly so as the book progresses. He's frail, his routines are those of a man who depends absolutely on his medication - particularly the painkillers. But his disease has become a fact of life for him, a constant companion he has reached a sort of understanding with.

The constancy of Roxanol, by the way, was the reason I was so taken by the cover image, by Australian artist Gerrard King. But more of that another time...

So I wouldn't let the fact there's a man with cancer at the heart of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy stop you reading it. In fact, I'd rather like to think it was yet another reason TO read it.

The link's to the right of this post. Do it now before you forget...

Book Post - Populating Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy

Image via CrunchBase

So we pushed the button yesterday, but even in the 'Internet age' these things can take time. We're looking at three editions of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy: Smashwords, Kindle and CreateSpace. Here's what happens when you press 'go' on a book.

Smashwords
Smashwords populates pretty much instantaneously, provided your documents are formatted in the required fashion. Smashwords' own guide to formatting is a free download and reading it will save you time and hassle. I choose not to publish to Kindle using Smashwords but use Amazon's own Kindle Direct Publishing. Once 'Meatgrinder', Smashwords' multi-publishing engine, has done its work, the book is available on the Smashwords site as an ebook compatible with Sony, Kobo, Barnes and Noble's Nook and Apple's iBooks. So you can go to Smashwords here and buy Shemlan.

Smashwords also populates the relative stores - B&N, Kobo and iBooks. But that takes a good deal longer - it's part of the 'Premium Catalog' and requires quality checking by Smashwords before that goes ahead. So for now, it's just Smashwords, not the retail sites. That can take a week or so.

Kindle Direct Publishing
Kindle takes a while longer, promising 12-24 hours but usually beating that quite comfortably. In fact, the Kindle book of Shemlan was up a few hours after Smashwords. So you can go here to buy Shemlan from Amazon in the UK or here to buy it from Amazon.com. There are now Amazons around Europe and even further afield, including Japan, but posting all those links is just too exhausting. I have never sold a book in Japan.

CreateSpace
This is the print edition of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy and takes longest. Createspace is currently still reviewing the book files. Once they've passed the files (an automated check is performed when you press 'go' but they still do a manual check following that), they'll populate the Createspace store, Amazon and then expanded distribution outlets such as The Book Depository. This can take a couple of weeks.

While that's happening, it's down to compiling the list of reviewers/book blogs. And yes, you're all in for a rough old ride because I'm in promo mode now and that means bugging everyone and their uncles to run around screaming 'buy Alexander McNabb's novel Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy now now now!'

It's not about you buying it, see - it's about you getting everyone you know to tell everyone they know to buy it!!!

Book Post - Shemlan Chalks Up LitFest First!

Gerrard King's amazing pill skull image, 

wot graces the cover of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy.

I didn't realise until the dirty deed was done, but my third Middle East spy thriller, Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy, today became the first book ever to be published at the Emirates Airline Festival Of Literature's spiritual and temporal home, the Dar Al Adab.

Today's workshop, part of the LitFest's 'Open Door' series of workshops and writerly things, was for the Hunna ladies writer's group and explored how to publish a book - both getting an agent and publisher and doing it yourself.

As part of the latter bit, I showed how to format, upload and manage a printed edition using CreateSpace, a Kindle book using MobiPocket Creator and Kindle Direct Publishing and also an Epub standard ebook (for Kobo, B&N and Apple among others) using Mark Coker's brilliant Smashwords.

What better example than the book I have just finished editing and proofing?

All three took well under half an hour, underlining how essentially easy and accessible self-publishing platforms are these days.

So Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy is now published - available here right now for your Kobo, Sony or iPad and here for your Kindle.


It's a funny old feeling, actually. Shemlan became something of a project on hold after I decided to self-publish Olives - A Violent Romance and then Beirut - An Explosive Thriller. Shemlan completes the Levant Cycle (three books set roughly contiguously but NOT a trilogy) and comes at the end of a lot of enjoyable but hard work.

I'm wondering what people will make of it, actually. I love it to death (obviously!) and think it sits somewhere between Olives and Beirut. I've already had people express strong preferences for both of those books at the expense of the other, Gerald Lynch appears to be the Middle East espionage thriller equivalent of Marmite and the strength of feeling he provokes from readers can take a chap aback occasionally. It's fair to say his behaviour in Shemlan will do little to dampen down the love/hate debate.

Needless to say, one will be having a quietly celebrative quaff this evening...

Book Post: Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy - The Cover

The cover of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy.

