Yes.

I don’t ever handle your payment details when you make an order through my site. The store is embedded into my website, so I get to control the layout and the pretty pictures, but the actual store function is provided by Wix who handles the transaction and the security. 

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When you make an order, Wix directly sends you your ebooks, or forwards the order to BookVault for physical books, without me being involved at all.

So, you aren’t actually trusting me with your money or with fulfilment, you’re trusting an industry-standard e-commerce provider who handle millions of transaction per day, who use industry standard security.

I have a support page that walks you through how to open your ebooks on Kindles (and other popular devices). It isn't a hard process, and once you know how it only takes a minute or two, but if its your first time and you're used to the Amazon store sending things directly, it can be a bit offputting.

The method that I take you through is the official Amazon process for sending third-party books to your Kindle, and it only uses the official Amazon app for doing that. And, for good measure, I've tested it on my own Kindle, to make sure that the books do show up, display properly, and give you a good reading experience.

If you've received books through BookFunnel before, I'm giving you the same exact process. The only difference is that I fulfil my orders directly though Wix, but everything else works exactly the same way.

BookVault fulfils my physical book orders, so if you have problems with shipping, or your books aren't arriving in mint condition, the first thing to do is contact their support about the order.

BookVault are normally very good, and I've never had problems with them as a buyer, so you can expect them to resolve anything within a few days.

If you continue to have problems, then you can raise it with me directly and I can chase it with BookVault, through my publisher account.

I sell ebooks on Amazon, but not physical books.

To put it bluntly, with physical books it costs me money to have Amazon to send you worse quality books.

Amazon’s print-on-demand service is definitely much worse than BookVault's, and is much more variable depending on where your books are printed. But the Amazon printing costs are the same.

Amazon then takes a 50% cut of whatever is left after the printing costs just for listing my books but doing nothing to promote them or even to make them easy to find. And Amazon keep all your data, and use it to sell you other things. And they send you worse quality books.

I know Amazon is convenient, and for ebooks I know that some people won't buy from anywhere else, so I do continue to list them there. But for physical books, it doesn't make sense to me to have them on Amazon.

There is no AI in my writing, but my covers do use some AI generated images.

If that puts you off reading my books, I understand that and I’m sorry to see you go.

My goal has always been to use human artists and designers, and I actually did that for the original covers of the first two Agent of the Crown books. But good designers cost serious money, and before I had saved up enough for the cover of the third AotC book, I had the first three Blackhurst books written, and two novellas, and two shorts.

The novellas and shorts were written specifically so I could give them out for free, and let you get a feel for my writing and my characters. But I couldn't even give them away, because I didn't have any cover art for them.

People expect a proper cover. I do, when I buy books, even when I check out free samples. So the things that I needed to build an audience, and earn back the cost of human designers, were too expensive to put out.

I had to do something else.

I do still hand-design my covers. Some of the striking parts, like the Piety textmark, are hand made because I know I'll use them over and over. For assets that are AI-made, they are still corrected and adjusted, then arranged to make them blend nicely. I do take my covers seriously, even if I'm not a professional, and I hope that they look nice and communicate the themes.

I really do get it if you don’t like AI. But for me, the alternative was a growing stack of books that would never see the light of day.

Give one of the novellas a chance. They’re free. They’re good stories. If you get to the end and I haven’t convinced you, that’s fine. But do give them a chance.