Does the link from the Bridge House and the Bridgetown Café website to Amazon just go to Amazon UK?

We asked those writers who were published in "The Best of CaféLit 8" to vote for their five favourite stories published on the CaféLit web site in 2019. We awarded five points for number one choices, four for number two and so on. These are the stories that received the most votes.

Each story in this little volume is the right length and quality for enjoying as you sip the assigned drink in your favourite Creative Café. You need never feel alone again in a café. So what's the mood today? Espresso? Earl Grey tea? Hot chocolate with marshmallows? You'll find most drinks in our drinks index.

 RRP  £9.00

Buy from Amazon  

We actually use a universal link that should take you to your local Amazon. However, occasionally there is a blip and it takes you somewhere else. This is Amazon, not us! Never fear, all you need to do is copy the ASIN (for the e-book) or the ISBN (for the paperback) and paste into you own local Amazon’s search facility to be able to buy locally.

 

Incidentally, we use an affiliate link that means if you buy the book via that link we get a few pence as well. Indeed we even get a few pence from anything else you buy while you’re there. It’s not a lot – currently about £25.00 a year but it helps us to cover set up costs for books and web site maintenance etc.                     

Copyright Issues with Book Covers

 

Not every picture you see on the Internet is there for your own use. All you may do is admire it. The majority of them are copyrighted.

 

There are three ways to avoid copyright problems:

1.      Use something that is in the public domain.

2.      Use a stock site – and our favourite is Pixabay, as the pictures are not only copyright free but also free. And they provide them in the right sizes. You do need to check the license though. And we do pay a regular monthly amount, voluntarily, which is distributed with other monthly amounts between the artists. You could also contribute to that artist if you like.

3.      Commission a picture or even the whole cover.

 

There are three problems with the latter:

1.      It’s a much more for us working with an artist or a cover designer. There are technical, artistic and house style consideration to take into account and there is often a lot of discussion about this. 

2.      We need to sell between 250 and 1000 books to cover the cost of commissioning a picture or cover. Often the author will offer to pay for this or offer some of the costs but this muddies the waters even more for 3. below.    

3.      Who owns the copyright on pictures / covers such as these? Professional graphic artists tend to license us for the cover up to a certain number of copies and then we have to pay again. There is also limited use in marketing situations. There is no limit at all in the covers we produce ourselves and we even allow the authors unlimited use of the materials.           

 

So, on the whole we’re happier controlling full production of the cover. Sometimes, however, we commission an artist ourselves especially for novels – this particularly applies to The Red Telephone and Walela but we make sure we get full rights to the material afterwards.      

If people write a review, where do they publish them?

 

One of the main reason we ask for reviews is so that we can get fifty plus on Amazon which really makes our book more visible there. Once we have fifty or more reviews, Amazon becomes much more proactive in promoting the book. Even if they’re not all five star.  

 

However, you have to have either bought the book from Amazon or have spent enough with them otherwise to be able to post there.

 

We generally ask that reviewers post to Amazon, Good Reads and Storygraph. You can use the same one for all three. Anyone can post on Good Reads or Storygraph.

Reviews don’t have to be long, but reviewers should try to say why they thought the book was excellent if they gave five stars and where it fails at all if they give fewer.  

 

It’s great if reviewers can send the review to the author who can use it on their own  social media and web sites in turn might forward it to us. We keep three reviews on our online bookshop. If you think the latest one is better than the one you have there, just give us a shout.

 

We’ll often anyway flag up a review to our Facebook page followers.

 

Reviewers might also put up their reviews on their own web site or social media.