The Witch’s Boy is back in town.

In 2008 I published The Witch’s Boy for the first time in print and ebook format through Lulu.com.  A little later, I accepted a contract from a publisher to publish it under their imprint in 2009.  Once I’d signed the contract, I retired the Lulu version and made it unavailable. 

Then complications ensued, with the result that no new version was published in 2009, or in 2010.  By spring 2011 my contract with the publisher had lapsed and there was still no sign of it being published.  So on Friday I gave the publisher notice that I no longer wanted them to publish it, and I un-retired the Lulu version again.  That’s this one:

I also figured out how to reduce the price of the Lulu paperback to a much more reasonable level, and I’m much happier with the value for money there now.  The paperback and the Lulu ebook have the beautiful cover designed for me by Black Hound. 

However, I wanted there to be a Kindle version, so I formatted the file for Kindle and put it up there.  At that point I realized that although beautiful, the brown cover did not look very striking in a thumbnail, so I made a new cover for the Kindle version.  That is the only change between the two.  Text wise, the two versions are identical.

If there’s any demand for the paperback with the black and red cover, I might venture into putting that up on Createspace, but Lulu was a lot easier for me to deal with because everything was all set up there already and only needed the click of a button to go live again.

The Kindle version took the weekend to get itself sorted out through the system at Amazon, but is now up and ready to go, here at Amazon.com and here at Amazon.co.uk  I’m not quite sure how long the Lulu version will take to propagate through the system before the paperback is available from retailers, but it shouldn’t take more than 6 weeks to show up on Amazon, and in the mean time is already available here at Lulu.

It’s a weight off my mind having this available again.  I know that quite a few people have been waiting for it, and I’m glad not to have to keep saying “I’m sorry, I really don’t know when it will be out.”

What should I do to celebrate, I wonder?  Post an excerpt?  Have a competition/giveaway?  Make a new book trailer for it?  Something else much more exciting?