At last! My smash-hit fifth opus – Bobby Shafter – is now available as an e-book. It costs a derisory US$2.99, which works out to 0.003 cent per word. You can buy it on almost any e-book sales platform except Amazon (but I am working on that).
I suggest getting it from Smashwords by clicking here.
I am a writer of science fiction – or social science fiction, as I have redefined my chosen genre in an as-yet unsuccessful attempt to create a new market in which I am the sole supplier. Apart from pitifully low sales figures, my main concern is that science fact will overtake me, leaving my speculative, imaginative, provocative stories looking like ho-hum period pieces.
This concern of mine was reinforced today by two stories at the BBC’s admirable website. One is about a self-contained robotic octopus made of jelly-like materials, intended as a prototype of something that will one day perform autonomously and slither into spaces that robots with rigid components cannot. It’s a good read.
The other story is about the future evolution of our species. The idea is that we have evolved as far as we can by means of natural selection, which is in any case too slow for our immediate needs. We now have to design and make our own evolutionary adaptations, which will almost certainly entail combining organic and inorganic elements. This story is very short and told audio-visually.
SHAMELESS PLUG
If those stories pique your interest in what I’ve been writing, and if you’re willing to buy and read e-books, you can get my trilogy of books in an omnibus edition called ‘Goldiloxians’ at all the major e-book retail platforms. Here are two links:
There is a buzz of excitement in the literary world today. For the first time ever, all three books of The Eeks Trilogy are available in a single e-volume. Entitled ‘Goldiloxians’ it is for sale at Amazon/Kindle, Smashwords, Apple, Kobo and other e-book retail platforms at the absurdly low price of US$4.99.
Why such excitement? The Eeks Trilogy is thought by some to be the first example of an explosive new literary genre, which concentrates on human responses to change brought on by scientific and technological advances and speculates on the future path that our species will choose. This new genre has been called Social Science Fiction.
Don’t be unprepared when the conversation at your next dinner party turns to Social Sci-Fi. Be the first to say, “I suppose you’ve all read ‘Goldiloxians’?”
My sci-fi trilogy is now for sale at Amazon/Kindle. That was possible only now because Amazon does not sell books at a price of zero, so I couldn’t upload it to them while the 1st book (‘Eeks’) was free.
I’ve changed the covers too. Now they’re more like standard sci-fi book covers, in accordance with the advice from Smashwords: “Your cover is a promise to the reader.” There’s a language of book covers that we all subconsciously know. An unknown author struggling to be seen cannot afford to be too original.
You can see the new covers on the ‘Books – The Eeks Trilogy’ page of this blog.
Writing the books was taxing but fun. Following the white rabbit (symbolising Fame and Fortune?) into the world of self-e-publishing has been a bizarre experience. To get through the door Alice had to drink the potion that made her smaller. So did I. I drank the potion and found myself in a world teeming with best-sellers, block-busters and authors that people had heard of. I was and remain a pygmy. My poor little books jostle with 24 million others at Amazon alone, each one jumping up and down, waving it’s virtual hands in the air and shouting, “Me! Me! Click on me!”
Then I discovered that writing the books and publishing the books were the easy bits. Publicising the books – that’s the hard bit. Watch this space for updates about my experiences down the rabbit hole.
When I came close to finishing my sci-fi trilogy (The Eeks Trilogy) all the experts said, “You must start a blog. People will read your blog and then they will want to buy your books.” So I did. So far it has not attracted enough interest to crash the servers.
Then when I decided to self-publish The Eeks Trilogy in the form of e-books, available through the big online retailers, the experts said, “The key to self-publication is clever use of social media.” So I hired a social media consultant to set up Twitter and Facebook accounts and feed interesting titbits daily to the world, whipping up a frenzy of fascination.
It’s early days, I know, and as Mrs SG keeps reminding me. But ‘Eeks‘ has been available FREE for 13 days and the download tally is only 104. Did J K Rowling have to wait this long for overnight success?!
StroppyGit 