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Category: smash-roundup

  • Robert’s Roundup #15 (Winter Smashwords Edition)

    View the Roundup series || View Raves & Reviews || Mike’s Likes ||  Read how I compile this list. || How to Submit Smashword deals || How to Submit your own Ebook Deals in the Comment Section || Commercial Disclosures

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    Abbreviations: KU means Kindle Unlimited, LE means that lending of this Kindle title is allowed, and APUB means it was published under an Amazon imprint.

    Preface

    I found some great deals on Smashwords titles which were valid in the last 2 weeks of December. Prices jumped back to normal in January, but my guess is that the prices are still pretty low.

    I’ve been busy on publishing stuff for most of 2020, so haven’t been able to post this column in a while. With my new blogging strategy, I expect to be writing Robert’s Roundup columns once a month. I’ll post the column page at the beginning of the month and then add it to over it over time. This kills a lot of birds with one stone. First, it ensures that I post more regularly and that I can post individual links more regularly. I used to treat this post as being time-sensitive, but over the past year I’ve decided that it’s less important to publish temporary sale prices than to make people aware of new authors and books. If you want, you can always set up price alerts on ereaderiq if you want instant notifications (perhaps Bookbub has that same functionality by now; can’t remember). I belong to the Smashwords affiliate marketing program, so you’ll notice that I do direct links to Smashwords ebooks. (I doubt if my affiliate payouts have amounted to more than $5 over the past year). More importantly, I like Smashwords because it’s very author-friendly, DRM-free and pays great royalties to authors.

    I’ve stopped providing direct links to Amazon books mainly because they cancelled my affiliate account, but also because I see no reason to promote the Kindle platform because it’s so dominant. Another reason is that it’s time consuming to manage all those links — and frankly everybody knows how to google. Anyway, I think it’s more important to link to the author’s own website because they can direct you to the ebookstore they like the best.

    In 2020 55% of my ebook spending came from Amazon.com, 30% came from Smashwords, 10% came from Google Play Books (GPB) and 5% came from buying directly from the publisher.

    I expect to buy a lot more ebooks from GPB over the next year. GPB now pays indie authors one of the highest rates in the publishing world. Amazon only pays 35% for ebooks priced below 2.99; indeed for ebooks with a larger file size, Amazon will reduce author royalties by 15 cents for each MB of the ebook file as a “delivery fee.” This is crap, and both Smashwords and Google Play Books charge no such fee. For that reason, I try to buy indie titles on GPB or Smashwords instead of Amazon for ebooks priced at below 2.99. Of course, Kindle Unlimited titles are exclusive to Amazon, so you have no choice.

    Indie Author Spotlight

    (Read about indie authors profiled in previous months).

    Frank Prem (Website is here) is an Australian poet who writes and performs poetry about the ordinary aspects of living — such as going shopping!

    Sales on Smashwords

    Here are the most interesting presses I’ve seen so far on Smashwords: Unsolicited Press | Fomite Press | Whitepoint Press | OpenBooks (interesting but overrpriced?), Bold Venture Press (republishes classic, pulp and genre fiction | Lethe Press | ReAnimus Press (established scifi press which republishes lots of things) | LDB Press | Black Opal Books | Propertius Press (too expensive though) | Atthis Arts | Leaf Garden Press (mainly poetry — see here)

    Read by Strangers: Stories (Free!) by Philip Dean Walker (author website). A collection of sixteen queer stories exploring the complexities of the human experience. One review describes it as “result is a deep dissection of lives where the barriers to human connection can take on sometimes-comic, sometimes-monstrous proportions.”

    Lethe Press has a variety of titles (notably gay fiction, sci fi, paranormal and some some general fiction and stories. Some good discounts here –highlights:

    • Vanishing Point by E.V. Legters (author website) — FREE! Novel about a turbulent affair a lonely housewife has with an emotionally unstable man. (called by Kirkus a “heartbreaking and exquisite story about emotional violence.”) See also: Connecting Underneath (on Amazon for $2, not SW) , her debut novel about teenage girl journey to discover who her father was. (Kirkus: engaging meditation on the most basic desire—to know oneself. )

    Senior Touring Society by Donald Kemp

    Isolde Kurz: A Cultural Anthology, translated by Becca Menon (free!) Kurz is a

    Kissing Booth and other stories by A.C. Wise (3.75) — whoops, maybe I thought the price was lower? Gay surreal scifi fiction about time machines, robots, aliens, etc.

    ReAnimus Press republishes out-of-print sci fi novels and story collections for 3.99 (no discount; it’s the same price as Amazon). (Update: I see that you can buy DRM-stuff for the same price directly from the publisher . If you subscribe to the newsletter, you get 20% off first purchase — and hopefully info about more promotions. I generally like buying directly from the publisher because author royalties tend to be higher). Still Smashwords has a lot of these titles — I found lots of James Gunn stories and Robert Silverberg novellas. From Gunn, I’m starting with Future Imperfect story collection, but there’s a lot to choose from. The Silverberg link above went to several 60,000 word collections of 3 novellas by well-known people. Wow, does sci fi have a lock on the 15,000 word novella?

