Lightning Books, the fiction arm of Eye Books, has unveiled a digital-only imprint. Its new series of Lighting ‘Bolts’ will be launched as initially as ebooks only, with print editions to follow for titles that sell particularly well.
The series kicks off on 6 March with We Are Animals, a quirky, heart-warming tale of friendship and lost love, set in Goa, by stand-up comic turned writer Tim Ewins.
Following at two-week intervals throughout the spring are:
- All the Beautiful Liars, a semi-autobiographical journey into her Austrian past by Australian writer Sylvia Petter;
- iRemember, a sci-fi noir with a psychedelic twist by writer and filmmaker SV Bekvalac;
- Landsliding, a dark domestic drama by Mandy Jameson, which was originally successfully self-published and is now re-edited and repackaged by Lightning;
- and Marrow Jam, a cosy crime caper by Susan A King, shortlisted for the Write Here, Right Now novel competition at the Bradford Literature Festival.
All the titles will be launched at the introductory discount price of 99p.
Publisher Dan Hiscocks says: ‘We want to continue to bring exciting new voices to the market, but the changing conditions and levels of support by both media and retail mean that it is not always possible to publish their work traditionally.
‘Under this new imprint, we will launch some authors in digital form first, where the barriers to market are lower, to allow them to get a following. Once they do so, we hope that will persuade retailers to support the same novels in traditional print format.
‘The initiative also allows us to be more agile and launch books much more quickly than traditional critical paths allow, which appeals to many of our authors.’