Australian artist Gerrard King created the cover image for Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy. I stumbled across it during a session of frustrated Googling, having found various images that just wouldn't really do the job. I was looking for a combination of pills and death, two themes that run through the book, and you'd hardly find a better themic concatenation than Gerrard's decorated skull - one of a series he created as part of a perhaps worryingly extensive exploration of the artistic potentialities of skulls.

I had tested a tentative image or two with my pals over on the mailing list only to find them definitely 'meh' about the ideas. But this one really does the job - it's got impact, vavavoom and lipstick bullet following kabamm - in my humble opinion.

The image file (1600x2500 resolution both for Kindle and Smashwords, people) is ready to upload, as is the full Createspace cover. I have yet to finalise the .prc format text file for Kindle, the .docx file for Smashwords (all Meatginder-ready) and the Createspace text file. That's today's job.

And then tomorrow I'll be pushing various buttons at the 'How to self-publish a book' workshop at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature's spiritual and temporal home, the lovely and tranquil barjeel-laden Dar Al Adab tomorrow. The Hunna ladies group of writers will be gathered to watch in puzzlement as I wrestle with the various feersum endjinns involved in actually making a book happen in this brave new eworld of ours.

And then, gradually, pixels will pixellate. It's all quite exciting, really...

Book Post - Shemlan On Target

As they climbed up into the hills above Beirut, Hartmoor gazed out of the car window at the buildings around them. No scent of spring for this trip, he reflected, the February rain greying out the scenery. Misty tendrils snaked around the treetops. He remembered his first journey on this road, past the sprawling village of Bchamoun at the foothills then the road winding through the villages clinging to the plunging gorges of the Chouf Mountains. Now, as then, the houses in the villages seemed stacked up on top of each other, densely packed on the steep hillsides.
To the side of the road ran a concrete storm drain that crossed the tarmac as the camber and direction changed, the grating covering it clanging under the taxi’s wheels. The taxi hit a pothole hard, the engine note jumping and a dark cloud left behind as the driver changed down a gear. The rosary hanging on his rear mirror jangled.
They passed the village of Ainab, Hartmoor marvelling at the number of new stone-clad villas, gated developments and building sites overlooking Beirut spread out far below. A blue sign proclaimed ‘Shimlan.’ He leaned forward and asked the driver to slow down, ‘Shway, Shway.’
From Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy

The mornings and evenings this week have been a tad hectic, with proofreader Katie Stine chucking up no less than 230 line errors (where the hell did THEY come from?) in her edit of the MS of Shemlan - A Deadly Tragedy and my last editing round, performed using a Kindle, now almost over.

Its amazing that after so many edits, beta reads, a professional edit and a professional proof read (Katie's VERY good) that I'm still chucking stuff up but that's the way it goes with books. You can do a lot with 85,000 words, including word repetitions, lazy adjectives, little touches to clarify points, better word choices, filters (he saw the shiny spoon = the spoon shone) and more.

I'm giving a follow up workshop for the Hunna Ladies Writer's Group on Saturday at the Emirates LitFest's home, the Dar Al Adab - on how to self-publish a book. Last time we looked at how to write and edit, so now we're going to complete the exercise and look at how you can use POD and ebooks to make your work available to a truly global audience. What better example to use in the live demos than Shemlan itself? So I'll be publishing the e-book on Saturday.

That doesn't mean you'll be able to get your hands on it Saturday. Amazon Kindle takes 12-24 hours to populate, Createspace for the paperback can take longer (including the Book Depository which can actually take a couple of weeks to bring up a title) and Smashwords' Premium Catalogue (iBooks and the like) can similarly take a while. I reckon by my 'official' target publishing date of November 5th you'll be good to go and the links can go up.

Platforms For Self Publishing

 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sorry, long involved book publishing post warning...

The final edits to Beirut - An Explosive Thriller are done now that editor Robb Grindstaff's comments and changes have been incorporated. A few tweaks here and there, a few last squealing adverbs eliminated and we're on the home straight. I must reiterate here, you HAVE to get a professional editor - budget $1,000 to $1,500 for one. But don't for one second think you can self edit your way out of this one, buddy. And no, your talented friend who is a magazine editor/writer/English teacher won't do.

What platforms will I be publishing on? The plan is pretty much the same as for Olives - A Violent Romance, although there is a question mark over a UAE print edition, not least because the parcel containing the MS I sent to the National Media Council to obtain my Permission To Print in June has gone missing and nobody can find it. Which is not helpful.

Just in case you need a reminder, BTW:

The Olives - A Violent Romance website

The Beirut - An Explosive Thriller website

And yes, I would recommend you do a book website!

