Hello, authors, readers, and fans. I hope you are all staying safe and sane and practicing proper social distancing during this stressful and trying time.
I wanted to give an update on how Brain Lag is affected by all the measures brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. As a home-based business, the closures and recommended social distancing hasn’t affected the work from my end too much. However, all the businesses involved with publishing books have, which has certainly had an impact.
Here in Ontario, gatherings of more than 49 people have been banned. That means various conventions and festivals that we were originally looking forward to exhibiting at have been cancelled or postponed, including Breakout Con and Ad Astra. At present, our next confirmed event is Forest City Comic Con in London, Ontario at the end of June; however, given the virulent nature of COVID-19 and its ongoing threat, we are prepared to either see this or other events cancelled or postponed or to make the choice not to attend. I will continue to monitor the public health situation and make decisions closer to our next events, if such decisions are not already made.
Book production is currently uncertain and circumstances may change at any time. A state of emergency was declared and all non-essential businesses have been closed in Ontario and Quebec, the home of our printer for our personal stock. While they have sent a message saying that they will work with their clients to fulfill their needs, I have no intention of endangering their excellent staff by requesting any print runs at this time.
Our distributor also released a statement saying that they will continue to print and ship books ordered online, but if further restrictions affect their operations the way the state of emergency has in Ontario and Quebec, I expect that this may change. One of our titles, I noticed recently, was listed as out of stock at a particular retailer.
If you would like to purchase one of our books and you can’t find it available elsewhere, or would prefer to purchase directly from Brain Lag, we do have stock of all our currently released books. We are working on setting up an online store, but in the meantime, send us a message and we would be happy to ship you a copy. Ebooks also remain available, as well as the audiobooks we have released so far, and I encourage you to please continue to support our authors in this time.
I plan to continue with our release schedule as we have set it, including more books yet to be announced for next autumn and winter. I will be ramping up online promotions, and while we cannot have the launch parties we had hoped for, we will still celebrate their release at a later date. Availability of physical copies may be limited to begin with, but these books deserve to come into the world as promised. We need art to get us through these trying times, and the books will still be there when the world has settled down and caught its breath again. Brain Lag also remains open for submissions, if you have been using this time to polish up your next great scifi/fantasy novel.
Thank you all for your continued support. If you have any questions or concerns, don’t hesitate to contact me. Please remain safe—and keep others safe—by enforcing social distancing, and we can all get through this together.
Catherine Fitzsimmons
Owner, Brain Lag
