EBook Preorders Are Now Open For Brightwill!

As if writing the book wasn't enough fun on it's own, I get to share it with everyone with a taste for fantasy fiction. I dreamt of writing this short novel for over four years, and the writing portion of the journey was fantastic. With my cousin, Luke Alberon, staying at my place for this summer, he got to read the pages as I completed them, and I got nearly instantaneous feedback from someone who is fairly choosy with his entertainment.

Then the editing chain began, and everyone involved with that seemed pleased, with surprisingly few notes to offer, so the writing of this book has gone so well. Now I can't wait to get it in front of you.

Even though my distribution partners advise that I should put this up for Pre-Order for six weeks, I'm not going to delay, because the book is finished, after all, and you should be able to read it as soon as everyone has started listing it. That's going to be in about seven days.

So, you can preorder as soon as the EBook is available at your favourite seller until November the 7th, when the book should be available pretty much everywhere. You can also read previews of the novel wherever it's being sold. Here are the links:

AMAZON KINDLE: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00P2Q5RFK

US APPLE iBOOKSTORE: https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/brightwill/id935771816?mt=11

CANADIAN APPLE iBOOKSTORE: https://itunes.apple.com/ca/book/brightwill/id935771816?mt=11

SMASHWORDS:  https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/489351

Print edition preorder link. (Each copy is signed). http://www.ebay.ca/itm/Brightwill-by-Randolph-Lalonde-Signed-by-author-/171515338241?pt=US_Fiction_Books&hash=item27ef1c5e01

Thank you so much for your interest in my work and your support so far. This is one of those ideas out of a dream that became a novel projects, and I had so much fun writing it. I hope you enjoy it half as much!

RL

Spinward Fringe Broadcast 8: Renegades Special Edition, Amazon, and Smashwords versions are available!

That's right, Spinward Fringe Broadcast 8: Renegades is rolling out. The full Ebook is available through Amazon and Smashwords right now. Other retailers (iBookstore, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Diesel, and others), will be listing the book sometime on or shortly after the 21st of March.

There is also a Special Edition for this release. Inside you'll find the Kindle and EPub (epub is compatible with the iBookstore, Nook, Sony EReader, Kobo, and most other devices), versions of the EBook as well as a bunch of goodies.

Here's a list:

- The Triton-Con Cup (5min narrated slideshow)
- A Brief History Of The Spinward Fringe Universe In Covers (25min narrated slideshow)
- A 90 minute commentary track featuring the Author and the Editor.
- Several wallpaper images for cellular phones, tablets and computers.

The special edition is only available through Gumroad, and costs the same as the regular EBook. 

Here are those links again:

Amazon

Smashwords

Special Edition

Barnes & Noble

Thank you so much for your support, and for reading. This book took a long time to finish, and I hope everyone enjoys it!

RL

About Gumroad and the Special Edition:
I recommend you download the Special Edition File with a computer, unzip the archive, and then send the .mp3's, videos, and Ebooks to the devices you want to use them on. If you have any problems with downloading, please contact support@gumroad.com - their customer service is excellent. So far, the Special Edition has been a fantastic success.

Mobipocket Cleans Up Public Domain Titles for Kindle! What's Next?

It had to happen sometime. With project Gutenberg books freely available to everyone a lot of small publishers have taken the raw digital adaptations of the old classics and collected them into eBook editions.

Sadly for distributors like Mobipocket who rarely if ever discriminate, this meant that anyone with a laptop, Notepad and their Creator software could upload and sell a copy of Pride and Prejudice. That's a problem. Some publishers took the raw digital adaptation from the Gutenberg project and did a fantastic job of indexing and formatting the classics, others just copied and pasted or worse. If you want to see how utterly extreme this problem has become you only have to do a search for Pride and Prejudice.

The problem doesn't end with Mobipocket.com, they're a major eBook distributor and have a direct pipeline to the Amazon Kindle store. Everything you see on Mobipocket.com (in English, I'm not sure about other languages), you'll see in the Kindle store. The announcement Mobipocket put out indicates, though indirectly, that the resulting mess for Kindle users is what prompted this cleanup.

Regardless of what may have brought this on, I hope this improves things for Mobipocket. The vast majority of my readers are Mobipocket users and anything that improves their experience on that site has got to be helpful.

As long as they don't remove self published content like the First Light Chronicles Omnibus, for example, I'm happy. Not all self published content is bad content, so I hope the Mobipocket and Kindle teams just leave that as it is. The users sink anything they dislike with bad reviews and few purchases anyway. It's a self policing system that generally works across the Internet.

There was no mention of them cleaning up self published titles in their notice, so I'm led to assume that as long as self published work is part of their bread and butter it'll remain. I've been in the top ten in Science Fiction on Mobipocket.com for a year now. I take extra pride in that because the readers put me there with their reviews and their hard earned money. I'm also thankful and humbled. Readers put a welcome pressure on me to reciprocate with high quality releases, and I'm told each book gets better.

Let's hope that the changes to Mobipocket end with the removal of poor quality royalty free titles, I'd hate to see my readers lose access to my work.

RL

[What do you think of Mobipocket removing poor quality classics? Would you stop using Mobipocket if one went missing from your bookshelf?]