    John Flynn (aka Basil Rosa) Basil Rosa — a pseudonym (author website) for John Flynn has discounted all his 3.99 titles to 99 cents for this week — including his Lotion State Trilogy. Alas, I see that he has 3 poetry collections on Smashwords for free — which is great. Fun fact, Flynn served in Peace Corp Moldava in 1993-1995, and I lived in both Albania (1995-7) and Ukraine (1997-9) with Peace Corps and Soros Foundation (respectively). Moldava is right next door to Ukraine, and our country director in Albania came there directly in Moldava, so I have an affinity with this author already. His poetry comes from Leaf Garden which publishes a lot of free and low cost poetry.

    Nature’s Confession by JL Morin and Loveoid Nature’s Confession is a YA climate change novel (descriptions and reviews here). Also, Morin has a Huffpost author page containing climate change articles.

    Sussurus on Mars by Hal Duncan (1$) is another novella about Greek mythology, botany, philosophy, gay fiction

    Richard Herley (author website) is a versatile English author who has already achieved a fair amount of commercial success and has published a lot of his titles on Smashwords (as well as Amazon). On both stores, a significant fraction of the ebooks are priced at free, but everything is under $3. On his author’s website, he has helpful advice about which books to read first and next.

    Frank Prem is a gifted Australian poet who I mentioned in a previous column. (author website). I really love his stuff (and you should listen to  Frank Prem’s youtube pages.) . He has two poetry ebooks on Smashwords: Pebbles to Poems (free) and Herjo Devastation – a poetic collaboration with a storyteller

    I have already highlighted Whitepoint Press in previous roundups. Whitepoint has published a few new titles in 2020: Bread and Salt by Valerie Minor (author website). (Note: This is just one title — more are sold on Amazon). Also, Mom’s Dead by Gerard Lafond (author website) and the poetry title Of Covenants by C. Kubasta (author website, also an interview here and here).

    A brush with life by Steven Mayoff. (author homepage)

    Various by Basil Rosa — pseudonym (author website).

    Rasmenia Massoud (author page)

    ISOLDE KURZ: A Cultural Anthology: Edited, Translated & Iluminated by Becca Menon FREE!

    Man in the Seventh Row: and Related Stories of the Human Condition by Brian Pendreigh 99 cents. Novel by film critic about man who is sucked into various movies (see Purple Rose of Cairo, etc) . Several good reviews on Amazon (where it is on sale for the same price). Here’s his Smashwords interview.

    Real World by Kathleen Jowett (author home page and book page). Novel by English writer about a gay woman torn between her desire to marry her girlfriend and the desire to serve as a vicar. From her website, a LGBTQ reading list. A few years ago Jowett published a well-received award-winning novel Speak its Name.

    Two YA books by JL Morin: Nature’s Confession and Loveoid.

    Deals published by Amazon imprints

    Some of the Amazon imprints produce very inexpensive ebooks of varying quality. Some titles though are superb (and you should check previous roundups for my recommendations — I frankly ignore most of the genre stuff and focus on the international authors and biographies. Follow this link to see which titles are 99 cents for the month.  (check previous columns here, here and here), so maybe my recs will be sparser than usual. All are KU APUB, (but not lendable!).

    The King of Kahel by Tierno Monénembo, trans. from the French by Nicholas Elliott. 99 cents (KU, APUB). French prize winner inspired by a historical event about a man who traveled to Guinea and conquered a region in order to build a railway. Reviews are mixed though.

    Under the Radar

    Talking is Wasted Breath (Tales from the Deccan Plateau) by Rasana Atreya (free, preorder on Amazon and Smashwords).

    Gotcha! Inside Trump’s 2000 Campaign – A Novel by Ed Weinberger (99 cents). I usually pass on fiction about topical politics, but Weinberger is a legendary TV writer — wrote for Mary Tyler Moore, co-created Taxi and several other shows. Also, he and Ed Asner wrote an entertaining pseudo-history, Grouchy Historian: An Old-Time Lefty Defends Our Constitution against right-wing hypocrites and nutjobs.

    Three Stages of Amazement: A novel by Carol Edgarian (bought on sale for 2.99). (Author website). The first thing I noticed about the book page is that the author was the cofounder of Narrative Magazine (which is very well done). Wow, I read the first chapter a long while back — it’s a contemporary California story about love affairs, social classes, venture capital, current events (sorry for phoning it in; it’s been a while). But it seems competently written and Edgarian is definitely someone to watch (she’s even achieved a fair degree of mainstream success).

    I swear, I keep bumping into the ebooks of John Vance, (author website) who is a retired academic who has written in a lot of genres — most titles run for 99 cents up to 2.99 on Amazon, so the price definitely is right. Professor and the Don’s Girl, Men Behaving Badly,

    Empty Cell by Paulette Alden (author website). Alden won a Stegner Fellowship and wrote a novel about lynching in the 1940s.

