The new edition of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson is now available to order from book stores or on-line from Gazelle Books and Amazon.co.uk.

The new edition, the fabled "writer's cut", which starts the re-branding of the Barney Thomson series, looks set to take the literary world by storm, with publishing analysts predicting that by mid-2009 over half the people in the English-speaking world will own a copy of the book.

"This is an exciting time for Long Midnight Publishing," said artistic director, Solomon Kane. "The publishing world is prone to hyberbole and absurd attempts at aggrandisement, but I believe it does not overstate the case to say that this is the most incredibly significant moment in publishing history. Soon the world of literature will be split into two periods: before the writer's cut of The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, and after. These are heady days."

In light of this extraordinary publishing event, already other writers are considering re-working their original manuscripts, with rumours abounding that JK Rowling intends to restore a missing "1556 pages" to Harry Potter & The Philosopher's Stone.

Barney Thomson author, Douglas Lindsay - while currently writing the last title in the Barney series, The Final Cut - is also said to be working on the new edition of the second book in the series, the re-titled The Barber Surgeon's Hairshirt.

Despite the astonsihing media interest in the event, Lindsay, 44, remained unavailable for comment.

Long Midnight Publishing have announced the release of a new edition of Douglas Lindsay's cult 90's crime novel, The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson. With a new cover by celebrated Polish designer Iza Swierad, the release is the first step in the re-launching of the Barney Thomson series.

Released in February 1999 to strong critical acclaim, the book which The Scotsman described as "gleefully macabre, hugely enjoyable black burlesque" is now entering its third reprint, and its fourth different cover. Swierad was tasked to come up with a mischievous figure of Death to illustrate the combination of dark comedy and bloody murder which was to become the trademark of the entire series.

"This isn't a series of crime novels in the conventional sense," said Long Midnight Publishing's artistic director, Solomon Kane. "The books are set in a bizarre and insane world, where so many normal rules are subverted. But that's not to say that a lot of people don't get brutally murdered in them. It's this sense of chaos which has made them so successful."

For this edition Lindsay has gone back to his original manuscript of the book, changing the tense of the prose and replacing much of the Glasgow dialect. "I wanted to get a feel for the way people talked in the west of Scotland, without making the dialogue arduous to read," said Lindsay. "So I've concentrated on the phrasing and the flow of speech, the words they would use in a particular situation, rather than reinventing the language to illustrate the point."

Despite going back to the original manuscript, Lindsay is set to disappoint fans with news that the infamous "Blair butcher scene", rumoured to involve Barney Thomson feeding the British Prime Minister to a herd of rabid alpaca, continues to be omitted from the text.

"Even ten years on," said Lindsay, "it still doesn't quite fit."

The Long Midnight of Barney Thomson, Second Edition, is released on 14th November 2008.

Long Midnight Publishing, the company behind the cult Barney Thomson novels, has announced that publication of the final book in the seven part series will be delayed until summer 2009. The seventh and last novel in the series, The Final Cut - partially based on the Barney Thomson novel Der Herr der Klinge, previously only published in German - was originally scheduled for release in November of this year.

Long Midnight Publishing have denied reports that the book has been pushed back entirely for commercial reasons, along the lines of Warner Bros.' recent announcement of delays in the release of the motion picture event Harry Potter & The Half-Blood Prince.

While the delay is likely to lead to an increase in the fever-pitch of anticipation surrounding the novel, a statement released from LMP's Inverness headquarters claimed that there was no commercial reasoning behind the delay. "It's entirely because the author hasn't started writing it yet," said an unnamed spokesperson.

Douglas Lindsay was unavailable for comment.