Hello there, gentle reader. As you’ve probably noticed, most of the books listed in my store are self-published through Smashwords. You possibly wonder why you should buy these books. Let me give you five excellent reasons to do so.
1. You can read them on any ereader, DRM free.
That’s right – whether you have a Nook, Kindle, iPad, Kobo or some obscure Korean device, my books are in a format you can read. Every ereader I could find information about, bar the Kindle, will read .epub format. The Kindle takes .mobi (and it’s dead easy to load books bought elsewhere onto your Kindle.) Most take PDF. My books are available in .epub, .mobi, and .pdf formats, as well as those for Sony Reader and Palm.
2. They’re properly edited and formatted.
Don’t believe me? Check the free previews. Every book I publish goes through multiple editing sweeps, and is checked by friends who are also authors. I hold myself to very high standards, and I know for certain fact that my books are as well, if not better, edited than ebooks issued by the main epublishers. You won’t find ‘loose’ for ‘lose’ in my books, I promise.
I take enormous care over formatting too. Again, don’t take my word for it – check the free previews.
3. You can try before you buy.
Not only is at least 20% of every one of my ebooks available for free preview, I also offer copious numbers of free complete stories and novels right here on my site. You don’t have to guess whether you’ll like my style.
4. They’re really, really good stories.
I’ve actually had people say they won’t pay for my books because they’re ‘obviously’ not good enough to be published. Well, that’s just nonsense. Two of my previously self-published books have been picked up by pro publishers, and have received rave reviews.
The reasons that these books are being self-published differ. In two cases, I offered them to romance publishers who didn’t like them (not enough big ‘R’ romance). In other cases, as with Different Senses, they were never offered to anyone because they don’t fall into the tight genre requirements imposed by most publishers. In the case of one book, I actually had sold it to a publisher and managed to get it back from them because I’d lost confidence in their business practices. Because they had already issued the first book, I can’t really sell the sequel to another publisher, so I chose to issue it myself.
In the case of the Darshian Tales, when I wrote these back in 2003-04, there was no viable market for m/m (a term not even used back then – people were calling this stuff ‘original slash’). Like a lot of authors venturing into ‘original slash’ I just wanted people to have a chance to read them, so I put it up online. I didn’t attempt to get into pro publishing until 2007, and my first pro book didn’t come out until 2008. By now the market was starting to be attractive, but there was still a lot not to love about the ebook publishing world (still is, frankly). However, since the books have been up for free, Samhain Publishing aren’t interested in them, and I don’t have the confidence in other epublishers to submit to them (sales figures I’ve seen for some are worse than what I’ve made through self-publication). These books are very, very long and so, not attractive to epublishers anyway.
So it’s not that they’re bad – the huge volume of feedback I’ve received over the last seven years for my free to read stuff confirms that readers adore them – it’s that I wrote them at the wrong time, and didn’t have the options then I do now. It’s unfortunate because these books represent my very best writing – much better than anything I’ve sold to a publisher. Anyone trying to tell me that these aren’t ‘good enough’ to be published, is going to be laughed at.
5. They’re extraordinary value for money
Tired of being charged $4.99 for 20,000 words? Or ‘novels’ of a hundred pages which cost seven or eight dollars? Then buy my books and save! Different Senses is a mere $6.99 for nearly 200,000 words! Kei’s Gift is $4.99 for over 300,000 words! You won’t see value for money like this from the epublishers because they have so many people who need to take their cut. (And before you say, ‘oh, but they have to pay their editors’ – some do and some don’t. Some epublishers aren’t exactly spending much on editing, if at all.)
And that’s it. You can read them anywhere, not pay the earth for them, and you’ll love them. So why not give them a try?