    Believe it or not, I bought one low priced collection of Penthouse Letters and found them surprisingly entertaining and well-written. Fun reading if you’re into that kind of thing — and not just as stroke material.

    Dog Logic by Tom Stretlich (LE). (Author website) Satirical novel about a damaged caretaker at a pet cemetery. Stretlich’s thing is mainly being a playwright, so this is an extension of a play he wrote previously. I’m probably not describing the book fairly, so let’s hear from the author himself.

    Regrets by Milton Schacter 1.99 (KU, LE). Well-reviewed crime novel about a defense attorney who is killed as a robber and returns to life as a 15 year old black boy. No author website, but the Amazon author profile is one of the longest I’ve ever read!

    Inside the Robe: Judge’s Candid Tale of Criminal Justice in America by Katherine Mader (author website). (free)

    Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling and Making of Cultures by Antonio R. Damasio 0.99 Philosophical book about how homeostasis explains human evolution and lots of other things.

    For $1 each I’ve picked up 4 volumes of the sci fi series Eden’s Trial by Barry Kirwan (author website) who apparently in not the Irish folk singer with the same name. The premise is about humans who travel in a space ship to find a better planet after earth is ruined by war and climate change. You know I’m a sucker for those kinds of books.

    Newspaper Widow (Novel) by Cecilia Manguerra Brainard

    Snapshots by Eliot Parker. 99 cents. Stories set in Eastern Kentucky/West Virginia. Stories about life’s quirky ironies, usually with a twist.

    Film Writing mini-guides by John Gaspard. The series is called Fast, Cheap Filmmaking Books (KU) . I got Fast, Cheap & Written That Way: Top Screenwriters on Writing for Low-Budget Movies for free.

    Blink and It’s Gone Sales

    (books which go temporarily on sale for a day and then jump back to regular price; to hear about them, you generally need to set up price alerts on ereaderiq).

    Cosmos by Witold Gombrowicz . 1.99 Award-winning book by Polish author whom Milan Kundera proclaims one of the great novelists of our century. Described as “a metaphysical noir thriller narrated by Witold, a seedy, pathetic, and witty student, who is charming and appalling by turns.” I tried reading Ferdydurke earlier without really getting into it, but my critic friend raved about his other book Pornografia, so I’m willing to give him a second look. (Sometimes I throw aside books too quickly — a personality flaw).

    Second World War by Antony Beevor. 3.99 (a fat ebook!) A well-researched comprehensive book which retells the whole narrative

    Ecstasy is Necessary: a practical guide to sex, relationships and oh, so much more. by Barbara Carrellas. (A guide to having a good sex life sells for 99 cents on amazon — what a deal!). If you’re looking for a great book about sex and relationships (seriously), I recommend the book Sexual Intelligence by Marty Klein. (Here’s the author’s website). I also have thumbed through but not actually read his two other books about porn and “America’s War on Sex.”

    Sympathizer by Viet Thanh Nguyen. (author website). This much lauded first novel is one of a series and about a communist double agent from Vietnam who travels to America in order to spy on immigrants already in America. He has written other novels The Refugees and The Committed which give different perspective on the plight of post-war Vietnamese. Nguyen has written lots of essays and fiction (here’s a recent essay from NYT called “Post-Trump Future of Literature”). Here’s a long excerpt:

    That much of the literary world was willing to give Mr. Obama’s drone strike and deportation policies a pass, partly because he was such a literary, empathetic president, indicates some of the hollowness of liberalism and multiculturalism. Empathy, their emotional signature, is perfectly compatible with killing people overseas — many of them innocent — and backing up a police and carceral system that disproportionately harms Black, Indigenous and other people of color and the poor. It turns out that a president can have a taste for both drone strikes and annual reading lists heavy on multicultural literature.

    And here, marginalized writers who tell stories about marginalized populations do not get a pass. Take immigrant literature. During the xenophobic Trump years, when immigrants and refugees were demonized, simply standing up for immigrants became a politically worthwhile cause. But so much of immigrant literature, despite bringing attention to the racial, cultural and economic difficulties that immigrants face, also ultimately affirms an American dream that is sometimes lofty and aspirational, and at other times a mask for the structural inequities of a settler colonial state. Most Americans have never heard of settler colonialism, much less used it to describe their country. That’s because Americans prefer to call settler colonialism the American dream.

    Too much of immigrant and multicultural literature fails to rip off that mask. Yet the politicization of these populations does pose a threat to the white nation that Mr. Trump represents. White identity politics has always been the dominant politics of this country, but so long as it was ascendant and unthreatened, it was never explicitly white. It was simply normative, and most white writers (and white people) never questioned the normativity of whiteness. But the long, incomplete march toward racial equality from 1865 to the present has slowly eroded white dominance, with the most significant rupture occurring during the war in Vietnam.

    I, Claudius by Robert Graves ($2). I’ve heard good things about this.

