Free/Bargain Science Fiction & Fantasy in January 2014

[Lemurion]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

I admit to being puzzled by the way all the series is being oferred free. I can see what an author would offer the first in a series free, but not the others.

According to a comment she made on my Facebook a couple of days ago, she's giving the first seven away to boost sales on the most recent three books in her series.

[Joykins]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Amazon UK have matched Nook UK

Farthing (Small Change Trilogy 1) by Jo Walton is £0.61

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GHK71NG/

FYI

Ha'penny (Small Change Trilogy 2) £4.79 Kindle Edition

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GHK71S6/

Half A Crown (Small Change Trilogy 3) £4.19 Kindle Edition

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00GHK71QS/

You know what would be a great bargain? Selling those books at the price of the title. Even half a crown isn't bad.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Self-pubbed so it might make sense to have all but the latest free (or to continue to rotate the free ones) to get noticed.

Iron Ax press, so technically not a violation of the "no self pub" rule of this thread.

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Joykins

You know what would be a great bargain? Selling those books at the price of the title. Even half a crown isn't bad.

How much would a coin dealer want for a 1948 half crown etc. ?

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Little.Egret

Iron Ax press, so technically not a violation of the "no self pub" rule of this thread.

As Iron Ax press doesn't exist as a company and publishes precisely 1 author (Pam Uphoff & Pam Uphoff writing as Zoey Ivers) I think it's fair to call this one self pubbed.

I wasn't complaining BTW, just answering pdurrant as to why so many were being offered free.

[Little.Egret]

Carrying on with Pam Uphoff

Dark Lady (Wine of the Gods number 8) free everywhere

She saved a world, but not perfectly, not everyone. Drained of her magic, exhausted, she could not block out the screams of the injured and dying. She could only flee through a dimensional gate to an unknown world.

A town that accepted her. A town that needed all of her limping, injured, magic to save them when they came under attack.

http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Lady-Wine...dp/B00BMIEQIG/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Dark-Lady-Wi...dp/B00BMIEQIG/

[curtw]

Originally Posted by MikeB1972

Self-pubbed so it might make sense to have all but the latest free (or to continue to rotate the free ones) to get noticed.

I think we seriously need a sticky from the moderators, clarifying policy. The title of this forum includes "No Self-Promotion." My interpretation of that is that an author cannot appear here, offering a discount on a book that they, themselves wrote. Joe Hill cannot place a post saying "NOS4A2 is on sale this week."

High Howey is a self-published author. When his ebooks go on sale, my interpretation of the rules of the forum are that anybody except Hugh Howey can start a thread here announcing it.

Am I getting this correct?

[Lemurion]

I thought the thread was only for commercially published books. As far as I know, the reason Pam Uphoff came up was in a discussion of how she uses free books as marketing tools.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by curtw

I think we seriously need a sticky from the moderators, clarifying policy. The title of this forum includes "No Self-Promotion." My interpretation of that is that an author cannot appear here, offering a discount on a book that they, themselves wrote. Joe Hill cannot place a post saying "NOS4A2 is on sale this week."

High Howey is a self-published author. When his ebooks go on sale, my interpretation of the rules of the forum are that anybody except Hugh Howey can start a thread here announcing it.

Am I getting this correct?

Yes, you're quite correct. Author's cannot advertise their own books, even if on special offer, outside the self-promotions forum.

This thread also asks for self-published books to not be posted, because there are so many of them, and of such variable quality.

[stutzj]

My problem with not being able to post about self-published books is that the VAST amount of the books that are marketed and featured on Amazon(where I do 100% of my ebook shopping) are self published. While I agree that they may be of variable quality, under the rules for this thread, I can't share a link to a book featured on the kindle daily deal today. I've started reading "A Nameless Dwarf' and its really great. I want to recommend it here but its also published by Homunculus Books which is clear is the authors publishing co. So I guess I can't share it, but I think that's a shame since, like I mentioned, I'm enjoying it and it currently has a sales ranking of #45 which should mean that it is legit to a certain extent. Should there be a separate thread for Sci/Fantasy that is exclusively self published? I for one love discovering authors I have not heard of and am more far apt to take a risk an author when there books are on sale. I have discovered a number of books from this thread that are in fact self published and probably should not have been posted here based on the rules. Just my 2 cents.

[cromag]

I've posted about plenty of self-pubbed titles -- just not in this thread. If they're on sale, post a new topic for the book here in the Deals and Freebies section. If they're not on sale, and you just want people to know about a good ebook, post a new topic under Reading Recommendations. (Of course, this is only for books that you haven't written, published, etc.)

[mewmartigan]

It's my understanding that the writer himself/herself cannot advertise their own book outside of the self-publishing forum.
If you, stutzj, didn't write "A Nameless Dwarf", I see no reason why you couldn't recommend it in the "reading recommendations" forum.

[Difflugia]

Originally Posted by stutzj

I've started reading "A Nameless Dwarf' and its really great. I want to recommend it here but its also published by Homunculus Books which is clear is the authors publishing co.

Maybe instead of a flat "no self-pubs", the bar needs to be that you have read and enjoyed any that you post (or are at least willing to vouch for some level of quality). I agree that there's a lot of chaff in the self-pubbed books, but I also have found a selection of self-pubbed authors that I quite enjoy.

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

Maybe instead of a flat "no self-pubs", the bar needs to be that you have read and enjoyed any that you post (or are at least willing to vouch for some level of quality). I agree that there's a lot of chaff in the self-pubbed books, but I also have found a selection of self-pubbed authors that I quite enjoy.

That's a good suggestion. I have a sudden sense of deja-vu, but I'll risk adding that qualifier to the thread specification.

[Rev. Bob]

Originally Posted by Difflugia

Maybe instead of a flat "no self-pubs", the bar needs to be that you have read and enjoyed any that you post (or are at least willing to vouch for some level of quality). I agree that there's a lot of chaff in the self-pubbed books, but I also have found a selection of self-pubbed authors that I quite enjoy.

I'll second that suggestion, especially as there are some tradpub writers who've started self-publishing at least some of their work. I can think of a few cases where a series was being traditionally published, then the publisher dropped it, and the author self-published the rest.

Seanan McGuire is a useful example; she's got a two-book* tradpub UF series for which she's published three tie-in stories in tradpub anthologies...along with several more tie-in stories that she just self-publishes on her website in assorted ebook formats. IIRC, three of those self-pub stories were up for Hugos in 2013. To further complicate things, a small press (associated with a convention) has collected and published two volumes of stories that she originally self-published in a similar way.

* Soon to be more; book three of at least four comes out in a couple of months.