One EBook Screaming "Look At Me! Look At Me!"

Today, being the last day of Read An E-Book Week (don't worry, there'll likely be another one next year at the same time, and there's nothing stopping you, really, from continuing to read ebooks after today), many of the special promotions are expiring.

I thought I'd take a self-promotional pause (you know, for a change, because I rarely talk about my writing or suggest people check it out or anything like that here on this blog) and remind folks they can use coupon code RE100 at Smashwords.com to get my book ONE HAND SCREAMING (among a huge selection of other titles), for free up until midnight tonight (Saturday March 12, 2011) - after that, OHS goes right back up to the ridiculously over-priced $0.99)

The $0.99 price point is meant to make the book attractive for folks with very little risk. I mean, if you spend $1.00 to get it and you don't like it, it's not like you dropped $30 or anything.

And if you really liked it, you'd consider that $1.00 to be a really good investment. (In fact, you can download 50% of the book entirely for free, which gives you a really great way to check it out and see if it's worth your hard-earned money)

The reason I set a really low price rather than making it 100% free is that I wanted to be able to see some cash exchange hands in order to support the supply chain that supports publishers and authors. (When money is exchanged, each of author/publisher/retailer/service provider typically gets a small cut - I like that equation, particularly since it spreads the cash to as many elements of the supply chain as possible)


When I first released One Hand Screaming back in 2004, I never dreamed about becoming rich off of it. The idea of collecting my previously published stories together was simply to create a way for people to find my stuff. When most of your fiction has appeared in small press magazines or anthologies that are no longer in print, it's really hard for people who want to read your stuff to find you -- that's the reason I put the effort into this collection. And the good news is that I've heard from a lot of folks over the years who have quite enjoyed this little volume that samples the various types of fiction I have written. So it seems to have done its job.

And yes, each year, I draw some small royalties and income from the sales of the print and ebook versions of OHS. But I know I'll never get rich off it.  The real reward to me has been hearing from people who've read and enjoyed it. 

I'll also pause to say if you like this collection of dark humour, macabre stories and twisted poetry, you might also enjoy listening to my podcast Prelude To A Scream, where I've taken samples of some of my previously published stories and pushed them out into free audio.

I really like listening to fiction via podcast feeds (it allows me to "read" more while doing other things, such as going for a run, or even on my daily commute in to work), so I thought I'd try to share some of my own writing that way.  Prelude To A Scream includes many of the stories and poems that appear in ONE HAND SCREAMING (and will eventually include all the stories from it) as well as some other tales I thought would be fun to share.