I’ve just heard from my agent about how much it’s going to cost to have my books published in ebook format – and, as I expected from my research, it’s not going to be cheap, not if you want anything acceptable.

So it’s getting to the stage where I need to make a decision – do I just treat this as a hobby project or do I really go for it? At one end of the scale, I could (1) simply opt for the cheap approach (submit the books to Kindle, let them convert them, see them for sale on Amazon with just their standard text-only cover on a yellow background and then hope they take off with promotion via my website) or (2) go for the more expensive option of getting an ebook publishing company convert them at a cost of about £250 a book (including a proper cover – or do I get someone to design the covers independently)? This approach would mean the books being available not just on Amazon, but also on iBooks and Barnes & Noble – a much bigger potential audience. Option 1 involves no extra expense at all, but the second option is going to involve forking out about £2000 for all eight, with the added issue of spending more on top of that for a half decent PR campaign if I really do want to be serious about it. The whole thing started out as a retirement project, but now the prospect of financial reward (and expense) has reared its ugly head. Do I simply put out the revised books cheaply as a means of personal satisfaction in terms of the books finally being the way I always wanted them – ‘Author’s Cuts’, in other words, or do I actually try to make some money out of them? (Which is by no means guaranteed – is there really a market for spy thrillers written over twenty years ago, even if they did gain positive reviews in the Daily Express and New York Times?) It’s all very well saying speculate to accumulate, the thought of spending two grand and counting is a bit like an ice cold shower…

Needs thinking about… might need a few cans of lager for this.