Olives was published on Amazon.com's KDP, on CreateSpace and Smashwords. Space, which I published more as a bit of fun than a serious novel, was only published to Amazon's KDP Select, of which more below.

Managing multi-platform publishing.

Things can get out of hand pretty fast with file management and so on, so I suggest keeping a separate folder for the core MS and a different folder for the files required for each platform (Kindle, Smashwords, Createspace, Print etc). One hard-earned tip here; DO NOT spin the files out from the core MS until you are 1001% sure you're looking at the last version you will ever create. You really don't want to end up making line corrections across four or more different sets of files for every niggly thing you missed. It's time consuming and, perhaps more importantly, dangerous - you've got four or more multiplications of that invitation to Mr Cockup.

You'll also have to change the copyright page on each version to reflect the ISBN or identify the edition. Do NOT, by the way, use your print book ISBN across other formats/editions.

Those folders can also contain the different versions of your cover - again, each platform will have a subtly different cover requirement.

Polish that blurb!

Before you start thinking about uploading books to platforms, make sure you're ready to start. Finished, professionally edited MS, clear idea of what you've got (is it a thriller, historical romance or what? And what tags would you put on it to make sure it's searchable?)? Got a GOOD cover that'll work as a thumbnail and still stand out? And have you polished your blurb so it DOES NOT contain ONE silly error, reads like a dream, is short and crisp yet will make people want to dip into your work and, gasp, even buy it? Then let us proceed!!!

Publishing to Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing)

Uploading books to Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing is pretty easy, assuming your MS is in Word. You need to download a natty little piece of software called Mobi Pocket Creator (MPC, just to save my fingers). Here's a link. Now you export your Word file to an HTML, Filtered format file and then add it into MPC. You can also upload your book cover to MPC - note it should be a colour file to fall in line with Kindle Fire capabilities. Cover art works best for Kindle as 2500 pixels high by 1600 wide or thereabouts.

When you're working on MPC, don't forget to add the metadata - blurb, BISAC category and keywords. These all help to make your book more discoverable.


You can add inline images, glyphs or other logos and picture content by embedding a link to the file in the text, the image file should be copied to the same directory as the source file. Use the img src HTML tag, the image file needs to be in the same folder as the text you're linking from - the syntax is <img src="filename" middle /> - the 'middle' centers it, of course.

Correcting formatting glitches (pages that kick over, that sort of thing) will involve getting lightly involved in editing HTML, but nothing too daunting. The most helpful simple HTML tags for this sort of thing (all tags are enclosed between < and> are:

<br /> inserts a paragraph break

<b> at the start and </b> at the end bolds it - <i> for italics </i> but don't forget to close the tag or your whole book from that point on will be bolded.

<mbp:pagebreak> inserts a pagebreak. Note this is not 'proper' HTML, but a Kindle specific tag.

You can now connect your Kindle to your PC and upload your book file to view it and make sure it works fine and dandy. Just drag and drop your built book file into the 'documents' folder on the Kindle (Windows sees a Kindle as a memory key).

The rest of the KDP process is pretty straightforward - follow the prompts on screen. When you get to book pricing, note the different royalty rates - and note unless you enroll in KDP Select, you'll only ever get a 35% royalty out of India, irrespective of how you price your book (The 70% royalty doesn't apply below $2.99 or above $9.99).

Amazon has a program called KDP Select, in which you only upload your book to Amazon for a duration of at least three months (and not to Smashwords, iBooks or anyone else). This way, you get to give your book away for up to five days in that period and also qualify to share in the monthly pot of money (currently $600,000) shared between authors depending on how many times their books have been borrowed by subscriber to Amazon's Kindle Prime service. Space, for instance, has been enrolled in Select and I've so far run two giveaways, which have resulted in hundreds of books being downloaded. I have to say, that hasn't resulted in hundreds of reviews.

I won't be doing Select with Beirut - An Explosive Thriller as I consider Smashwords to be an important additional platform. As I shall explain below.

Publishing to Amazon Createspace

Createspace is Amazon's POD (Print On Demand) platform and it's pretty smart - it means anyone, anywhere in the world, can buy your work as a printed book. There are a number of considerations to using Createspace, I'll try and deal with the 'biggies' here, as it's a relatively straightforward service to use.

Creating a file to upload is simply a matter of formatting your MS to suit the size and format of book you pick. I found the most sensible (and smallest) to be the industry standard 5" x 8". You can download the standard Createspace templates and then run your MS text into it. Before you do, make sure your MS is sensibly formatted - 0.5cm para indents, bar the first of each chapter, 1.15 line spacing and text set at 9 points is a good start. When you've run your text into the template, you can start to experiment with fonts. At the basic level, stick to a nice 'standard' font like Garamond (my choice), Palatino or Times. POD printing is slightly different to offset printing and fonts will reproduce slightly differently. If you know what you're doing with fonts, you can obviously make your own choices, but POD books set in Comic Sans are really something the world doesn't need.

