How Many Ebooks Can We Give Away? And Why Would We?

The ebook in question is Neptune Crossing, which has been my free loss-leader for several years now. I ran a Bookbub ad on it the other day, to try to goose interest in the downloads, which had dwindled to a small handful every day. The result? Over 32,000 downloads in two days! Zounds! (About three fourths of the free downloads are at Amazon Kindle, and the other quarter are spread out among B&N Nook, Apple, Google, and Kobo.)

Why would I want to do such a crazy thing? Ha-ha, crazy like a fox! (A smart fox, I hope, not a rabid fox.) The answer, of course, is that I hope everyone who reads their free copy will be so eager to read the next books in the series that they’ll fall all over themselves rushing to buy them. Stampede! That’s what I’m talking about.

So is it happening? Well, paid sales went up the same day at Amazon Kindle. Not out-of-the-ballpark up, but nicely and encouragingly up. At the other stores, I haven’t seen any change whatsoever. Is that because of the sheer weight of Amazon, or because of some difference in the algorithms of how books are shown to customers in the stores? Wouldn’t I like to know.

Anyway, time will tell. People need a chance to read the books, after all. I hope it looks interesting enough that they won’t put it on their to-read pile and forget about it. Excuse me a moment while I shout:

“Hey, folks who downloaded Neptune Crossing! I hope you read it and like it! And if you do, please leave a review! And try the next book in the series!”

And thank you.
 

The Infinity Link for the Price of a Buck!

It’s been over a month since I’ve had a big book sale, and let me tell you, it shows in the sales numbers. Jeez, people, don’t you ever buy anything that’s not on sale? I don’t mean you people, of course. Of course you’ve been buying my books, and bless you! No, I mean all those other people who have been choosing to spend their money on—I don’t know what, shoes for their kids, or cocaine, or other people’s books. Enough of that, I say.

Starting today, and for a limited time only, you can snag yourself a copy of the first book of mine that really got “serious” attention, and my first monster epic that took years to write. Yes, The Infinity Link. (No, not The Infinite Sea. That’s my other “infinite” book, intended to keep you on your toes.)

Anyway, here’s what it looks like, with a lovely cover by David B. Mattingly. And right below are the places where—for a limited time only!—you can get your ebook for just $.99. As I never tire of telling the world, that’s way less than a cup of coffee, for reading pleasure that will last long after those gritty coffee dregs grow cold. Act now!

(Is this a Bookbub special? Of course it is!)  

Cheap Books! Cheap Books!

It’s that time of the month again. If you’ve subscribed to Bookbub.com (as I have so often exhorted you to do), you already know this: The Rapture Effect is on sale for a buck minus a penny, for a week and a day minus a day. Get it while you can!

The Rapture Effect was my first book after The Infinity Link, which I recently blabbed about. It’s about artificial intelligence and alien contact, two of my favorite themes, with overtones of music and dance. Oh, and an interstellar war. It has some great aliens, with names like Moramaharta and Dououraym. I think you’ll like it.

You Guys Are Really the Best!

Over 4230 copies of Eternity’s End in the last week! A new Bookbub record? I dunno, but we just squeaked past the number they listed at the top of the range of sales for science fiction books! And as far as my own personal record is concerned? We knocked it out of the galaxy! KABOOM!

Truly amazing.

So, thanks, all of you bought Eternity’s End. And a double thanks to all of you who post reviews, which will encourage even more people to try it in the future!

I’m taking my writing group out to dinner, because they helped me make the book worthy of your time in the first place!

Here, have some extra exclamation marks. You’ve earned them. !!!!

You Guys Are the Best!

posted in: personal news, specials 0

The first day of this sale shattered all of my previous specials: More than 2500 copies of Eternity’s End sold in the first twelve hours after the Bookbub email went out! I have spent the whole day grinning and dancing around the house:  !!!! \\ !!!! \\

In a manly, virile sort way, of course.

So, I just want to say, Thank you, and I hope you enjoy your reading!

Special of the Week: Eternity’s End!

I’ll be your server this week, Mesdames and Sirs. We only have one Special this week, but it’s one I’m certain you will enjoy—and an amazing value for your entertainment dollar. That’s right—this week we’re offering Eternity’s End for less than that dollar, in fact a mere $0.99. That’s less than you tipped the parking valet to get into this joint. And it’s way less than the regular price of $5.99! Can you believe it?

I’ll be honest—at first I thought it was a misprint. But I checked with my manager. And yes, it’s $0.99, with no limit on the number of copies you can buy! One for the bathroom, one for the bedroom, one for the living room, six to give to friends! Oh wait, it’s an ebook, so I guess you don’t need to buy one for each room. But you could, if you wanted to. For one week only.

Eternity’s End is a big-scope science fiction novel. I mean, BIG scope. In one place you can peer all the way from one end of eternity to the other! (Except that eternity has no end, unless, um… well, never mind that.) Eternity’s End is set in my Star Rigger universe, and it was a finalist for the Nebula Award the year it was first published. It’s also a book that I feel very good about having written, a book that I would have wanted to read, if someone else had written it. Plus, it has a dog in a minor role, and cool amphibious aliens, and space pirates who might not be all they seem. Oh, and a Flying Dutchman of the stars.

