I drink from the keg of glory
A year ago, around Xmas time, I released Hornets Attack Your Best Friend Victor and Black Dog: A Biography as reader magnets for Brain Jar Press. For those not immersed in indie pub terminology, reader magnet is short-hand for books/stories I give away for free, so as to entice readers into paying for other work/signing up for your newsletter. Nick Stephenson has an entire book about the strategy which you can download for free (and I’ll let you put two and two together about the reasons behind his choice). The two stories have served me well since then—Hornets Attack, in particular, has picked up a couple of hundred downloads on various sites—but Amazon has been a sticking point. Unlike every other site, the big river isn’t a fan of letting you upload a book and making it free straight off. They are willing to price-match with other stores, if a book is available for free elsewhere, but it’s at their
