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Our secret project revealed: an audiobook!

As of today, Deadstar Publishing has entered the age of the audiobook!

Exclusive audiobook cover for Lynda Nash's Not as Pointless as You Think from In Ear Entertainment
Exclusive audiobook cover for Lynda Nash’s Not as Pointless as You Think from In Ear Entertainment

For the last two years we’ve been working behind the scenes with In Ear Entertainment negotiating rights to bring you audiobooks. The fruits of our labour are starting to appear and last week we announced via our newsletter (what? You don’t subscribe to it? Click here to change that) that Lynda Nash’s Not as Pointless as You Think is now available.

Released in MP3 (plays anywhere, on anything) and bookmarked MP4 (iTunes compatible, and you can skip from story to story) the files are DRM-free and are voiced by BBC1 Sherlock actress Georgie Leonard and veteran of several BBC radio dramas, Ian Baldwin.

As this is our first foray into audiobooks we want to hear your feedback – and don’t forget our reviewer programme, so if you review the audiobook somewhere we’ll give you an ebook as a thank-you.

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Ebooks, you say?

If you’ve visited our store at odd times in the night you may… just may… have caught a fleeting glimpse of a new category. That’s right, we’ve been working on digital versions of our books and comics for a while now and we’re almost ready to launch our ebooks range.

Previously you’ve been able to find select titles on Wowio, but these have been limited in format and we haven’t really done enough to promote them. For the next few months our focus will be on digitising the rest of our range and making them available in a variety of formats. For financial reasons we’d always like you to buy direct from us… but we appreciate people love Amazon as well as more traditional bookstores, so we’ll be making our ebooks available from them too.

To start with Suncaller, Rising Stars vol. 1 and Not as Pointless as You Think will be the only three available in all formats but we intend to have all of our titles available as ebooks by Christmas.

So. when will this all happen? Well, last night we made Suncaller and Rising Stars volume 1 available to sponsors of the Faustus IndieGoGo campaign that we supported over the summer. We’re going to give them a few weeks to enjoy their rewards… and then on November 1st we’ll open up the store for everyone else to enjoy!

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Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain

Things have been fairly turbulent here in Dr Deadstar’s lab over the past few weeks. David, the man who founded Deadstar, has moved on to explore new opportunities and Hannah, one of our part-time editors, has returned to her full-time job.

That has left myself (Kevin), Danny and Anna to crew the company and together we’ve been working to get things rolling again. Not as Pointless as You Think is now available to purchase and we’re in the process of arranging signings for Lynda – watch out for her coming to a bookshop near you, soon.

With Dave and Hannah gone, Danny and Anna working electronically at distance, and me having moved away from the office we’ve decided to close the office and officially relocate. Apart from the delay in our workloads from when we moved stock and equipment at the end of June this should have no real effect on you guys.

We’ve also had banking issues: half the country had trouble when RBS and Natwest had computer problems and since then it has been a bit of an uphill battle to get our finances in order but that is pretty much taken care of now.

As a result of all this, our release schedule is thinner this year than we had otherwise intended but White Walls and Strait Jackets is still due for release in November, and we have two more titles due to see the light towards the end of this year/the start of 2013.

 

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Coming 2012

Hello all, and welcome to the new year! 2011 was a hectic year for us; we gained staff, new offices, and a lot of new friends. This year we want to build on that so in the spirit of sharing, I thought I’d offer some spoilers as to what’s coming in 2012.

Starting with books: first up this year is Not As Pointless As You Think by Lynda Nash, which will hit stores soon. We also have two other titles slated for release this year, but you’ll have to wait to find out what they are…

When Deadstar Publishing Presents Rising Stars vol #1 was released, we were awed by the combined talent of David Owain Hughes and Kevin Enhart and knew that we wanted to see more of their work. White Walls and Straitjackets is the result of over a year’s collaboration from the pair and will be out later this year as a full-length graphic novel.

On the comics front, Thackeray, Stiffs and The Pride are continuing their run and are available in ever more comics shops. For a full list of our stockists, check this page.

We’re in the process of arranging more signings at the moment, so if you’d like to see your favourite author near you, let us know. As for conventions and expos, so far we are confirmed as exhibiting at the Cardiff International Comic and Animation Expo 2012 as well as the Bristol Comic Expo. There are a few more in the pipeline, so once those are confirmed we’ll let you know about those too.

As a final point, our Facebook page is fast approaching 500 fans. When we hit that milestone we’ll be giving away a free and exclusive wallpaper to all our loyal followers.

Well, that’s about it for now. 2012 looks like it will be a fantastic year and it’ll all be thanks to you!