A fan called Odette wrote to me back when I revealed the titles and covers of the next three Archibald Lox books at the start of the month, to say:

"I just HAD to email you because I'm dying over the new Archibald covers! They are SO PRETTY! And I'm SO happy you've made paperbacks of the first three books with those covers, I will be ordering them tonight because I just love those so much!"

Needless to say, I agree with Odette -- they ARE damn pretty covers!! :-)

Her reference to the paperbacks relates to the lack of physical editions when I initially released the first three books last year. I hadn't planned to bring them out until the autumn of 2020 at the earliest, and had been working to that timeline, affording myself plenty of time to get the paperback editions ready to release simultaneously with the eBooks. But then lockdown happened and I made a gut call to release the digital editions ASAP, which was a lovely surprise for everyone (not least of all Liam, my cover designer!), but the downside was that I couldn't release the paperbacks until later in the year, as they take extra time to typeset and prepare.

Anyway, this time round everything is set up for simultaneous ebook and paperback releases of books 4, 5 and 6. I can't actually make the paperbacks available to pre-order (WHY, Amazon, WHY?!?), but trust me, they WILL go on sale at the same time -- in fact, they might even go on sale a few days BEFORE the ebooks, so that I can be absolutely certain that people can buy them on the official release days. So, y'know, keep an eye on the Amazon pages as we get closer to launch -- early birds and all that... :-)

Oh, and yes, I'm afraid the paperbacks will ONLY be on sale through Amazon stores worldwide. When I release the collected edition next year, the hardback will be available through other stores for those of you who prefer to buy elsewhere. (The digital editions, on the other hand, will be on sale through lots of stores -- Apple, Kobo, B&N, Google, etc.)

You can find those release dates, direct links to all the stores where the books will be on sale, and other info in the May issue of my monthly newsletter: https://darrenshan.com/news/shanville-monthly