Since it's currently free, I "bought" The Mind Game and Vampire Junkies. From what I've read about some other Spinrad books, I think it's obvious that he is publishing some crappy versions that he grabbed off the darknet without making any attempt to bring the formatting up to the print edition. The lousy formatting makes dialogue nearly incomprehensible. For example, this snippet:
Kindle edition:
Finally he heard the rumble of Annie's Porsche pulling into the driveway. Vibrating with tension, he met her at the door.
"Hi Jack," she said brightly, looking cool, casual, and relaxed.
"How was your day?"
"How was my day? Is that all you've got to say?"
Print edition:
Code:
Finally he heard the rumble of Annie's Porsche pulling into the driveway.
Vibrating with tension, he met her at the door.
"Hi Jack," she said brightly, looking cool, casual, and relaxed.
"How was your day?"
"How was my day? Is that all you've got to say?"
Can you tell from the Kindle edition that Annie asked "How was your day?", and that Jack was angrily replying?
I found it amusing back when Spinrad announced that he was going to self-publish using ebooks from the darknet, after a suggestion from ebook gadfly Bowerbird, and then got into an argument with Bowerbird over the pricing of the ebooks. Spinrad took the position that they should be priced the same as a new mass market print book, and Bowerbird suggesting something closer to the Amazon minimum price for 70% author royalties. Quite frankly, with the lousy formatting, his books are not worth new book prices, and Spinrad ought to be ashamed to be selling them as is. It's a shame, because many of his books are pretty good, but if people only see these badly formatted editions, they're going to think he's another bad self-published author who can't write.