Robert's Modern Bookshop

With a temporary URL

Like the music industry, the radio industry, the TV industry and the movie industry, the publishing industry is going through some painful adaptations.

I have had books published by very well known companies in the past, Simon & Schuster, Penguin, Hodder and Stoughton, Octopus Publishing Group and most recently the now sadly defunct Unbound.

The relationship between a writer and publisher was easy to understand, a publisher gave you some money, you wrote the book, they edited it, then they printed and distributed it and if it sold enough copies, you would, eventually, after about a year, receive a little bit more money.

Through those times I did sell quite a few books. I loved doing it although I only ever experienced moderate success. I never wrote a Harry Potter or an American Psycho. A massive global multi million copy best seller. But I did okay and greatly enjoyed the process.

So the process behind my most recent book, The Ghost Camera, started out well. I launched it on the Unbound platform 18 months ago and it reached 110% which meant it was going to be published. A few hundred people backed the book, and I had published 3 previous books with Unbound and they were all, although I say so myself, moderately successful.

But, as many regular readers of my outpourings will know, Unbound sank without trace. None of the supporters got a book, I didn’t receive a dime, it was all very unsatisfactory.

So I went through the quite complex journey of publishing the book myself, and then sending copies to everyone who supported the book on Unbound. I managed to extract a list of supporters before the liquidators cleared out the offices and warehouse. It wasn’t everyone who had supported the book, there are still people getting in touch and I’m still sending out books.

But now I’ve opened my modern bookshop where, no pressure, if you’re interested, no pressure, you can buy copies of my selected works from the last 35 years.

Here is the current link to the store: Robert’s Moden Bookshop

You may notice it’s a very boring URL, I am waiting on getting a proper web address soon, but the shop is open and functioning, I’ve already sold 8 books through it and it only went live this afternoon.

Please do go and have a look, there is no obligation to buy anything, and some of the books on the page are not ready yet so there will be a wait of a few weeks before they are printed, but The Ghost Camera, my latest tome, is available now.

The Ghost Camera is Robert’s most recent book. It follows the story of a man called Morris, who is approaching retirement after a long career as a laboratory janitor.

In his last job before retirement, he works in the laboratory of Chipperau Fusioneering, a company developing micro-energy generation systems. The systems absorb millions in start-up funding, but fail spectacularly — in fact, they do the exact opposite of what they were designed to do — but this failure comes with very unexpected side effects.