Free story (Kindle, Sony, nook, no DRM) - When Antiphon Met Personal Demons [Fantasy]

[ATDrake]

Chapter 15.5 - Intersections and Interlopers: When Antiphon Met Personal Demons, by Ken Scholes and Lisa Desrochers is currently a free pre-order in the Kindle store with no description.

This is from Tor, and I have no idea whether it's an upcoming Tor.com short story (it's certainly regularly-priced right for one) and therefore a crossover between the worlds of Ken Scholes' Antiphon, which appears to be some sort of high fantasy epic, and Lisa Desrochers' Personal Demons, which is a YA paranormal/urban fantasy, or just a set of preview pages for both novels, which were released on September 14th, or some sort of interview or other publicity item.

In any case, if you want a cheaply priced Ken Scholes book, his novel Lamentation, first in the Psalms of Isaak series that Antiphon continues, is a mere $2.74 for Canadians, and described as an sf/fantasy post-apocalyptic hybrid, if you're into that sort of thing.

And you can read stories a few stories by him free on Tor.com, if you'd like to sample the writing first.

Lisa Desrochers looks like a new writer, so maybe this really is a short-story crossover collaboration to help boost her profile. One can only hope.

[koland]

It appears to be related to the screw-up by the publisher, as they put a chapter from Personal Demons into the middle of Antiphon. Maybe this is the missing info, for those who bought Antiphon (although, personally, I'd want a corrected copy instead, especially at $12.99). More than likely, though, the publisher is using their mistake to get more free publicity for the $12.99 and $9.99 books that few other than hard-core fans had heard of.

[ATDrake]

Well, according to the comments on this review, to which Tor editor Beth Meacham responds, the issue has been noticed and the corrected version of Antiphon was available as of the 21st, and this doesn't come out until the 30th.

So maybe they're now trying to capitalize upon the error by getting the affected authors to turn it into a joke?

I certainly wouldn't mind seeing a spoof-y parody (if that's what this pre-order actually is) of post-apocalyptic epic meets paranormal teen fantasy tropes. Might even interest me enough to go have a look at the "original" books, if it's done entertainingly enough.

[koland]

Yeah, nice of them to lay part of the blame with Amazon, when they are an agency publisher and insist that THEY are the ones selling the book, not Amazon. And, of course, we all know that Amazon simply sends out the file that they submit. Since it's two of their own authors, it's pretty obvious someone cut and pasted something incorrectly at their end and then didn't proof read it (and not likely the author, as he would not have had access the files). If publishers bothered to just keep their documents that they submit to the printing process, this and other issues (such as all the OCR errors in Hour of the Hunter, which they rescanned entirely, rather than just added a couple of chapters to the existing ebook they had) would disappear -- what they sent to the printers would be what they submit to Amazon, if they had their source clean enough and had a decent converter built. At least for 90% of what they are printing, as most novels really don't need a lot of fancy formatting over and above starting chapters on new pages and some decent indenting of paragraphs.

Had they simply fixed the error and updated everyone's copy, as has been done with many other books in the last year (several of which I received updates from, after being notified by Amazon), of course, that would not have resulted in any press. Instead, we all have heard about Hour of the Hunter one more time and now hear about these two books. Both in conjunction with the publisher being seen as "making things right" (and bashing Amazon in their rush to the spotlight).

[ATDrake]

Publisher incompetence, cluelessness, and whining are part of why I flat out won't buy at the $7.99+ most of them seem to feel they should get for products of potentially shoddy make and dubious keeping value.

I'm willing to open up and fix MultiFormat and even the few "Secure" books I get from Fictionwise for $3-6 after coupon/sale discount. I'm not willing to do that for DRM-ed stuff starting at twice the price. For that cost, the publisher should be doing all that work, and doing it in a logical manner.

It seems incredible stupidity to go and OCR newer books if a digital text file of some sort already exists, even if it's only the author's submitted manuscript that someone will have to proof against a print copy/pre-press PDF. Not to mention expensive and wasteful.

Although on the Amazon side, they really do need to work on their conversion tools and formats, if they're going to insist on exclusive Mobipocket and Topaz file support on the Kindle. So much room for improvement in both areas that it's not funny.

And while I like Tor for having a nice back catalogue which they've been working to digitize and commissioning new short stories from prominent genre authors that they may not even publish as part of their "stable" and putting them up free online, I also don't like them for unilaterally yanking the e-reader friendly downloadable formats of those stories they've chosen to monetize by selling them, now with added DRM and geo-restrictions, in the various stores.

At least the Hour of the Hunter fix gives people who missed the freebie version the first time around the chance to get it at no cost if that's what they want.

And I see this whatever-it-is as more as a thing that nets publicity for the affected authors who certainly aren't to blame for the original error or the spin being put upon it, rather than the publisher, so I'm okay with that, even though the mistake should have been caught by whoever produced the e-version in the first place.

Apparently no one bothers with pre-release quality control checking any more. But, we are offered their ill-made goods free for a limited time.

Two steps forward, one step back.

[koland]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

Apparently no one bothers with pre-release quality control checking any more. But, we are offered their ill-made goods free for a limited time.

Two steps forward, one step back.

I'd definitely agree on the former. And I suspect that for free, perhaps the people would not have been quite as upset to discover that they had the back half of a different book (especially if it was then corrected).

On Hour of the Hunter, there were typos and it was a bit annoying, but not as big a deal as was made of it by some readers (I've seen much, much worse; some of it so bad that I returned the book as unreadable). Auto-spell checkers should be banned at publishing houses - and anything OCR'd should be read by a native English reader (or the native language of the book), one who has either a degree in literature, a few years of honors lit in school or some other proof of being able to tell when an incorrect word has been substituted. The type that is annoyed by reading incorrect grammar and who is slowed and will notice errors (just the type that used to be employed as a proofreader in the past, perhaps, although not one that will feel compelled to mark up the text too much, as they will then have to be promoted to assistant editor, instead -- or offer their services, for a fee, to the self-published authors out there that truly want to sell a better product, eventually forming defacto e-publishing brands of their own).

[ATDrake]

Description got updated, so it turns out this is indeed a crossover short story based off that production mistake. I love being right about these things.

Product Description
When part of Lisa Desrochers' urban fantasy novel Personal Demons got swapped into the Kindle edition of Ken Scholes- epic Antiphon, they were notified and the error corrected. But the two authors began to wonder what would happen if their characters met, and Chapter 15.5, -Intersections and Interlopers,- was born.

Edit: 400 posts! I'm officially an "Evangelist".

[ATDrake]

The official title of this is now "Intersections and Interlopers".

Less spoofy than I hoped it would be, but now also free @ Sony and B&N. Both geo-restricted to US-only (and DRM-ed, as is the Kindle version), though apparently the setting of the story can be mistaken for Canada. If you're a paranormal teen in a love triangle.

However, it's also free directly from Tor.com, where you can get DRM-free ePub, Mobi, and PDF formats around the world. I suggest picking up an additional copy from there, to help show Tor just how much we like these freely downloadable non-georestricted multiformat e-reader friendly versions offered straight from the source.