You can play around with margins, but note Createspace is very picky about gutters and the usable type area as POD printers are less accurate about stuff like trim sizes than offset. If you significantly alter the margins from the Createspace template, you might fail file review and have to go back to the drawing board.

You can buy your own ISBN or you can opt for a Createspace assigned one. I go for the Createspace one. Some things you must know about ISBNs include the fact they are purely a stocking code and give away no rights or other attributes. The ISBN is unique to this edition of your book - if you produce another format, even size of book, you'll need a separate ISBN. If you opt for Createspace's expanded distribution (It costs a few dollars, but just do it), anyone will be able to go into a bookshop, cite your ISBN and place an order for your book.

Your book cover will require a little skill and may well be worth outsourcing. I'm lucky in that I have long used graphics software, so I do my own with a little help from talented artist friends for the images. You'll need to create a single image file with your back cover, spine and front cover all in one. The spine is sized depending on your pagination - Createspace gives you the relevant multipliers depending on the paper you decide to use. Createspace will also generate the barcode for your book or you can create your own (using one of many websites that offer free barcode creation) and integrate it into your artwork.

Your files then go through automated review and then a manual check. At this stage you can order your proof copy. Although you can skip this step, I recommend strongly that you do not. It'll take a few days (one of many reasons why Aramex' Shop n Shop service is cooler than cheese), but you'll get the chance to physically check the product you'll be selling to people. Now you're good to go. Select your book pricing (you get to see how royalties and so on work at different price points) and take the expanded distribution option (just do it) and about five days later, your print book will be on sale at Createspace.com, amazon.com and then over coming weeks other outlets and vendors including, importantly, the Book Depository which will sell and ship books affordably and internationally.

Publishing to Smashwords

Smashwords is important because it supports spinning your book out into multiple e-book formats and publishing to a number of important platforms including Barnes and Noble's Nook, Kobo and iBooks. Smashwords is relatively simple to use and powerful. Founder Mark Coker has written much sense on the topic of ebooks and I do strongly recommend reading his excellent 'secrets to epublishing success'. Another must read document is the Smashwords Style Guide - you really need to digest this so you get your head around the requirements for Smashwords' 'Meatgrinder'. Meatgrinder is the engine that takes your Word file and multicasts it to Kindle, ePub, PDF, .txt and other formats - you can pick which formats you want, but the ePub one is vitally important as this is the format for Nook, iBooks and Kobo as well as many other outlets/readers.

Basically if your MS is sensibly formatted to begin with (Times 12 point double spaced, 0.5cm para indents and no use of spacebar to create tabs), you should have no problems. Meatgrinder does NOT support text above 18 points and will reject any document that contains more than four concurrent paragraph returns (you can check your MS using the 'show document formatting' button in Word).

Double check you choice of tags on Smashwords - Olives - A Violent Romance was filed under Theatre on iBooks because I used a 'drama' tag on the book - remember, Smashwords is populating multiple platforms with your work, so you have to be super careful to get it right - an error means updating could take weeks.

And that's it for now. Beirut - An Explosive Thriller is uploaded and sites are populating pages even as we speak - we're on track for that October 1st launch date now.

In the meantime, if you have any platform questions, I'll try and help if you pop 'em in the comments. And I'll try and put up a 'Olives one year on - what I learned' post soon. For now I'm off to carry on polishing up my book blogger lists and get those review copies of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller out there. Wish me luck! :)

Beirut - I Got It Covered

Isn't this all exciting? So the final edit of Beirut - An Explosive Thriller is back from proofreading and ready to be formatted for CreateSpace, Smashwords and Kindle. I promised Jordanian tweep John Lillywhite a post on platforms for self publishing, so I'll do that later this week as I work on putting the book into its different formats.

In the meantime, here's the cover. It's a wee bit more stark than Olives, isn't it? I'm also now looking at a refresh of the Olives cover to come into line with this style. It ticks my boxes for a cover, which are as follows:

Thumbnails
A book cover these days needs to survive as a thumbnail. While the real estate of publishing in the age of the bookshop was shelves (and spines were vitally important), these days an idle click on catchy icon is what you seek.

Impact
Your book will rarely be presented alone on a screen, so if you can make it thoroughly eye-catching, so much the better.