I did some further upgrading of the interior formatting of the book for the occasion. If you’ve already bought the ebook, you should be able to download the newest version of the book from the store where you bought it. I can’t swear that every store allows this, but if they don’t, they should.

Yes, I’m working with Bookbub again—conspiring, I hope, to sell a lot of copies and become rich beyond my dreams of avarice. Or at least, you know, to sell a lot of copies. Some of which, I hope, will generate favorable reviews. Which will help, down the road, in drawing in even more unwary readers.

If you’ve held off before, why not give it a try? What have you got to lose? The supersize option on your next Starbucks coffee? You shouldn’t be drinking that much coffee anyway!

Well, It’s Happened Again

You’ve squandered another perfectly good hour listening to… no wait, that’s Car Talk.

This is Bookbub. That’s right, starting today, I’m practically giving away another book: Star Rigger’s Way, which only recently came back into e-print via my Starstream imprint. Ninety-nine big ones for this novel, for one week only. That’s 99 Lincoln pennies, neatly lined up with all the dates right-side up, please. That’s less than a dollar, and much less than half of a Starbuck’s coffee! What’s not to like about that?

Fun facts about Star Rigger’s Way:

1. A minor character in this book, Legroeder, became the main character of a later book, Eternity’s End.
2. Characters only mentioned in passing in this book—i.e., space-faring dragons—became the central element of two other novels, currently available in one omnibus, called Dragon Space.
3. The original Dell paperback cover for this far-future saga appeared to feature a guy in a NASA-issue spacesuit, taking a space walk from Skylab. (Remember Skylab?) It was a very pretty cover. But a tad anachronistic.

You can get this deal in any of the following book pubs:

Kindle | Nook | Smashwords | Kobo | iBooks | Google

That’s $.99, for a limited time only!

Kobo on Cyber Monday

I can’t believe I just said that. I hate all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday crap, and the whole BUY BUY BUY ramp-up. Nevertheless, Kobobooks has a one-day 35% off sale today on selected ebooks, and it’s pretty good. My selection is Dragon Space, an omnibus edition of Dragons in the Stars and Dragon Rigger, a pair of books in my Star Rigger universe. You can find it here, and use the coupon code CYBERMONDAY35 to get your discount. Today only!

To see the whole list of books in the sale, go to this page. You have to keep hitting Show More Results at the bottom to see all the books. My favorite book cover in the sale: Pet Noir, by Pati Nagle.

Old Promos, New Promos

posted in: ebooks, specials 0

In case you’ve been sitting on a fence biting your nails, trying to decide whether to plunk down your hard-earned ninety-nine cents on a copy of my ebook Panglor during its Bookbub sale, you’ve got through tonight to make up your mind. Then the price goes back up, and there’ll be nothing I can do to help you, except pat your shoulder as you learn to live with your regret. But you don’t have to live with your regret. Just visit any of the major ebook stores, and be decisive! Join the other 2500 wooters suckers readers who have, er, joined in! (That’s a real number, by the way. It’s been a great promo!)

This doesn’t mean there are no good deals after tonight, though. In fact, those crazy folks at Kobobooks have another special going, 35% off on selected ebook titles for the next week. Lots of stuff on sale, including my Chaos Chronicles: Books 1-3 omnibus (which they’ve grouped with boxed sets, rather than science fiction). There are some cool looking books by some of my friends at Book View Cafe. For example: Chris Dolley, Chaz Brenchley, Judith Tarr, and Cat Kimbriel. (I apologize to anyone I missed.)

One week only!

Here, in case you’ve forgotten what it looks like. And because blog posts look better with pictures.

Panglor Goes Off the Deep End

Panglor is kind of a weird guy, and Panglor is kind of a weird book. Much of it takes place on an extremely weird planet. You wouldn’t want to miss that, would you—all the weirdness? The guy feels as if he’s about to go off the deep end at any moment, and for a week the book is going off the deep end, at least with respect to price. (Is this another Bookbub special? Of course it is. Get the ebook for $0.99, for a limited time only.)

I wrote Panglor in my late twenties, immediately following my second novel Star Rigger’s Way, which is a coming-of-age space adventure. Star Rigger’s Way is full of youthful angst. Panglor is full of angst squared, and the thought: What might happen if the frustration, angst, and anger of the young adult of Star Rigger’s Way never got resolved. What might happen if a good space pilot went a little off the deep end emotionally, turning just crazy enough to become a little scary, but still (just) within the bounds of professional competency? And what if he met up with a young woman, smart and a little off balance herself, seemingly born just to become a thorn in his side?

And what if they both wound up on a planet occupying some kind of weird nexus in space-time, a place where reality itself seems broken, concealing a crucial discovery that will change the course of star travel?

You can find out, of course, by reading the book. As I said in an earlier post, this book didn’t get much love in its original paperback from Dell, but has been well received as an ebook. I revised the text for a Tor paperback after the Dell edition, and that is the version in this ebook. (And, by the way, any correlation between the mental condition of the characters and the mental state of the author at the time of the writing is, er, purely coincidental.)

Panglor is listed as Book 1 in The Star Rigger Universe. Actually it’s a prequel to the Star Rigger Universe. It’s about the discovery that leads to star rigging. How we got from the discovery to the actual practice of star rigging is a story I haven’t written yet. Maybe I should!

Here’s where you can get the $0.99 special: 
 
One week only!
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