Free Books

I use Blasty to monitor the Internet for sites which offer FREE DOWNLOADS of my books, including The Owl Wrangler, Guardians of the Sacred Seven,  and Quest for the Truth (all in The Seldith Chronicles series). I also search for my technical titles and for The Timkers–A Stitch in Time, The Timkers–Deja Vu, and The Timkers–Borrowed Time. If they show up, Blasty sends the site a DCMA takedown notice.

Folks, if you can’t afford my books, just send me an email telling me why you think you deserve to be sent one, and I will. Sure, I’ll send you a copy, a real copy. If you run a library or lending club, I’ll send you a copy.

I would also like to know why you think it’s okay to download my or anyone’s books from pirate sites. Some say authors are all millionaires like JK Rowling or Dan Brown. Some of us are, but the vast majority of us don’t make enough on our books to pay our electric bill. In my case, all of my book proceeds are donated to worthwhile national charities.

Consider that my novels (I wrote six in ten years) take some time to write. Once each book is written, authors pay to have the book edited–it usually costs about $900 per book, and sometimes more. Books need formatting so that’s another $200 or more. Some authors pay to have someone create the cover–another $500. And then we are almost ready. We put the books up on Amazon, but we have to pay to get an ISBN and proof copies, but this only costs about $50.

So, a year or two of hard work, and about $2000 of our own money later, we have a book ready to put up on the web for you to enjoy. Sure, when it sells we get a piece of the sale price. If you buy the print book from Barnes and Nobel, I get about $.75 (less than a dollar) per copy. If you get it from Amazone, I get about $1.50. If you get the Kindle version, I get not a cent until you read it–but people buy books, read them and then “return” them so I get nothing.

It would be great if my books sold like Fifty Shades of Gray or Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but my books don’t have their national appeal and don’t sell that well. Why? Part of the problem is that there are thousands of sites which pirate copies and suck off sales from legitimate stores and online sources. Of course, (as you well know) many of these sites don’t really offer the books at all but files with embedded malware. These pirate companies also make money through subscription fees and advertising, but none of that gets passed along to the author. Their customers (like you) are just making them richer.

Are you part of this problem?

So sure, drop me an email and I’ll send you a book–or post a comment on this site.

Bill