First off, thanks, everyone, for your patience as we wait for Apple to review and approve the Malay Mysteries books.
We’ll spare you the details. The short version is that we’ve worked closely with Apple to get our books into their system and released for sale. It’s been a monumental amount of work to convert our books to ePub (AKA iBook) format and we’re pleased with the results. Apple has been helpful, but evidently they have a huge backlog of books to review. The Malay Mysteries complicate matters because they’re illustrated, and we’re told this extends the review time (in the meantime, we hope they like the artwork!).
(Update: Malay Mysteries 1-3 are now live on the Apple iBookstore! Check them out here.)
Alas, Apple iBooks are the only format in which we are currently planning to bring you our illustrated books. Amazon has promised small publishers an enhanced Kindle format that’s supposedly perfect for graphic novels and other illustrated works–but apparently only the big publishers (not that we don’t admire them!) are deserving of the specifications for the new format. Small publishers aren’t even being given a timeframe for the new format’s availability.
We highly recommend some of these works, like V for Vendetta, Sandman, and Watchmen, all of which you can buy and read now if you have a Kindle Fire. You just can’t buy our graphic novels (or any small publisher’s) for these devices. At this point, until we can actually see the specifications and test our books on the new Kindle devices, we can’t even say for sure whether we’ll be releasing that way–if it’s additional work, we’ll do it, but we won’t release unless we can promise a reading experience at least as good as it would be on an iOS device. (More on our concerns about Amazon’s handling of releasing the Kindle Format 8 spec here, or just drop by Twitter to witness small publishers’ and readers’ rising concerns and irritation.)
So, we’d love for your digital stockings to be stuffed with our illustrated titles for you to read on the device of your choice. Unfortunately, for those of you who own Kindles, this year, all we have for you is a few bits of coal. We’re working on it–and of course will update our readers as soon as the situation is remedied.
