Off Life hits the shelves of London.

A new free anthology has hit stores in London, and I believe is already.. well, I can't say 'Sold Out' really as it's free, but they've all gone.

You're never quite sure what to expect when you're approached with the opportunity to place an advert in a magazine or flier, and it was no different with Off Life. So, whilst the approach was very professionally done I still had doubts when I opened my posted copy.

I needn't have worried at all. It's a fabulous little product. The printing, paper and colours are wonderful and the stories I've read so far are great.
If you're lucky enough to be able to pick these up in the future, I believe they are bi-monthly, then I'd recommend doing so, and if you're an Indie creator/publisher then it gets good coverage of London and so I feel is a good opportunity to spread the word about your books. I'll be looking to advertise in it again next issue.

Great reviews for new Accent UK books over at Burnt Weiners..

'Missing - Have You Seen The Invisible Man ?' and 'Who On Earth Was Thaddeus Mist?' get great reviews over at the Burnt Weiners podcast, Episode 133, and if you scroll down a but you'll find that Owen Johnson, the main mind behind Thaddeus Mist, was interviewed by the guys.

Both of these books, and the next installment of Josiah Black should be launched at Thought Bubble next month... if all goes well.

10th Anniversary Offer in this month's PREVIEWS

As we've previously announced on this blog, we've decided to move away from our themed anthologies, and concentrate more on one shots. What we didn't predict was the amount of feedback we'd have on this decision, a decision that wasn't made lightly. Those who contributed to these books and those who read them were all very disappointed that we'd not produce any more following Victoriana.

The decision was really driven by falling orders from PREVIEWS, and therefore the decline in getting these books out there to shops across the world. Speaking to Diamond we've seen that the biggest dip in orders from stores has actually been in the UK. Maybe this is a byproduct of us hitting more UK Conventions lately, or maybe it is due to the challenges on comic stores to order comics that aren't linked to The Watchmen or the 52 relaunch of DC.

We'd discussed the concept of an 'Accent UK Introductory' pack with Diamond quite a while ago, but never really took it any further, and thought that maybe now was the time to try it, and also combine this with an 'Anthology Promotional Pack' idea we'd been playing around with.
And taking Diamond's advice, we've agreed to focus on encouraging UK stores initially, and take this idea to the US PREVIEWS if it proved at all successful.

So the October PREVIEWS (number 289) offers two of our anthologies to stores for £5 each. The collections will still retain their original cover price, so I'm not sure if the stores will pass on the full deal to their customers, but either way we hope this'll get them to give the titles a chance.

We'll let you all know how it goes.