Fire Season going to Amazon

July 2, 2013 Uncategorized

Fire Season has just been removed from Smashwords.

This isn’t something I ever thought I would have to agree to, but it seems that the ebook pricing between some of the linked premium sites has got out of control. Effectively one discounted, then another beat their price and so on. The price on Smashwords itself never changed, and there seemed to be no way to get this back under control, since none of the affected sites would raise their price.

(For people complaining about favouring one platform over another: As an author outside the US I can’t publish directly through these sites, even though a US tax ID is available. Allow me or my publisher to publish directly and I will happily put my book on multiple  sites.)

There was also an issue, now resolved, with one of the sites making an entire book available as a sample. While I do release stories free to read, and have free runs on Amazon and Smashwords for my titles, I also have bills to pay and cats to feed and if websites are determined to give my work away for free without compensation or permission that is very difficult.

Managing this sort of problem also cuts into my writing time, which I have too little of anyway.

As a result, for the moment Fire Season is sadly going to become an Amazon-only title.  I have encountered similar problems with The Docks, but I only want to handle one problem at a time.

On the writing front, the stand-alone disaster novel is still being written, and I have half completed another Brooke’s Vale novella, which was meant to be a short story.