When Black Friday Comes...

This is not a Black Friday offer, obviously, Black Friday having been and gone, but I couldn't resist the Steely Dan reference. I imagine, like me, you were getting pretty fed up with being pestered over the whole dismal racket in the weeks preceding. No, thanks all the same, I don't want to "grab" any of your fake bargains...

But, if you had ever been tempted in the past to buy one of my books in hard copy but hesitated on the brink – somebody out there must have been, surely? – this latest discount offer from Blurb may be enough to push you over the edge. If nothing else, it should take the sting out of the exorbitant shipping charge:

Save 25% off in the Blurb bookstore with code: GIVING25. Offer valid starting November 28 to November 29, 2023 (11:59 p.m. local time). Valid only for books purchased through the Blurb bookstore. The discount is applied toward your product total with no minimum or maximum order amount. This offer has a maximum value of £410. This offer is good for two uses, and cannot be used for ebook or PDF purchases.

I make very little profit on these books – a couple of pounds at most – so from a financial point-of-view I really don't care whether you buy anything or not. In fact, I add the least profit onto the base price of the biggest, most expensive books, and make most on the incredibly cheap e-books and PDFs, but those are excluded from this deal (but then they're so cheap, who cares?). But, as I always like to say, the sincerest form of flattery is not imitation but cash purchase. I would be sincerely flattered if you were to buy one of my books. If you bought two or even more I might even start to believe you, you silver-tongued devil...

The link to my Blurb Bookstore is here:

Go on, at least have a look... Each book comes with a full preview of every page-spread. You're welcome to browse in my shop, with no obligation to buy. It's warm in there, we're open 24/7, the guy at the till is very laid-back, and you might even be astonished at how productive a lazy man like me can be, over the years. I have just counted them, and there are thirty publications listed there. Thirty! Crikey, I've gone and impressed myself now...

Worryingly, though, and seasonal opportunism aside, the increased frequency of these discount offers from Blurb might suggest a little desperation on their part. It may be a sign that the boom in "on demand" self-publication is waning. To repeat what I said in a recent post, the disappearance of a service like Blurb would be a serious loss for those of us who have come to depend on a risk-free "publishing" model, one that enables at the very minimum the production of a single simulacrum of an actual published book, with at least the potential to sell copies to third parties like, for example, you (see the post How Blurb Works). I'd better make sure I've still got copies and decent PDFs of everything...