The Pen is Mightier is a slightly satirical fantasy, also an homage to Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire. Looking back, perhaps I should have picked a different title…
I acknowledge that this is a personal annoyance for me. I don’t like the way Amazon tries to steer you towards the products it wants to sell ahead of the products you want to buy. But I’ll drop it before I go any further off topic.
May I ask why you decided to switch from A.C.F. to Andy?
ACF are my first and middle initials – for some reason I thought that sounded better at first. Eventually I decided that was dumb (and I didn’t like people calling me “ACF”) and went back to Andy. No good reason to pick ACF, in other words.
What a fun book, Andy! I was actually gripped enough that I stayed up late to finish it, which is high praise from me. Hope to see more from you.
Fantastic! I’m so glad you enjoyed it! It’s so gratifying to hear that people are enjoying what I put so much work into. And if it’s convenient, I’d be very grateful if you said so in an online review.
With all due respect, you could also consider paying the people who spent a lot of time creating the books you enjoy.
At the very least, join a library so at least the authors get something for their work.
Amazon does offer a surprising list of free books to download if you’ve got a Kindle. They tend either to be old classics (lots of Dickens) or cheap trashy romance novels (usually involving a billionaire who falls for his maid, if the titles are anything to go by). Literally just go to the Amazon site and search for “free books”. But I suspect you will get what you pay for, in most of those cases.
Have not tried “Spindown” yet. A friend of mine recently published their first sci-fi novel under a pseudonym and I’m still working my way through it slowly. The friend is normally quite a skilled writer in other genres (and has several other published books, plus a lot of ones ghostwritten for others) but…let’s just say sci-fi may not be their métier.
A lot of detective / mystery / thriller novel series have the first of the series available for free on Amazon as well. It’s like a drug dealer offering the ‘first taste’ for free to get you hooked, to keep you coming back as a paying customer.
Was this in reply to someone in the thread? The author himself linked to Amazon so I assume he’s okay with whatever money he gets from that. I’ve bought thousands and thousands of books in my life and it never occurred to me to worry about what the author was paid. That’s between them and the publisher.
Pretty sure he was responding to a post that was deleted.
Anything written before 1926 is in the public domain (in the US), and such books often show up in numerous editions, including some free (and if you can’t find them free on Amazon, you can find them free elsewhere, like Project Gutenberg).
The other freebies are mostly self-published (including, as you say, a lot of cheap trashy romance novels). Self-published doesn’t necessarily mean bad (Spindown certainly isn’t), but the wheat-to-chaff ratio is much lower. I suspect the reason these books are free is to gain publicity: the author hopes you’ll like them enough to buy more of his/her work, and/or that you’ll leave a favorable review or tell your friends.
Amazon has separate “best seller” lists for the Top Paid and Top Free Kindle books.
You are correct. Someone asked where they could get all their books for free.
That’ll teach me to not quote the post.
Thanks, I couldn’t figure out what post you were responding to. I wasn’t aware a post had been deleted. Was it a spammer type post or a regular poster?
BTW, @iiandyiiii I downloaded Spindown and will be sure to leave a review for you.
It looked like a regular post, but maybe it was a sock or had other spam posts.
Wonderful! I hope you enjoy reading it!
Apologies for the confusion - yes, someone (in a now-vanished post) asked about getting free books and I was pointing out that there were actual free books on offer on Amazon, albeit either public domain material or of questionable quality. It was not a comment about “Spindown” or self-publishing in general.
No problem, it was seriously a good read. Please keep us informed of any future books you write.
You faked me out a bit with the reverse Chekov’s gun thing. When the XO handed Bea his gun and took it right back I thought for sure a major character would end up dead with the gun with Bea’s prints on it laying next to the body. Instead you went the frame Konami route. Good move.