[ATDrake]

Myself, I'm open to the possibility of reading and buying indie books and have in fact downloaded quite a lot of them to try.

But the actuality works out that I've read practically none of them and I personally would not pay money for any purely self-published indie work (I cheerfully give money to "backlist" indies, who are established authors who're republishing their old previously printed books themselves and/or writing new stories for e-release) unless that author were:

a) very good and of a professional standard when it comes to editing, grammar, and storytelling ability

b) had a work with a theme/setting/genre/storyline which specifically interested me (I don't care how good your writing is, if you write a story I'm just not interested in, I won't be paying to read it though free giveaways to try out are still welcome)

c) provided at some point an entire full-length work at no cost to myself (regular teaser freebie, time-limited promo giveaway, whatever) besides time to be assured of sustained overall quality (some stories start off very polished and promising, then rapidly degenerate into WTFery once the initial sample-equivalent portions are over)

d) didn't act like an arrogant self-aggrandizing spambot idiot online (this last is a nicety I'm willing to skip, but I have a "you must be thi-i-i-s talented before I let you get away with stupid stunts" metric which I count in milliHarlanEllisons)

The commonly-cited low price point of many indie books is not even a consideration for me. I freely admit I'm both stingy and picky when it comes to books that I choose to actually spend money.

If I'm not willing to shell out $1.99 for those special promo-priced introductory 1st-in-series novels by established Big 6 authors whom I haven't already read and enjoyed, or at least had recommended from a very trusted source and and read a very promising sample, I'm certainly not going to splurge on a total unknown who probably hasn't even taken their work through the editing process.

Of course, getting things cheaper is always nicer, but a mere 99 cent price tag alone will not entice me to buy, although if all the other factors seem very favourable, it might entice me to try.

And once an author is "proven" to me, I often go and scoop up all their reasonably priced works which look like they're of interest to me. (I've done this for R.A. MacAvoy and Elizabeth Ann Scarborough in recent months, both of whom I'd never read before getting one book each from them at 50% off during a Fictionwise sale to try out; but of course they already had very good reputations in the field and I'd tried a sample first).

As for Canadian SF recommendations, my favourites are Robert J. Sawyer (plenty of free stories on his website, very Asimovian), Tanya Huff (more for fantasy, though her MilSF is pretty good), Peter Watts (kind of like an angry punk Arthur C. Clarke), Jo Walton (Welsh-born, but Montreal-resident and truly excellent) and Monica Hughes for YA.

I've also liked some works by Spider & Jeanne Robinson, Edo van Belkom, Robert Charles Wilson, and Margaret Atwood, for all that she protests that her most sfnal works don't belong in the sci-fi ghetto because they're "speculative fiction". And I've got some Élisabeth Vonarburg and Jean-Jacques Pelletier in the original French, which I'm slowly reading through.

Try finding some of the Tesseracts anthologies from the library; they showcase Canadian speculative fiction authors (both anglo- and francophone) and chances are anyone who's gotten into one of the volumes will have written other works which you can have the fun of tracking down.

If you're willing to expand into fantasy, Michelle Sagara/West is also pretty good from the short stories of hers that I've read (no idea if she falls apart at novel length), and Welwyn Wilton Katz and O.R. Melling do some very good YA (Celtic, Shakespearean, and First Nations-based).

Eileen Kernaghan may be a bit hard to find, but she's well worth it, and of course everyone knows Guy Gavriel Kay (though his mid-career works are much better, in my opinion). I've currently got some Dave Duncan out of the library; he's generally well thought-of and has an extensive backlist available via e-Reads, but I've yet to try him out myself.

Anyway, it sounds like you might want to be setting up your own site. You seem to have a fairly clear idea of what you want to see, and quite frankly, I don't think you're likely to see it anytime soon from anyone else.

"If you want a job done well…" and all that.

Hope this helps, and welcome to MobileRead, fellow Canadian!