    Indie /DRM-free Ebook Deals

    Once or twice a year, the radical publisher Verso Books discounts critical/leftist ebooks. Most Verso titles are brilliant radical works — often about economics, sociology, media studies, literary criticism (and occasionally even fiction). To my delight, I saw that Derrida‘s Politics of Friendship was discounted. I am somewhat well-read in Derrida, but as it happens, I attended the first public reading of the 1st chapter while at JHU in 1989. Although Derrida’s analytical method is fairly abtruse, he recited his thoughts carefully and intensely (leading me to believe that I understand most of what Derrida was speaking about. (I made small talk with him at a wine and cheese party afterwards). Verso has a lot of interesting “deep thoughts” books; it’s definitely worth signing up for the newsletter to be informed of when things go on sale.

    Note: Verso Books sells DRM-free versions directly to the consumer and in multiple formats. Everything is also on Amazon, but discounted prices come only from directly purchasing on Verso’s site.

    Creative Commons — Academic — Public Domain

    Some more free titles from Cornell U Press that I hadn’t picked up already. This set comes from the series, Signale: Modern German Letters, Cultures, and Thought. I’m reasonably well-versed in German literature and for a while was reading advanced stuff in German (including 2/3 of Hermann Broch‘s Sleepwalkers). Sleepwalkers is a great work; I probably should revisit it in an age of Trump.

    • On the Ruins of Babel: Architectural Metaphor in German Thought by Daniel Leonhard Purdy
    • The Total Work of Art in European Modernism by David Roberts
    • Benjamin’s Library: Modernity, Nation, and the Baroque by Jane O. Newman
    • Lyric Orientations: Hölderlin, Rilke, and the Poetics of Community by Hannah Vandegrift Eldridge
    • Formative Fictions: Nationalism, Cosmopolitanism, and the Bildungsroman by Tobias Boes.

    I have delved into the Cornell Open Access Project a bit. (See the newest free titles). There’s a lot there, and perhaps next month I’ll cover the offerings (many of which I’ve already downloaded). Suffice to say that on the Cornell website you can download epubs and pdfs, but on Amazon they are available at kindle files. If you download from Cornell directly, you should be sure to give the downloadable file a recognizable name. COAP has titles on a lot of subjects (maybe 1/4 are literary topics). Lots of social science, history and political economy,

    Once in a Lifetime Deals

    Improvement by Joan Silber, 2$

    a

    Poetry

    See my blurb about R.S. Gwynn below.

    Texas

    Benevolent Lords of Sometimes Island by Scott Semegran.

    Republic of Jack by Jeffrey Kerr (author website). A satirical look at the Texas government who entertains the secession movement for political purposes. Kerr (who also makes movies) has a great sense of Texas politics — here’s a fun Texas history lesson he gave to the Austin public access TV.

    Levee by Paul Otremba. (a Houston poet who died at 40 of stomach cancer). Here’s a very nice interview in American Literary Review in 2019. Here’s one lovely description: From a nice article about the book:

    Levee—set in and around the Ship Channel, lush greenery, and crawfish boils of the Bayou City—is a thoughtful, sometimes ironic work that examines living in a time besieged by climate change and perpetual violence in a place forged from industry and greed. It’s also some of Otremba’s most personal work, drawing, as it does, from the poet’s own confrontation with mortality.

    “He used his own illness as the background and metaphor for the illnesses of the world,” explains Otremba’s wife, Holly Holmes.

    Morgan Kenney, Houstonia Magazine.

    Demagoguery and Democracy by Patricia Roberts-Miller. (author blog).

    Clay Reynolds is a distinguished and erudite Texas author (website) whom I’m currently interviewing. Curiously, despite his being born 16 years after me, he went to Trinity and we share a lot of cultural reference points. I’m excited to get into his fiction and essays which have overlooked way too long. I’ll be posting more about his fiction eventually, but two places to start is his 2004 public lecture A Cow Can Moo: The Irony of the Artistic Lie (PDF). It’s a detailed discussion about the evolution of a Texas writer’s sensibility and how you develop a sense of irony. Deep, heavy stuff. For something lighter, here’s a 2006 interview with Reynolds in Lone Star Literary Life. One curious thing about Reynolds is that he talks freely about his fiction. When Baen released ebook editions, he wrote new introductions for almost all of them.

    From Barsoom to Malacandra: Musings on Things Past and Things to Come by John C. Wright (author website) Also: Transhuman and Subhuman. ( 99 cents KU, LE) Wright is a retired lawyer, editor and sci fi novelist. Here are two collections of essays about science fiction and the genre’s authors.

    Review Copies Received

    Erotica

    To prepare for the interview with Texas novelist Clay Reynolds (author website), I received two great-looking print books by Clay Reynolds: Of Snakes & Sex & Playing in the Rain (essay collection) and

    Printed books bought (Better World Books, Amazon, etc)

    If you are looking for a great book about elephant society and how mammals communicate and emote, check out the brilliant and fascinating Beyond Words: What Animals Think and Feel. by Carl Safina. (author home page). A great fascinating work about the animal kingdom.

    Essential Calvin and Hobbes by Bill Watterson. Believe it or not, this comic was really big during college, but I never read it until a month ago.

