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My Work on Smashwords
Just a quick update. As many of you know I have several story reprints available on Amazon as well as the first two volumes in the Lazy Designer series. Up until now I have also had the same content available on Smashwords. Smashwords is a great service because it distributes work onto multiple platforms, including Apple’s iBooks and Kobo. But as convenient as it is to have Smashwords distribute for me I’m finding that the vast majority of my sales are still occurring on Amazon. And unfortunately, for me at least, the process of getting the Lazy Designer books to work properly with Smashword’s formatting tools has been time consuming.…
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Priced to Die
“Why We Should Fear Ourselves More Than Pirates” So now that I’m seeing reports of SOPA and PIPA having been defeated by overwhelming negative opinion many are breathing sighs of relief. And others are cursing violently (but generally silently). Among game developers and writers, my two primary areas of interaction, opinions are mixed. Many are worried about piracy eating into their revenues. For freelance writers and indie game developers it does not take a lot of piracy to put a stranglehold on their revenue stream. Still I think there’s a larger concern than pirates for content creators. Why We Should Fear The $0.99 App and Novel One interesting thing I’ve…
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Read This: Digital Rights by Brent Knowles (Writers of the Future Winning Story)
The Assistant responsible for the primary thruster arrangement killed itself just ten days after Izzy arrived on the solar station. The panicked chatter of the other Assistants prevented them from continuing with their own duties. Horror, speculation, and worse of all, wonder, flowed across the station’s network. Izzy had to stop it. And it was her fault; it never should have happened. She had been distracted. Later she would blame the ghost, but for now, she simply reacted. Simply acted. Her body twisted and jerked, her fingers puncturing the holographic displays that surrounded her, initiating commands as she fought for the station’s survival. Earth, beautiful, blue, perfect, floated in front…
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Read: The End of the Road by Brent Knowles
Wanderer looked down in satisfaction as he walked the old mountain road and saw the town below him. The stagnation of the human race was at an end and the survivors were now rebuilding. So ended the apocalypse. Wanderer continued towards this hotel from his past, an old, sprawling structure sitting high atop a cliff, until loud noises from ahead made him pause. A cat’s howl. A woman’s cry. The raucous laughter of boys on the verge of manhood, the cruelest and most dangerous of ages. With a sigh he resumed his pace. He was the Wanderer and he would do what needed doing before doing what he needed. The…
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Read: The Prophet by Brent Knowles
The helicopter disappears beyond the horizon and Wanderer returns his attention to the laptop sitting awkwardly on his knees, sharing space with a can of cold beans. He digs into the beans with a plastic spork as he views the web site behind his dust-covered screen. A photo of a large man with wide, powerful eyes, stares back at him. It surprises him that these remnants of the old order linger still. Web sites: illusory constructs, full of ideas and utterly lacking in physical substance — devoid even of the paper reality of a book. Of course, they too will fade eventually as power grids collapse and the servers of…
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Free and Lazy
If you’d like a chance to read the Lazy Designer for free please head over to my Facebook Page and read the instructions on my latest post there.
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Stories and Amazon Sales
So something strange happened this week… one of my stories was priced ‘free’ on Amazon (I mentioned it briefly last post). So far my publishing short story reprints to Amazon… Smashwords… AnthologyBuilder has been mostly an experiment in ePublishing, testing the waters so to speak. Sales have been far from brisk :) But with ‘The Prophet‘ being free several thousand readers downloaded it in the span of a few days. And in those same two days I’ve had more sales of other stories than in the couple years I’ve been on Amazon. No, please, don’t be too happy for me. The sales are still rather puny and I wouldn’t be…
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‘Digital Rights’ – AnthologyBuilder
My Writers of the Future winning story ‘Digital Rights’ is now available at AnthologyBuilder. So there are now four places to read this story! I really am making this as convenient for you as possible. – In Writers of the Future XXVI – On the Kindle – On a variety of eBook devices through Smashwords (also check here for how to read it for free until the end of the week) – As part of a custom print anthology via AnthologyBuilder
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iBooks store
So yeah demonstrating the extent of my geekiness I was very pleased to notice yesterday that most of my story reprints are now available in the iBook store for Apple devices. While not quite as cool as holding a new magazine with a story of mine in it, this comes a close second. Just go into the app and go to search and type ‘Brent Knowles’. There’s a half dozen or so stories available. The only title that isn’t showing up there yet is my Writers of the Future story ‘Digital Rights’. If you check any of them out (the Prophet is free!) and are inclined to do so, I’d…
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The Monastery at AnthologyBuilder
I’ve been talking a lot about my Kindle and Smashwords reprints but I also have many of my story reprints available as part of AnthologyBuilder. This is a cool site that lets you take story reprints of your choice and assemble them into a print on demand book! My latest story the Monastery just went live on the site. There’s also A Ragman’s Vow, John’s List, The End of the Road, His Island, The Tale of Lady Spite, and From the Sea. Go check out the Magic Hat anthology which contains stories by Eric James Stone, Benjamin Rosenbaum and others (including my stories “A Ragman’s Vow” and “John’s List”). Or…
