Category: announcements

Launch!

It’s official … We’re off the ground with the new website!

Lots of new stuff here. But the big change that I’m excited to share is that you can now pick up all of my stories directly on this site (as well as all the usual places, of course). I decided to add this as an option, since so many people are starting to push back against Big Tech, and it gives me more control over what I can do with my novels (like giveaways and discounts).

It also gives you more control over where and how you read them.

Big Tech likes to manage your world in ways that most readers don’t see, but now you can fight back against that and get your books from me, here, without having to march to the beat of the mega-companies any longer. I know it is really a small thing to most readers, but if you’ve ever tried to move a book file from one e-reader to another or cancelled your account with one of these retail behemoths, you will really understand and appreciate how simple I’m making it to actually OWN your own copy of my books. (No DRM or other shenanigans to get in the way of enjoying the story where and when you like it!)

All you have to do is follow the links to the page for the ebook you’re interested in and click the buy direct button (it’s the big one that you can’t miss). From there, it will take you to a secure pay site and then you will get your book delivered straight to you from my BookFunnel catalog. Easy-peasy… complete with tech support if you need it.

HALF OFF CELEBRATION!

In honor of the new site being up, and as a way of saying thanks for hanging around, right now if you sign up for my newsletter (here) you can also get a 50% discount off of any (or all) of my ebooks for the rest of March (plus one free novel just to say thank you for signing up). I’ll send you the discount code in your first email from me.  (See how easy it is to be able to do things like this without having to get the overlord to approve it first!)

Anyway, that’s it for now.  Hang around, there’s more to come soon.

Take Care and Dream Well,

BTW, because we are still in the process of going wide, I know there are a few sales links that don’t connect up to some of the retailers. Unfortunately, it takes time to get things up and running on everyone else’s websites. But if you find anything here that should be working and isn’t, please shoot me note to let me know. I’ll jump on getting it fixed as soon as the smoke clears.

Several big things are happening around here.

Being a writer and running our own publishing company is never boring… nor does it allow for much time to sleep (at least not lately).

First thing I want to mention is  Wings of Earth: Book 9: Blood Cost is finally live!  Amazon has been beaten into submission (or maybe it got tired of us beating our heads against the wall and just gave up) and we have managed to get everything working as planned.  You can pick up your copy on Amazon now! (and everywhere else soon… more on that below)

Second thing to talk about is that Wings of Earth: Book 10: Fields of Fire is only waiting for the cover art to be finished and then it will go up on preorder. There are a few minor production details to be completed that should have no impact on getting it launched. We will probably set a launch date for some time in March (give or take a week) so keep an eye out for the announcement here.  The good news is that it is getting really close!

Once Book 10 launches we will be “going wide.” (For those of you who don’t know what that means, it is a term for distributing books on the full range of retail sites.) It is a complex process that we’ve been gradually exploring for several months with my Shan Takhu Legacy prequel series and Atlas and the Winds, which you can already get through a variety of locations (Here are the links to Barnes and Noble and Kobo). The biggest issue is that each of these distributors has slightly different specifications for publishing, and it takes a massive amount of detail work to tailor each title for each site.  But because not everyone likes to get their books through Amazon, we’re making the effort to get them out on every platform anyone might want to use. And to be honest, after the problems we had with Book 9, if Amazon wasn’t the biggest distribution channel, we probably wouldn’t be up there at all. Unfortunately, we’ve got no choice until we can jump through the other guy’s hoops… So that’s what we’re doing.  Lots of jumping.

But soon enough you will be able to find my books everywhere!

Which brings me to the final thing I want to discuss…

We are busily redesigning this entire website from scratch to make it easier to keep in touch, and to support the new wide distribution of my books.

We’re also adding a way to buy my books directly through my website. There are several reasons that we’ve decided to set up an actual store, and one of the most important is that when you “buy” a book through Amazon (or B&N or any of the other sites) you really aren’t buying it, it is almost like you are renting it.  Amazon (and the other retailers) maintain control over your book purchase. When you buy from them, you don’t actually have physical possession of the book, so if they shut off your account you lose everything you think you bought.  I don’t think that’s fair to you.

Once we have it all set up, when you buy a book from me, I will make sure it is delivered to you for real and for good, with no strings and no limitations other than the basic copyright stuff. (I will explain more about Digital Rights Management and how this all works in a future post here, so keep an eye out.)

Anyway, all of these things are happening at the same time and, if it all goes according to plan, will all launch pretty much simultaneously sometime next month (except for Book 9’s release which has already happened… whew!).

So, as you can probably imagine, we have been crazy busy trying to get everything done at once.

I’ll keep you posted so keep checking back to see the new site once it goes live (and you can always sign up for my newsletter if you want the absolute latest news and scuttlebutt).