    Several volumes by George Singleton: These People are Us, Half-Mammals of Dixie, Calloustown, Between Wrecks.

    Argument for Stillness by Erik Campbell. Found a poem in a litmag that blew me away, and finally tracked the book it came from.

    Two books on medicine and philosophical questions: How We Die by Sherwin Nuland and Art of Aging. Here’s his NYT obituary a bio on his foundation website and two TED Talks.

    How to Create a Flawless Universe: In Just Eight Days by Godfather Publications is one of my favorite novelty books. They’re giving away copies for nothing, and it is a clever humorous scrapbook kind of book.

    Secret History of Wonder Woman by Jill Lepore. Lepore has covered weightier subjects, but this treatment of cultural history was engrossing.

    Goethe, Goethe, Goethe. I’ve been a fan of the Princeton U Press multivolume set of Goethe Translations from the 1990s. This Christmas I broke down and bought two volumes — one of plays, the other of poetry. (That means I have 3 volumes so far).

    No Word of Farewell: Selected Poems, 1970-2000 by R.S. Gwynn. Gwynn came highly recommended to me by Texas novelist Clay Reynolds, and he happens to be spending his retirement very close to Houston! By the way, I’ll be reading more works by Clay Reynolds, stay tuned.

    I couldn’t resist. I’m an admirer of the book cover designer George Salter, a German-born Jewish artist who designed some immortal covers — both for German publishers and (after fleeing Nazi Germany) all the major US publishers. Someone gathered all his illustration work with commentary and packaged it into a print book. called Classic Book Jackets by Milton Glaser. You can view a sampling of Salter’s covers here . I have picked up a handful of books with Salter covers already, but it might be nice to collect these books (all the books sound cool too).

    Personville Press Giveaways and Deals

    I run Personville Press, a small literary book press where all the ebooks cost less than $4. All the titles are discounted on Smashwords for less that price — and usually under $1.50. Pay attention to any 100% coupon codes which I occasionally list below — they can be redeemed only a small number of times, so first come, first serve. Smashwords only sells epub versions of these titles, but you can easily convert them to Amazon’s mobi format by using Kindle Previewer or Calibre.

  • ALERT: 99 cent sales on Unsolicited Press titles (Smashwords)

    I don’t know when I’ll be doing my next Robert’s Roundup, but I just noticed that all the titles from Unsolicited Press are priced at 99 cents on Smashwords. Note that even though this link might list the full price, if you click to the ebook page, you will see the discounted price of 99 cents.

    Unsolicited Press has a lot of fiction and poetry titles. Definitely not mainstream — here’s the blog. There’s a lot of good stuff, but I can tell you some winners in the pack:

    • (I’ll post some more authors tomorrow).

    One final thing. In my last roundup, I promised to provide a Smashwords 100% off coupon to obtain the Jack Matthews’ writing guide for free. (By the way, I did the preface and afterward for it!) Here’s the coupon you need to get it for free. Expires May 22, 2019. (Note: The coupon is not automatically applied; you have to manually apply it).

    A worker’s Writebook by Jack Matthews. Ebook. (More about the ebook).

    Promotional price: $0.00
    Coupon Code: TA97D
    Expires: May 22, 2019

  • 2018 Overlooked Ebook Gems for $1 or less on Smashwords — Ebook Week March 4-10



    (These sales are valid until midnight on Saturday March 10.  I’ll be adding more titles until that time.   If you have any free/almost free titles to recommend from SW, please list it in the comments. Thanks!]

    Smashwords may not yet be a household name yet to readers, but it serves as a great alternative to Amazon for ebooks.  For publishers and authors, Smashwords provides a gateway for authors to get their ebooks in  stores like Kobo, Apple, Overdrive (but alas, not Google Books). The main  drawback  of getting ebooks through Smashwords (which I actually consider to be an advantage) is that you have to manually put the DRM-free ebook/epub files on your ereader/tablet/phone of choice.  (My personal preference is to download EPUB files and then upload them to GOOGLE PLAY BOOKS  which is found on all android devices.  Alternatively, if you use iphone/ios, just download them (or email to youself) and then open in the iBooks app. Many titles here also provide .mobi files for sending to your Kindle (and often PDF).

    Another advantage of finding ebooks at Smashwords is that it’s much easier to offer discounts or sales or free ebooks than on Amazon.  This is especially true during Ebookweek on March 4-10 where a lot of ebooks  have  (temporary) reductions in price. Amazon will always have a significantly larger ebook catalog (duh!), but for this next week,  prices on ebooks by Smashwords authors are  likely to be significantly lower on Smashwords than on Amazon.com! 

    It can be a challenge to find  gems on Smashwords. You have book descriptions, but rarely reviews (although you can just go to the Amazon.com page or Goodreads to see what readers are saying about it).  A lot of Smashwords titles are shorter (like less than 20 pages — yikes!), the percentage of Adult-content titles is higher (ugh!), and the inventory of nonfiction titles can be pretty lame in comparison to what you see on Amazon. On the other hand, high quality fiction, memoirs, poetry, self-help and random academic titles are plentiful on Smashwords — certainly comparable to what you’d find on Amazon.com  To summarize:

    You can always find  great, cheap shit on Smashwords!

