Download Hal Spacejock, by Simon Haynes - Free!"Fast, funny, quirky, enthralling comedy adventure" Tom Holt

The Hal Spacejock series is published by Fremantle Press & distributed by Penguin Australia


You can get it and find out more about it here:

http://www.spacejock.com.au/Hal1Download.html

Thanks, just downloaded it.

Thanks for the link.

OH boy free books, thanks :bookworm:

EDIT: :(

What I'll do is make up a PRC file and add it to the zip on the spacejock.com.au site. I nearly did so last night, although I was trying to keep the file size down.

If you could remove this copy from your forum I'd appreciate it. My publisher asks that people don't serve up their own copies of the book. (They're just trying to make sure everyone downloads the 'official' version, but I appreciate your helping out.)

BTW, anyone else here use a Treo 650 for ebooks?

Cheers
Simon

Spacejock, I downloaded your book then converted it to .lrf for my Sony reader. Was that okay to do?

i get the impression that he wants to keep track of how many downloads there are, which is why it's not good to have copies available elsewhere, but probably format shifting for your own personal use is fine with him.

fffff

What I'll do is make up a PRC file and add it to the zip on the spacejock.com.au site. I nearly did so last night, although I was trying to keep the file size down.

If you could remove this copy from your forum I'd appreciate it. My publisher asks that people don't serve up their own copies of the book. (They're just trying to make sure everyone downloads the 'official' version, but I appreciate your helping out.)

BTW, anyone else here use a Treo 650 for ebooks?

Cheers
Simon

Nope on the Treo 650. But I'm using my heavily-modded Netronix EB-100 (a hardware and OS clone of the Cybook Gen3) to read it in Mobipocket's .prc format! And get your publisher to get with the program and offer all of them via Baen Books!!! I can hardly wait to read all of them on my Cybook and EB-100! :)

Derek

They already sell via Dymocks in Oz, and Dymocks already sell ebooks. Strangely, none of Simon's ones...

i get the impression that he wants to keep track of how many downloads there are, which is why it's not good to have copies available elsewhere, but probably format shifting for your own personal use is fine with him.

Absolutely right. I'm tracking downloads, and the higher the count the more excited my publisher will be about the whole 'giving it away free' concept. No problem with format shifting for your own use though.

The second part of the equation is word of mouth. People talking about the books, reviewing them, blogging about them, etc. You can't buy word of mouth ... all any writer can do is put out the best book they can and hope people discover & enjoy it.

Cheers
Simon

They already sell via Dymocks in Oz, and Dymocks already sell ebooks. Strangely, none of Simon's ones...

Dymocks Australia is selling an encrypted PDF version of Hal 1 for ... $23.95. That's one of the reasons I worked so hard to convince my publisher that 'free' was a better pricing point for ebooks.

Yeah, Dymocks is a bit of a sick joke as far as pricing goes. I'd happily pay you for ebooks if that was an option, but paying Dymocks $24 to rent a copy for a while... pull the other one.

Dymocks Australia is selling an encrypted PDF version of Hal 1 for ... $23.95. That's one of the reasons I worked so hard to convince my publisher that 'free' was a better pricing point for ebooks.

I know Cory Doctorow is quoting someone else, but I think he's got it right in his latest, "Little Brother" - it isn't piracy that's the problem, it's obscurity. Amazon boasts of having over 100,000 titles; eReader.com and Fictionwise are each claiming around 30,000 titles. In all that congestion, it's hard enough to find new works by authors I *do* like. And if it's a new author which - for whatever reason - these sites don't 'promote' on their main page, there's a good chance I won't hear about them. Add in dealing with an absurd ebook format such as PDF and the publisher and author can kiss a sale to me "goodbye".

Derek

What I'll do is make up a PRC file and add it to the zip on the spacejock.com.au site. I nearly did so last night, although I was trying to keep the file size down.

Cheers
Simon Simon -- Please post here when the MobiPocket format is available in your zip file and I'll download again.

I second the suggestion someone else made about selling books 2-whatever through Baen's Webscriptions site. They are well known among those readers of electronic books who like Science Fiction. Your books will be shelved alongside those of some of the best known and widely read authors.

Thank you for the first book. If I like it, it's highly probably that I will purchase others in the series -- but only if I can get them in electronic format. I have no intention of purchasing any more paper books.

Re: obscurity .. yes, that is the problem. Walk into any bookstore and you face an overwhelming choice, and of all the thousands of titles on display there might be 100 to your taste, and half a dozen which would become your favourite books if only you knew about them. We can't take every title in the store down from the shelf and read the first chapter, which is why word of mouth & the internet have become so valuable.

New authors aren't promoted because there's no money in it. Why push a new author onto the front page (or into the front of store) when the publisher is only expecting to sell 3000-4000 copies tops? Makes more sense to put a big name author there and have guaranteed sales 10x or 100x that.

Simon -- Please post here when the MobiPocket format is available in your zip file and I'll download again.

I did it before I posted here originally. In other words, it's available now.

I second the suggestion someone else made about selling books 2-whatever through Baen's Webscriptions site. They are well known among those readers of electronic books who like Science Fiction. Your books will be shelved alongside those of some of the best known and widely read authors.

My people are talking to their people, as they say in the movies ...

Thanks! I will give the book a try. But like Elsi said, I hope the other books come out digitally (for a price), or I won't be trying the others.

Thanks again!