When is a book not a book?

When it’s only printed in a ‘Collector’s Edition’ !

Yes, I’d be confused too. Let me explain. An excellent organisation called ‘Incredible Edible Salford’ (IES) had a massive ‘Crowdfunder’ campaign in the autumn of 2021. If you know anything about these Crowdfunder conundrums, you’ll know that the campaigners are obliged to offer some incentives, or – as they call them – ‘Rewards’, to people who contribute cash. Fine. The person who put £10 into the pot was offered a packet of seeds. The person who put in £50 got a tour around the planting site, followed by tea and biscuits on the terrace. The only question, then, is what do you give the person who donated, say, £1,000? Hmm, yeah, it had to be special.

Enter me, Mike. Since the green and growing area that the funding was for was in Buile Hill park, I offered to write a book based around the site. Since I write only Crime Fiction adventure thrillers, it was going to be one of them. Since the prize had to be special, I agreed to only print out 50 copies of a hardback version of the book – no paperback, – an edition that would be numbered and signed by the author. Yes, unique.

Six months went by. Okay, the Collectors have had their day. Now, what about the regular readers, people who enjoy good crime thrillers? Well, the powers that be wanted to hold me to my contract – no paperback – but they agreed I could issue an e-book, if any profits made went to the funding programme. Agreed. That’s what we’ll do. Buy this e-book and you’ll be making a donation to the green and growing project at the bottom of Buile Hill.

So, your chance has come. You can acquire a copy of this story now. It’s one more novel in the series ‘Amelia Hartliss Mysteries’, but it has one exciting extra – fairy folk.