    The challenge is  that so few names are ones you’d recognize, and  most people don’t have time to go through individual titles. Fortunately, I have done the necessary legwork.   Below is  a list of several underappreciated and overlooked titles on Smashwords I found during the week which are free or very cheap.  Caveats: 1)I strongly prefer literary fiction to genre, I don’t like series, and I am  biased against certain genres. 2)I have only browsed book descriptions, author background and maybe read a sample chapter for these titles (i.e., I haven’t finished the books). But all sound very promising.  3)I’m overlooking titles with less than 20,000 words, and  4)I generally don’t care about how popular a title has been. The less popular, the more likely I am to mention it!

    Note: Prices listed will take into account the coupon/discount for this week only. After this week, these prices might no longer be valid (but I suspect most will be decent deals anyway).

    Literature & Literary Collections

    1.  (Free!) Abruptions: 3 Minute Stories to Awaken the Mind by Jack Matthews.  My Personville Press  publishes several titles by this great Ohio writer of philosophical stories  (see my book description and biographical sketch ).  Also check out the (Free) story sampler, Three Times Time . Also, I discounted another story collection Soldier Boys to $1 for this week only (which I think is one of his best works).
    2. (All Free!) Fiction and Poetry by  Paul Hina.  Hina is an incredible and prolific author who sells on both Amazon and Smashwords — except that all his titles on Amazon cost money, while on SW, they  are free! I read and loved the Other Shore: Two Stories of Love and Death which I would call highbrow romance in the vein of D.H. Lawrence or Somerset Maugham. It’s about a troubled son of a famous poet who returns to his hometown (and dying father) to deal with the family issues which he’d been avoiding.  In my review, I wrote: “the book captures romance and domestic drama with psychological nuance. Hina writes incredibly well and with tenderness about unique relationship situations and flawed but complex characters.”  Hina has several poetry collections — which I thumbed through. All interesting and expressive.  Grab these titles while you can (before Hina wises up and starts pricing them on SW for nonfree!).
    3. (Free!) Eye of a Needle: And Other Stories. Cornelia Fick (her website) . Here’s a collection of flash fiction/prose pieces about relationships and marriage by South African author (and nurse) Cornelia Fick which was her master’s thesis when she was studying creative writing at Rhodes U. She dabbles in poetry and experimental forms (the book description mentions Lydia Davis, Maxine Chernoff and Flannery O’Connor — and certainly the stories are ironic and observational). Watch out for (and enjoy) the nutty-sounding South African dialect!
    4. (Free!) Fine Print and Other Yarns by Dinesh Verma.  9 separate stories about 9 different Indians visiting Paris during the 1980s and 1990s. Verma works for the Indian government studied overseas in several countries (including Paris) and recently published a translation of stories by  the 19th century  Hindi author Premchand. The first story is a masterful tale about a disappointment experienced by an Indian art lover when given two days to visit Paris. This is an ebook version of a book which was positively reviewed in several Indian literary publications several years ago.
    5. (Always Free!). Speaking of Work: A Story of Love, Suspense and Paperclips. Literary Anthology, with contributions from Jonathan Ames, Lee Child,Jonathan Safran Foer,Aimee Mann, Gary Shteyngart, Joyce Carol Oates, and others.  (PS, it’s also a free download on the Xerox project site). The book seems to be a collaboration between the 92nd St Y and the  Xerox company, and based on my superficial impressions, the stories are based in New York  offices.
    6.  (Free!) Various Novels by Anne Billson  I raved about Billson’s  film books below, and special mention needs to be made of her novels (all of which are also free this week).  They  run the gamut from horror to satire to supernatural. From her own descriptions: SUCKERS (an upwardly mobile vampire novel), STIFF LIPS (a Notting Hill ghost story), THE EX (a supernatural detective story) and THE COMING THING (Rosemary’s Baby meets Bridget Jones) . As I mentioned above, I don’t read much horror, but I will note that Suckers, (her first novel)  was very well-received by readers and critics (one reviewer called it Bret Easton Ellis meets Anne Rice). Also, Stiff Lips has lots of great blurbs: “‘Sexy, sardonic and distinctly spooky… a tale to make you shiver – if you don’t die laughing first’ (Cosmopolitan).
    7. (Free/Set Your Own Price) Call me a Taxi  by Terry Ravenscroft.  Ravenscroft is a very accomplished writer for British TV comedies; he’s also been publishing a lot of novels in a similar vein.  This novel (which I’ve read two chapters of) is about an out-of-work man with the uncanny resemblance to  Oliver Hardy who runs into a strange neighborhood character who resembles Stan Laurel. It’s a promising start to what will surely be a series of comic misadventures mixed with occasional Mitty-esque returns to  glum reality.  Also,  the Razzamatazz Not Entirely PC Encylopedia is like a Devil’s Dictionary for modern times.   These two Ravenscroft works are likely to remain Set Your Own Price after this week, but about a third of his remaining ebooks are free for Ebook week: Stairlift to Heaven, Good Old George! and Dear Coca Cola  (humorous letters to corporations actually sent to companies).
    8. (99 cents) White Mythology: Two Novellas by W.D. Clarke. Clarke is an Ontario-based Pynchon-loving scholar who writes lots of smartypants fiction in the fine tradition of Joyce/Pynchon/Barth/Daniel Foster Wallace. Here are two novellas which showcase Clarke’s dazzling but always  readable style. The first  (longer) novella  describes in stream-of-consciousness manner  the crazy life and thoughts of a certain psychiatrist, Dr. Ed, as he goes through his day . The second novella captures a series of interrelated whimsical conversations and intrigue between various  American expats in Japan.  The first novella is more focused and introspective; the second is more rambling and silly (Those are my initial impressions at least).  Apparently, these two are part of a “Skinner Boxed” thematically-linked series of  novellas. (Apparently, many people  on Goodreads  have reviewed it, using phrases like  “clever,” “wild ride,” the “perfect book for these chaotic, stressful times”). (If you are wondering more about the author, check out this curmudgeonly blog post).
    9. (Free!) Tales by KindleLight by Kate Rigby.  Rigby is a highly accomplished British author who has about 10 titles. They are budget-priced, but generally high quality, quirky, unpredictable, experimental, always trying new subjects, full of British slang and attitude.   This story collection has some sexy and bittersweet stories — and one (“Sharing Sarah” about a strange love triangle where two best friends try to date the same girl simultaneously) made me laugh aloud. Two other longer works are free: Are you Dead? (described as “An edgy, contemporary tale about death and suicide and its effects on two families….Written in bite-sized sections in a colloquial style with elements of black humour and surrealism”) and Little Guide to Unhip (a fun but insubstantial series of rants about unhip things like “Umbrellas,” “early birds,”  Christmas, Badminton, Vicar of Dibley, etc.). Two other nonfree works deserve mention:  Fall of the Flamingo Circus — her first novel about a rebellious punk teenage girl during the 1970s which  lots of positive reviews when it came out in  on Amazon. Also Did You Whisper Back? an award winning  1991 novella about a psychological breakdown of  a girl seeking her twin sister.
    10. (new-Free!) New Old World by C.D. Stowell. Magnum opus 200,000 word semi-autographical novel about a 39 year Oregon photographer reflecting on her life as she travels to various places (and continents). Stowell herself is an award winning photographer who published a creative nonfiction book about an Indian reservation in the 1980s.  In her interview,  she mentions that it took 25 years to complete this novel and that she’s an admirer of Louise Erdrich,  David Mitchell and James Welch. The book itself includes some of her photos. One reviewer said  it had ” top-notch word-smithing, perfectly complimented by the author’s artful photography” and another called it “a brilliant, absorbing, and moving work of fiction.”

