More Me At The Mindless ( @ThoughtbubbleUK recollections)
I’ve been quite ill for the last few days, hence the lack of proper updates, but I’ve contributed to another post at the Mindless Ones, this time Illogical Volume, The Beast Must Die and myself discuss what we did on our holidays.
I’m going to be posting there tomorrow as well, about Doctor Who, but I’ll try to get a How We Know What We Know post up here, too, health permitting.
Is this a good idea?
I just had an idea for a way to promote my music books, and hopefully make a little money, but I want to know if it sounds too mercenary. I’m very, very wary of going from someone writing for pleasure to turning into a money-grabbing hack, so I thought I should ask those who get my writing for free…
What I’m thinking of doing is taking some of my individual essays – the ones on Pet Sounds, Revolver, Rubber Soul and Head would probably be the best to start with – and making slightly revised versions available as 99-cent Kindle ebooks in a ‘classic albums’ series. They’d be reworked enough to stand alone, and maybe contain some more factual information (session dates and stuff) but basically just be the sections of the other books.
I think if done properly this could be OK, and a way to drive people to my full-length books, but it could seem tacky. What do you think?
Latest Who Review on the Mindless Ones
Is here.
Incidentally, the need for overtime at work is dying down slightly now, so I might be able to get more posts up here, too.
One Week’s Notice – Withdrawing My Books From Smashwords
Just to give people a head’s up – a week from today I’ll be withdrawing my ebooks from smashwords.com , so anyone who has bought them but not yet downloaded a copy should make sure they have one.
The reason for this is that Lulu, who I do my print books with, have announced that they now have an automatic epub conversion facility similar to Smashwords’, so there should be no problems with formatting (the main reason I didn’t use Lulu previously) as well as getting ebooks onto the same sites (iBooks, Nook etc) that Smashwords does.
And Smashwords has a truly Byzantine payment system which means they can pay you anything up to six months in arrears (I’ve still never received a penny from them) and they make non-US authors jump through all sorts of hoops or withold 30% of their earnings for US tax (I was going to jump through the hoops, now I’ll take the hit since the amount of money involved is going to be tiny) while Lulu pay monthly and consider one’s tax situation one’s own business (I must get an accountant early next year, because I’m now selling enough books to justify it).
So my books will still be available in DRM-free ePub form, and after a relatively short break they should be up on Nook, iBookstore etc as before, but they won’t be on Smashwords after this week.
My books for sale at @travellingmanuk
For those of you in Manchester who have been vaguely interested in buying my books Sci-Ence! Justice Leak! or An Incomprehensible Condition, but don’t like buying online (or like buying for a couple of quid cheaper than it’d cost you online) local comic shop Travelling Man has a small stock of each.
Seven Soldiers Book – Epub, Palm etc versions
These are now up at Smashwords.
I accidentally uploaded a badly formatted version of the book to Amazon, so while you may be able to find a Kindle version on Amazon, please *DON’T* buy it unless and until I have posted a link on this site. The text is OK, but you may not be able to see the footnotes, and some pictures are wrong. I’ll be uploading a new version as soon as Amazon complete processing for the old one.
As always with my ebooks, I am unable to check that everything’s correctly working on all devices. Please contact me with any formatting problems, and assuming they’re fixable I will update the book. I’ve never had a formatting problem brought to my attention before, but this book has more images, more quotes, and some sections using non-Latin alphabets.
Blog Tour 3: A Trout In The Milk
Plok interviews me here. Comments are turned off here, to keep the discussion on that post.
EDIT – now contains working link!
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