TEN authors and SIX BOOKS (two in preparation) within a year of beginning this project:
ELEVEN AUTHORS if you count Emily Bronte, and we do!
Hot News: WHUDDERIN HEICHTS now printed -- see New Books page. Publication date 21 May
Is This Too Naff?
The Publisher's FICTION DIRECT
But the website, as you might expect
Begins with the reader, the reader's the leader,
So the Website's READ FICTION DIRECT .co.uk
We added 'read' to Fiction Direct when naming our website, because Fiction Direct on its own led to hundreds of sellers. We want to save people from looking up Fiction Direct thinking it's the website's name. The web address is printed in all our books, and placing mnemonics here is a fine example of preaching to the converted. We'd like to hear suggestions for sorting this out.
Morelle Smith and Sally Evans
are experienced writers, with many years of published work behind them. Morelle has travelled widely, making writing contacts and working at writers residences in many countries, and has published books in Albania as well as in the UK. Sally has helped run diehard, a small publisher in Scotland, for at least thirty years, building up from plays to poetry to non fiction, until the lockdown (which she spent mostly completing her PhD).
Morelle and Sally, and others known to them, had taken time and trouble writing books they wanted people to read. There was no movement among smaller publishers. Meanwhile the establishment publishers all worked with authors via literary agents, and the literary agents were also choked up, because of the slow economic climate. Nobody could move.
Artists provide their own canvas
Morelle and Sally decided they believed in their work enough to produce their own books. They would band together, edit and typeset their books co-operatively, and pay for their own printing, believing they could break even by selling the books under the new imprint Fiction Direct. This got rid of their need for backing from third parties who could not afford to invest in them anyway. They would involve more writers. They would read all Fiction Direct books, find beta readers to check them, typeset them as good quality novels, design the covers, and contribute to publicity, using their own skills and advice from others to keep the project feasible.
The first three books in this series now exist in reality: the third, Inside DAMMA, has been launched in Edinburgh, and a fourth book is under way for Spring. Read around our website for how it's all happening and how you can join in.
You're here already, you're in the right place. You can buy books, talk to the authors, learn about our work, find forthcoming books by other authors, get answers to questions, read further background to the books. You can become part of this website if you are a reader or a writer of fiction that's happening now. Read our other pages. Enquiries welcome at help@readfictiondirect.co.uk
How to buy Lettersgait, Beyondthe Lion Gate and Inside DAMMA
Head for the page NEW BOOKS FROM FICTION DIRECT
for details, and visit the webshop,
or send to Kings Bookshop Callander including your UK address, postcode
and British bank notes (these will be safe if you seal your envelope
normally and properly, and change will be credited to you)
or Visit our Bookshop
Kings Bookshop Callander FK17 8BQ
(by arrangement if from a distance) or pop in.
You could also attend Events noted on a following page,
or if you are in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling or Cumbria/Lancaster,
enquire about possible drop-off delivery.