      Essays

    1. (Free!) Cats on Film by Anne Billson (and lots more by her).  Billson is  a prolific film critic, cat-lover  and novelist  who runs several special interest blogs and sometimes writes reviews for the Guardian. (Her blog is here). This book contains dozens of essays (and movie stills)  about  cats who have appeared in movies, and although the topic and style is humorous, it’s seriously  tries to understand what role they play in each movie, as well as comment on what they add (or don’t add) to the movie itself.  Each chapter looks at a different kind of cat movie role — the Catagonist, the Heropuss, Catrifice, Catguffin, Catscallion, Cataphor …. Oh, I’m dying here! This is one of those books you’d never thought you’d want to read, and yet I can imagine, spending a lot of time  on reading it(yes,  now, I’ll be watching some of the mentioned movies just to see the cats). This is a MUST BUY!
    2. (Free!) Multiple Titles of Movie Criticism by Anne Billson (see above). Unbelievably, all the Billson titles on SW are free this week. Check out especially the Billson Film Database (500,000 words, that’s about 5x the size of most movie reference guides). Also check out Spoilers Part 1 (1989-1995) and Spoilers Part 2 (1995-2001). (Several other collections are available for free this week).  These are solid, interesting books; watch out Kael and Ebert!
    3. (Always Free!) Dead Media Notebook by Bruce Sterling and Others. This is an encyclopedia about failed/obsolete technologies. Sci fi author and futurist Bruce Sterling  once made an offhanded remark that somebody should write about failed technologies, and this ebook is the result. A random hodgepodge of historical and technological curiosities.(Free!)

