Fantastic! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it, and thank you for giving it a try.
Congrats! I will download and read it.
Wonderful! I hope you enjoy it.
New review – very thoughtful and positive from book blogger “Tome Tender”: Tome Tender: Spindown by Andy Crawford
I just finished the free Part I and enjoyed it very much. But I don’t understand something on the Kobo site. They have Spindown part 1 (free) and parts 2,3,4,5, all at CAD 1.29 which is cheap enough although I would prefer having the book in one piece. But they also have a single book called Spindown at C$0.99. All of them have the same synopsis and the same cover. Had that last been 5.99 or something I would have assumed it was the whole book but at 99 that seems less likely. Can you explain?
I’m so glad you liked Part 1! That is the whole book at .99 currently. The whole book is heavily discounted right now in preparation for a promotion (Bookbub) that will be running in a few days - this is my first time working with them, and I wanted to make sure extra early that there were no hiccups in the discount pricing they require. So I set the discount price now to make sure it was represented in all the various marketplaces. Please take advantage! And if you do, let me know what you think of the whole book.
Please give it a try! You can download Part 1 for free (check the links in the first post of this thread).
Okay, I got it for .99 (+.15 tax) and I will leave a positive review. There is a misprint somewhere in part 1, the word “sigh” came out as “sign”.
I am now up to Chapter 50 and came across the line, “Truth doesn’t have an ideology.” Really? It does now.
I recommend the book unreservedly. Well written and a page turner. And pure SF. Most of what passes as SF these days is fantasy. Actually, probably always was. FTL drives, telepathy, instant communications are not any science we know.
Fantastic! I’m so glad you’re enjoying it. I’ll be looking forward to reading your full thoughts once you’re done.
It showed up in my morning Bookbub email, so now is the time to get it. Does it make any difference to you (Andy, the author) where we purchase the book from? That is, does Smashwords, say, give you a bigger cut than Amazon or Kobo? (I’ve got accounts at all three, so I’ll purchase it from whichever gives you the best cut.)
Great! This is my first Bookbub promotion, and so far the sales are (relatively speaking) through the roof!
Smashwords gives me the best cut. Though if you write reviews, I think Amazon’s user reviews (and maybe Goodreads too) are the most influential, so that would be my preference since I’m still trying to build buzz. Thanks so much for giving it a chance, and I hope you enjoy it!
Wow, this promotion is quite a hit for me in Canada. Right now Spindown is the #1 sci-fi Kindle book in Amazon Canada, and the #58 Kindle book of any genre: Amazon.ca
I read it and enjoyed it a lot. It hit all the right hard sci-fi buttons for me.
Something I have a hard time articulating: I’ve read (or started to read) a number of self-published books, as well as some written by basically unknown authors. And there is a certain vibe that comes from them with respect to the writing and characterization. I can’t put my finger on what’s wrong except to say that it’s amateurish. Your book did not trigger that vibe for me at all. No author is perfect but there is a certain threshold of professionalism that many authors never cross, but you have.
Minor quibbles:
- I don’t remember exactly where (near the end), but there is a “here” instead of a “hear”.
- At one point you describe a hatch as weighing 50 kg on Earth, but in the low gravity of the Aotea it weighs 15 kg. This is not exactly right–kilograms are a unit of mass and a 50 kg object masses 50 kg everywhere. This isn’t an academic distinction either, since inertia is affected by mass, and even if a person can lift a massive object, they will still have to be careful with slinging it around. Not a big deal, and people (on Earth) miss this distinction all the time, but on Aotea people would have to make allowance for the difference between inertial mass and weight.
- I would have done without the various cultural references (Helm’s Deep, etc.). They’re infrequent enough that they sorta stand out awkwardly. I don’t mind references if the whole book is going for that feel, as with The Martian or Ready Player One, but it felt that your overall tone was more serious, and against that I don’t think they fit well.
Less minor, but understandable:
[spoiler]This isn’t unique to your book by any means, and I’m mostly able to look past it, but the “organization infiltrated by long-lived and widespread conspiracy” is a somewhat hard to swallow trope. It’s just really difficult to believe that a conspiracy of hundreds (thousands?) could remain dormant for decades, with supplies of weaponry and other things, and never be detected. Or that someone like Gregorian could have a suicidal devotion to the cause and yet remain friends with Konami for years without anyone being the wiser. People just can’t isolate their beliefs to that degree. Konami in particular is a good detective and would have noticed something.
Again, this isn’t unique to your book and certainly doesn’t ruin it. And you did spend some effort in explaining some parts (such as that most of the conspiracy didn’t know the real plans). Nevertheless, that did kinda stick in the back of my mind as I was reading it.[/spoiler]
At any rate, I look forward to your future books, and would love to see a sequel or at least something set in the same universe.
Thanks very much for this. Obviously this is what I’m aiming for, and it’s incredibly satisfying to have strangers with no stake tell me that I’ve accomplished it. And I’m so glad you enjoyed the book!
Thanks for the thoughtful criticism. I’ll definitely take it onboard for consideration on my upcoming books.
If it becomes successful, I’ll definitely consider this! And I’m surprised that multiple readers have asked for sequels – I thought of this as a relatively self-contained story, but I suppose there is plenty of room for interesting events among a crew of thousands on a decades-long journey in deep space.
If possible, I’d greatly appreciate a review on Goodreads, Amazon, or whatever other ebook sites with which you have an account. Reader reviews are by far the best way to convince other skeptical readers to give my book a try.
You did a great job with the world-building. Aside from further stories on Aotea, there are stories on Samwise, or on a different colony ship (we know that Earth got serious about interstellar colonization after the comet scare), or Ceres in the early SNH days, or the immediate consequences after development of the Forwood drive, etc. So many stories here!
Done! (Amazon)
Thanks! World-building is actually the writing activity I enjoy most. I’m really glad you noticed the “comet scare” stuff – I couldn’t conceive of a realistic way that humanity might actually decide to colonize the solar system and consider expanding beyond, without such a threat as a motivator, at least not for the next few hundred years.
Awesome! Thanks so much!
I grabbed it for my Kindle app, you have an interesting premise and the reviews look good so why not. I’ll leave a review on Amazon after I’m done.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy it! I look forward to reading your review.
Aussie book review site Dark Hints Reviews loved my book! Spindown, Andy Crawford – Dark Hints Reviews
Nice surprise yesterday. And most of my sales lately have been in Australia, for some reason. No idea why.