Mono
On an e-paper Kindle, it'll display in mono, on a Kindle Fire or other tablet, colour. (It has to work in a 1.6 to 1 ratio and be 2500 pixels high for a Kindle cover) So, ideally, it should also work in mono.

Sell the book
This is where I had huge problems: many of the cover treatments I had considered just reinforced the annoying and outdated 'Looks like Beirut' syndrome - choppers over the mountains, revolvers et al just brought 'war' to mind. So I was looking for a cover image that was cleverer than that. I came up with a crude lipstick  bullet, but art director pal Jessy came up with this much more sophisticated image. It's supposed to make you do a mild double-take, to resolve clearly as lipstick and bullet. It's about sexy and violent, which are two words I would definitely pin on Beirut. And Beirut, come to think of it!

Print
It's got to be sensible as a print book cover, too - that means for POD like Createspace, a clear 5mm around all page edges for trim, unless you're 'bleeding' (material that's designed to run over the cover edge), in which case you need a 5mm margin all around.

It also ticks a rather esoteric little Font Nazi box for me - it uses Eric Gill's stunning Perpetua, a true serif 'stonecutter's font' and a true design classic by that most fascinating of typographers and artists.

For those who care about such things, the slug's a 9mm parabellum, which would be nicely compatible with Lynch's weapon of choice, the versatile Walter P99. The lipstick is a... just kidding.

I also tested the cover with quite a few people to guage reactions - I'd love to know yours, so do feel free to drop a comment!

Olives - A Book in Print

I keep passing milestones I hadn't expected to be milestones. I had barely finished reading my first (and thoughtful, thanks 'Big Dave'!) review of Olives on Amazon.co.uk when I found myself down in Dubai's Al Quoz industrial area picking up two boxes packed with fifty books. In the moment when Tony from Raidy Emirates handed over those boxes, Olives - A Violent Romance was 'published' in the true sense.

If you remember, I had been holding out for 'proper' booky book paper and getting nowhere. I have had so many arguments with people about Kindles and the 'feel of curling up on the sofa with a good book' that I decided there was to be no compromise. Books are printed on a special grade of paper called novel paper - it's a lightweight, high bulk paper. If you pick up a paperback by the spine, it doesn't flop. Most 'books' printed in the UAE are printed on standard grade 'wood free' art paper, which is way heavier. If you pick up one of those by the spine, the weight of the paper makes it flop over. It just doesn't feel right. Olives had to printed on novel paper. The decision has cost me, literally, weeks of delay as my journey to find anyone who stocked the paper (or, indeed, even understood what I was on about) led me into blind alley after blind alley.

Every printer in the Emirates was quick to assure me that yes, they did have the paper I was talking about, each one greeting me at journey's end with the inevitable idiotic, drooling grin and a swatch of copier paper. The thinking seemed to be that I'd settle for whatever they had once I'd driven across town to them. One fool actually quoted me for news print. I finally decided my only option was to print in Lebanon, Egypt or Jordan where you can actually find novelists and, therefore, printers who can print real books. I asked heart-rendingly talented Lebanese cartoonist Jumana Medlej for a recommendation and she came back, quick as a flash with 'Raidy, silly. I knew you'd finally realise Lebanon's the only place to print.'

The whole idea rendered my weeks-long quest for 'permission to print in the UAE' worthless. I was going to print overseas after all. I reconciled myself to the fact and got in touch with Raidy, who returned my query. Yes, they could print on novel paper but I might like to give the job to their Dubai based subsidiary, which also stocks the paper. Hallelujah!

Another milestone this morning - signing my first copy of Olives. How do you sign a book? Surely not with your 'real' signature! You can imagine the Nigerians having a field day with that one, queuing up with 'Could you dedicate it to "Please transfer the amount of" if you don't mind?'...

And to top off the start to the week, the SEO is beginning to kick in and 'Olives' now appears on the first page of results if you search books on Amazon.co.uk (although the results on amazon.com are still pretty poor). You wait, one day I'll knock those smug bastards at Crespo off the top spot...

Olives - A Violent Romance launches at TwingeDXB - the first Dubai Urban Festival on the 10th December where I'll be doing a chat and reading thingy, along with poet Frank Dullaghan and Emirati writer Sultan Darmaki. The book will be available in Jashanmals stores and other major UAE outlets from then onwards.

If you can't wait, or if you're based outside the Middle East, you can get a print copy of Olives at amazon.com, linked for your clicking pleasure right here. And if you have a Kindle, you can buy it here in the UK or here in the USA. If you have another e-book reader (from iPad through to Kobo), you can buy ebooks here at Smashwords.