Peter Crowther writes to tell us that PS Publishing is revamping their web site. He says:
The current steam-driven PS Publishing website will quit creaking and groaning, and be closed down for good sometime on Thursday 28 October. Paul is aiming to load up a countdown page that’ll sit there until we open up the new site for business… and that will happen on Hallowe’en. And from there on in… well, you’re on your own.
To mark the launch of the new site, we’re running an entire week of special offers that we reckon will pretty much blow your mind… seven day-long deals involving free books and a cumulative prize at the end of it all that’ll reward the three top customers (and those, dear Chauncy, are the ones who shell out the most loot in our direction—hey, you think we’re inn this for the benefit of our health?) with major prizes. And we really are talking major here.
Here’s how it’ll work.
Day One (from when the website goes live until midnight on 31st October): the first 25 orders received will also get a copy of the signed traycased version of Spook City; the next 25 will get the trade edition. (Let’s just stop a minute here and get the times straight. We’re based in the UK, so midnight on the 31st of October here by the seaside in Yorkshire will be 7PM in New York and 4PM in California. For our chums in Australia, it’ll be mid-day on the 1st of November. Hey, who says time travel isn’t possible?! Okay, back to the prizes.)
Day Two (all day on the 1st of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get a copy of the signed traycased version of Patrick O’Leary’s Black Heart; and, once again, the next 25 will get the trade edition.
Day Three (all day on the 2nd of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get copies of the first five Stanza poetry Books; the next 25 will get just three (of our choice) of the five.
Day Four: (all day on the 3rd of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get a copy of the signed slipcased version of Zoran Zivkovic’s Impossible Stories; the next 25 will get the trade edition.
Day Five (all day on the 4th of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get a copy of the signed slipcased version of Ramsey Campbell’s The Grin of the Dark; the next 25 will get the trade edition.
Day Six (all day on the 5th of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get a copy of the signed traycased version of Gwyneth Jones’s Grazing the Long Acre; the next 25 will get the trade edition.
And on Day Seven (all day on the 6th of November, until midnight): the first 25 orders received will get a copy of the signed slipcased version of Ray Bradbury’s Long After Midnight; the next 25 will get the trade edition.
Okay, that’s a fair few free books—up to 350 by my reckoning (Nurse… my pills!). But it also means we should be getting in a fair slice of revenue. And, as we’ve always said, we have the best customers in the business—many of whom have been with us since we opened our doors back in 1999—so it’s only right we give a little back. And a little bit more than just a few free books.
So, in addition to the freebies mentioned above, the third-best customer (third-best in terms of the total amount they spend over the seven days) will receive a credit for £250 that can be spent (post-free) anywhere on the website.
The second-best customer will receive a credit of £500 that can be spent (again, post-free) anywhere on the website.
Which leaves just the person who has notched up the top spend. And to that person, our bona fide no-holds-barred super-spender… to that person we’re giving a Standard Lifetime Membership, starting with the first titles published in December 2010… so the lucky he or she will receive the standard unsigned state of every title we bring out from then onwards—but please note that Lifetime Memberships do not include our twice-yearly anthology volumes (formerly known as Postscripts, the magazine), any Stanza Press titles, or any PS ArtBooks titles. Even so, that’s a nifty top prize, currently selling at £1,600.
Now for the rules. (Hey, every competition has to have rules, right? Come on!) The “rules” is just this: although titles from all sections of the website will count towards your total tally, you must order at least one book from the current catalogue for us to be able to send you the free book of the day… or le livre du jour, if you will.
Talking of postage, it will be applied at the standard rates—£2.49 per book (to a maximum of £9.96) for each order placed by customers in the UK; £4.99 per book (to a maximum of £19.96) for each order placed by customers outside the UK). All free books will, of course, be free of postage.
Okay, that’s it. Now it’s just a waiting game until Paul gives us the green light. Shouldn’t be long. Until then…