    Social Science and History

    1. ($2) Sacred History of Being by Thomas Yaeger. This book  of ancient scholarship by a scholar of ancient languages  intrigued me so much that I ended up buying the ebook at 75% off. The book argues that philosophy and the conception of the divine, the nature of reality and being came about well before the Greek philosophers; Yaeger examines historical evidence from cultures predating the Greeks to establish this thesis. Another fascinating and slightly more accessible book, Understanding Ancient Thought  ($1 for this week only) tries to get inside the mind of ancient humans from different cultures in Greece, Mesopotamia, Assyria, Mexico and Asia. You can view the Table of Contents for this book on Yaeger’s blog.
    2. (Free!) Be a Hater: A Polemic on the Hater Mindset by Wes Parham. This erudite but unclassifiable book is a spirited and lively defense of contrarianism in contemporary society.  The book engages the reader with pop culture references (i.e., Taylor Swift’s “Haters gonna hate”), first person narratives, humor and lots of discussions of recent books on psychology and cognition. Interestingly, the book talks very little about politics; Parham has an MBA and PhD in organizational leadership and works in education.

    Science and Medicine

    1. (Free!) Snake Oil is Alive and Well by Morton E. Tavel MD.  Tavel is a doctor, professor, medical researcher and grandfather with a distinguished  history in the medical field. This book is an introduction to how to evaluate medical claims and  recognize medical quackery before it  bites you in the butt. The companion book, Health Tips, Myths and Tricks,  contains 2-3 page chapters about ways to stay healthy and fit (similar to Dr. Weil’s books) and full of practical advice. The topics are probably familiar: Eating breakfast, health benefits of green tea, whether you should eat less red meat, that sort of thing. Overall, good and informative, with the caveats that the book research might be out of date (it was published in 2015), the topics are not covered in great depth, and unfortunately, there are some major formatting errors in the book (like, there are a few chapter titles minus chapters — alas, they appear OK  later in the book!). But the content is all there and readable.

    Memoir/Biography

    1. (Free!)25 Years in the Rearview Mirror: 52 Authors Look Back. Edited by Stacy Juba.  (Free also on Amazon). Juba explains that she used to write articles  for her publications  with a “25 (or 50) years ago today” theme. Then she thought, wouldn’t it be interesting to ask my writing friends what they were doing exactly 25 years ago? This readable anthology is the result. Juba was going to write a mystery  about a person who writes  these “25 years ago today” articles and stumbles upon an unsolved murder mystery. (Ah, published only on Amazon but very well reviewed). Juba has published several chicklist/YA fiction that are somewhat light-hearted and well-reviewed on Amazon
    2. (Free!)Footnote to a Dream by Benny Michel. This is an autobiography of a well-known South African musician, his rise during the “Big Band” era, his affliction with polio and living as a Jew in the early days of Johannesburg’s history. I picked this title less for its literary qualities than the fact that I just found the subject matter interesting in and of itself. (BTW, I had problems opening the EPUB file, but managed to send the .mobi file to my kindle app without problem).
    3. (Free!)An Incredible Talent for Existing by Pamela Jane. Jane is the author of 30 books (mostly children’s books). Here is a memoir for adults about going from the idyllic childhood of the 50s to the turbulent sixties and beyond. I had time only to flip through the chapters, but she spends a lot of time on childhood (and her encounters with various children’s literary works) and college. Highly readable, literate and thoughtful, full of photographs and cultural details, this is a book I probably would never go out of my way to buy, but I think that it will be easy to fall into this memoir (like a character from a children’s book might fall into some inner fantasy land).  BTW, I noticed a nice blogpost by the author about outstanding books for memoir writers.

    I probably wouldn’t be able to recommend any titles in the genres below, but if you have something to recommend (or other genres), feel free to indicate.

    Sci Fi/Fantasy

    1. (2.99 — not free! )  Onset, Reset, Mindset by E.L. Russell. First, this ebook (actually a trilogy in one volume) is a medical/scientific thriller about a young female athlete (and medical student) who suffers a severe injury, and through genetic reprogramming becomes more than human with special powers. I mention it here because I ran  into Mr. Russell at a local writers’ event. Russell has a PHD in Math, has worked in technology research all his life and now cowrites these technical thrillers with his wife. I found the man and the background behind his sci fi novels to be fascinating and thought-provoking.  I don’t read much sci fi, and I haven’t read this one yet — though I definitely plan to.  The author has lots of ebooks on Smashwords — and some of his shorter works are free, and if I recall, the ebooks contain instructions about how to get other free ebooks by him.

    Finally,  remember that these are titles which caught my eye.  Surely I’ve overlooking a lot.  If you have one or titles to recommend from Smashwords, list it below (links are ok, but try not to mention more than 2 titles, especially if you are mentioning your own titles. I’ll approve your comments fairly quickly).

    Special Note for SW Authors Listed Here:  If you’d like to provide a custom SW coupon code for a discounted price valid after this week, send me an email ( idiotprogrammer AT fastmailbox.net ). I’d be more than happy to help you sell your stuff!

    Finally, as I mentioned above, I run Personville Press. SW currently has three Jack Matthews titles, but I should have 3 more Matthews titles  by Matthews in a month or so. A fourth volume (a short story collection) will be released at the end of 2018. I keep a page of Smashwords coupon codes for Jack Matthews  which I regularly update, so check there for the latest deals.  Incidentally, I’ll be publishing my first fiction title (a short story collection) this summer. It will be listed on the Personville Press page at Smashwords — when it’s ready.