Free books!
Intro
Scroll down and you’ll find four promos for you to check out. Sign up for an author’s newsletter, get a free book. If you’re already subscribed to Sundman figures it out! you can grab one or more of my books for free using the email address you use for that. You won’t get any duplicate posts in the future.
If you’re curious about the how & why of free ebook giveaways, read the next section. But if you just want to check out the promos, skip ahead.
A promo primer
You may wonder: If I’m already signed up for John’s newsletter, why is he sending email telling me I can get free books by signing up for his newsletter? Wouldn’t he rather that I purchase his books? (You probably weren’t wondering about that, but maybe you are now.)
I want more subscribers to Sundman figures it out! I have about 1,800 subscribers today; I’d be much happier if I had 18,000, or 180,000.
I use a service called Bookfunnel to find readers who’ll sign up for my list in exchange for a free book. About half of the 1,800 names on my list got there that way.
Among many other cool things, Bookfunnel allows indie authors like me to find other writers whose audiences may overlap ours, and to create joint promotions. For example, consider the promo, ‘Apocalypse in April’1. All the books in this promo concern dystopian visions of one sort or another. It contains my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria The Pains. If you’re looking for a regency romance novel or a western or a sweeping historical epic, this promo is not for you.
When you join a promo on Bookfunnel, you make an agreement with all the other participating writers to use your ‘platform’ (social media, newsletter. . .) to promote it. Bookfunnel keeps track of how many ‘clicks’ each participating writer generates on each promotion. People who generate more clicks get a higher reputation, which confers certain advantages.
Most often I give away either Biodigital in Bookfunnel promos. Why? Because people dig it, it provides a good preview of the kind of things you’re likely to find in other Sundman novels, and, mainly, because the book I’ve been working on since the dawn of time and really, really will publish soon, Mountain of Devils, is the prequel to Biodigital, and I’m betting that many readers of Biodigital will be willing to buy Mountain of Devils.
So that’s the logic. When Mountain of Devils finally becomes available for sale I’ll find out whether or not it worked. Meanwhile I’d appreciate your clicking on one or more these promos. In that way you’ll help me boost my Bookfunnel reputation whether you grab a book (one of mine, or anybody else’s) or not.
Apocalypse in April: Dystopian Worlds — Apocalyptic Endings.
This promo includes The Pains, my illustrated dystopian phantasmagoria, is an updated take on the Story of Job, set in a world that’s a mashup of George Orwell’s 1984 and Ronald Reagan’s 1984 which is run by an unholy cabal of pan-surveillant fascist theocrats and libertarian transhumanist techbros. I wrote The Pains in 2008 but it’s about today.
AI Ink: Beyond imagination
This promo is for “AI-generated books.” I’m not quite sure what that means; you’ll have to read the description of each book to see what its creator has to say.
The promo includes my 2002 novella Cheap Complex Devices, which is not AI-generated; I wrote it. But the book itself purports to be AI-generated, so I figured that was close enough. I don’t give away this book — which is the most ambitious of my books and probably my favorite — very often. So now would be a good time to grab a copy.
Mystery, Thriller & Suspense
This one contains my hackertastic cyberpunk thriller Biodigital, about brain-hacking nanobots, technoparanoia, an evil-genius Silicon Valley billionaire, and the cult of techbros who venerate him. (Biodigital is my novel Acts of the Apostles reimagined, with a more streamlined, pile-driver plot and a much more significant role for the character Bartlett (McGovern) Aubrey.)
Free Sci-Fi Reads
This promo also contains Biodigital.
Mountain of Devils is coming real soon now
In 1974, in a small town in Downeast Maine, a twelve year old carefree girl named Bartlett McGovern experiences a traumatic crisis that propels her to make a private, almost religious, vow to commit her life to science. In Palo Alto, California, an arrogant young professor of computer science named Abraham Angevine discovers molecular biology and, like biblical prophets before him, receives a series of otherworldly visions. Their two worlds are destined to collide.
Readers of Acts of the Apostles and/or Biodigital, stories set in 1995, twenty years after the events in Mountain of Devils, know these characters as Bartlett Aubrey and Monty Meekman.
As The Hobbit is the prequel to Lord of the Rings but can be profitably read after it, as Better Call Saul is the prequel to Breaking Bad but is better if you watch Breaking Bad first, Mountain of Devils and Biodigital can be read in either order. If you haven’t read Biodigital yet, why not grab a free copy today so you’ll be ready when MoD finally drops?
It runs thru May 11.