Free books! Foregoing millions of pounds in sales, I’ve made all my self-published books free for a while. But they’re not available on Amazon so ignore that link. ‘Federation and Empire’ and ‘The Union Man and Other Stories’ are not free because Nomadic Delirium Press published them, not me. They’re still quite cheap.
They are all science fiction or fantasy. The short stories appeared in small magazines first, so some editors liked them, not just me. They even paid money! ‘Fixing Forcalquier’ and ‘Arnos Hell’ are self-indulgent works subject to the Dunning-Kruger effect.
Here’s the books2read link to this treasure trove. Scroll down to see them all listed horizontally. Buy now while stocks last! Here’s the link. Free Books.
After years of ‘going wide’ with my books, namely publishing them to all the bookstores, I’ve gone exclusive to kindle with some of them. In fact, I’ve scrapped all the small collections with crappy covers and am putting out better collections using my small stock of nice covers. I don’t judge a book by its cover but many readers do.
When it comes to indie publishing, Amazon is often referred to as ‘the 300lb gorilla in the room’ and other terms less friendly. Many of the criticisms are valid. Many ignore the fact that people go to Amazon because it is excellent for customers. Not publishers, not authors: customers. That’s who they care about. In any case, the world is what it is and sometimes the little people have to go along. Bruce Lee said: ‘You put water in a bowl, it becomes the bowl. You put water in a pot, it becomes the pot. Be water, my friend. Be water.’
Well, I’m 60% water and I’m following Bruce’s advice, which I take to mean, fit into the real world. Amazon has 60 – 80% of the market in English language eBook publishing. It’s where people go to look for eBooks. Furthermore, its kindle unlimited program means that readers can check out new authors for free, which is a great aid to being discovered, and you even get paid a tiny bit for the pages they read.
So these three books are now available on Kindle Unlimited. This one is currently free to buy!
Bob Harding is a health advisor at an NHS helpline in a call centre built on a graveyard. One Halloween night, a disgruntled spectre locks the staff in and announces he’s going to kill them all. To save himself, his colleagues and his girlfriend Bob must overcome his greatest fear. A spooky supernatural tale laced with humour.
This one collects the very best of my science fiction stories, published in anthologies, Kzine and various other little magazines. No Hugo winners but some editors quite liked them.
A collection of SF short stories by Eamonn Murphy that were previously published in anthologies and magazines. There arefour sections: dystopian, time travel, Mars, aliens and humour. In future London, desperate people seek help. A woman battles for Earth on a distant colony but is her cause just? A rich man’s son tries time travel to secure his fortune. Aliens infiltrate top jobs across the world. A President causes a catastrophe with a careless tweet.
Last is my epic fantasy set in Forcalquier, Provence, near to which I lived for a year working on a building project. I started it in a Moshav and finished it in a small flat in Bristol ten years later.
When a Tyrannosaurus Rex from the Jurassic era and an American businessman from the 21st century are magically transported to mediaeval Provence they threaten to change the past and imperil the future. A celestial entity called the Fixer sends the sorcerer Orph and his wily assistant Orcas to sort things out and put history back on track. Aided by a cobbler’s apprentice and his family they soon get involved with the court of Count Guilham of Forcalquier and his lovely daughter Garsenda. Then they have to deal with the most fearsome predator ever to walk the Earth! A ripping yarn with touches of humour, Fixing Forcalquier is an adventure young adults will enjoy.
I’m not entirely exclusive to Amazon. They have strict rules about what you can put in a book and you can’t put any story that is available free online, or has been. This rules out everything I published with Perihelion SF and a few other stories published with webzines so I’ll do a separate collection of them and put it ‘wide’ but not on Amazon (because they won’t accept it anyway).
Kindle exclusivity runs for 90 days at a time so it’s quite possible I may put these wide again, depending on how the experiment goes.
On the dark side, it’s not good for one company to dominate completely the book trade; but Amazon doesn’t. And it won’t. I remember similar concerns about Tesco’s dominance of the UK supermarket business but someone else always comes along to challenge it. (Aldi and Lidl in that case). On the bright side, Jeff Bezos does use the profits to help fulfil our science fiction dream of conquering space, if you can afford a ticket or used to Captain a starship on telly.
