By James Bacon: I was chatting with Robert Rankin who has decided to self-publish as E-books many of the novels from his backlist, with new edit and covers.

I was surprised by this, as he has some 31 books in print. He told me, “’I am self-publishing in ebook form my entire Transworld back catalogue. The Antipope came out on Tuesday on Amazon for the Kindle and that the other 22 will be following one at a time over the coming weeks.”

What sorta surprised me was what he said next: “Jo Fletcher, my then editor with Gollancz, my present publisher, expressed an interest. She wanted to publish all of the Transworld backlist as ebooks. However, I then learned that a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ exists between publishers, that they will not publish each other’s backlists in ebook form. I’ll bet not many authors know that!”

And I didn’t. Who’d have known.

His plans are to issue them one a week over the next 22 weeks. He is doing new cover art for each one and scrupulously re-editing where needed.