Over the past few months, it's been fantastic to hear from many people who are now more interested in trying some New Zealand crime and thriller writing. Unfortunately, one of the biggest hurdles to increasing the awareness and appreciation of well-written Kiwi crime, is that the latest books of many of our authors, regardless of quality, are currently rather hard to get your hands on if you're anywhere other than Australia or New Zealand.
Things are slowly improving, with Paul Cleave, Vanda Symon, and Paddy Richardson all now being published in Germany (and Cleave in several other continental European countries), and Cleave being published for the first time in the UK late last year, and in the US mid this year.
And now, as of tomorrow, Vanda Symon's latest book CONTAINMENT is available brand new (and at a reasonable price) on Amazon.com. Normally I don't link through much, if at all, to book sales websites, preferring to keep this blog about information and opinion rather than ads - but in this case I'll make an exception as this is something of a key moment on the road to greater recognition for Kiwi crime on a global scale.
Previously, many of you based overseas would have had to pay quite hefty freight charges to order most New Zealand crime and thriller titles from downunder sources, or rely on the small quantities that trickled through unofficially (e.g Vanda Symon's earlier book OVERKILL is available second-hand through Amazon.com, and even though it hasn't been published in North America yet, you could get the UK version of Paul Cleave's CEMETERY LAKE in a similar manner). But now the latest book from one of our burgeoning if still overlooked group of modern crime writing stars is readily available brand new, free shipping and all. I'm hoping it's a sign of more good things to come. And hopefully a few more readers will now have a better chance to try some Kiwi crime for themselves.
Congratulations!
ReplyDeleteAnd as Australian books are not exactly easier to come by in Denmark than in Britain or the US, I must admit that I usually wait until I can get them second-hand via Abebooks.com. I know that you won´t earn anything that way, but I review more than 100 books per year - and hopefully I can also sell a few from down under.
Wow, I didn't know that!!!!!!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it seems to come under 'Penguin Global', but it's not like the other times I've seen Kiwi books randomly on there - this is brand new copies, at a reasonable-ish price like they have a decent supply (rather than just carving off copies from the UK etc)
ReplyDelete