Michael Patrick Hicks's Blog, page 37
October 6, 2016
Review: Pressure by Jeff Strand (audiobook)
Review: 
My original Pressure audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Pressure can be defined as the exertion of force upon something by something else, as well mental or physical distress. Either definition is appropriate for Jeff Strand’s aptly titled suspense thriller, Pressure. At its core, this a story of two forces impacting one another, forcefully and violently, and the result is a hefty dose of distress.
Alex and Darren are two boarding school brats, their friendship cemented by a late-night excursion into the woods behind a strip club, where they hide out and hope to catch sight of the action inside. Darren, though, has a secret, and once Alex and their schoolmates discover Darren’s morbid fascinations nothing is the same. What follows is a decades-long story of friendship, adversarial rivalry, and gruesome deeds that can only leave one of them alive.
Strand does a terrific job building his characters, giving them enough dimension and subtle shadings to make them relateable, even if you don’t particularly want to relate to them. And although Darren’s actions are often outside the din of understanding, you at least get what motivates him, even if the results are terribly aberrant. Alex is a solid every-man character caught up in a situation beyond his control and struggling to cope, struggling to make sense, and, mostly, struggling to find a solution to the problem that is Darren. The first-person viewpoint Strand uses allows us to see the world from Alex’s point of view, and while the story itself is pretty pitch-black, Strand, via Alex, is able to interject enough levity and enduring positivity to keep Pressure from collapsing under its own misery.
Pressure is narrated by Scott Thomas, whose voice talents I greatly enjoyed in a prior Strand title, Wolf Hunt. Here, Thomas exhibits a nice a range and listeners are unlikely to confuse characters during stretches of dialogue. While the story belongs to Alex, Thomas injects plenty of different voices and speech styles to mark the other characters that inhabit Pressure. Soundwise, this is a cleanly narrated book, with terrific production quality and no technical issues to speak of.
Clocking in at seven hours, Pressure is a solid psychological suspense thriller with dashes of Strand’s typical wry humor, and packed with plenty of history between the central antagonist and his nemesis. It’s entertaining, occasionally bleak, but highly worthy of attention. Between the two works I’ve listened to that Strand and Thomas have collaborated on, I think it’s fair to say they make quite a good team. As long as Strand keeps writing, and Thomas keeps giving a voice to those words, I’ll be listening.
[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1478636/review-pressure-by-jeff-strand-audiobook
October 5, 2016
Review: Bite by K.S. Merbeth (audiobook)
Review: 
My original Bite audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Bite, a post-apocalyptic offering from new author K.S. Merbeth, comes with a neat little hook with its focus on cannibal wasteland scavengers and killers, but I would have enjoyed a little more meat on the bone.
Kid, a young woman hitchhiking her way through the irradiated ruins of Australia, accepts a ride, only to learn she’s bit off way more than she can chew. In short order, she soon finds herself a part of the gang and on the run from various forces, many of whom, unsurprisingly, don’t look to kindly at having cannibals in their midst.
The premise alone is a huge part of the draw in Bite, and I appreciated Merbeth’s wasteland saga’s focus on a group of people who are, quite arguably, the bad guys. Kid quickly makes friends with these ne’er-do-wells, led by Wolf, a dread-locked survivor with a knack for pulling off scores by the seat of his pants, and they all soon find their survival linked to one another. Dolly, a blue-haired tough, is an easy standout for fan-favorite of the bunch, with her quiet ways and easy violence making her an unsettling sort, but also an attention-grabbing mystery.
My biggest hurdle in Bite, unfortunately, was the main character herself, Kid. I prefer my female heroines to have a bit more agency, and felt that Kid too often fell into role of victim who needs saving. Granted, this is a sort of hero’s journey and she grows and adapts as the story progresses, but frankly I found it a be too unbelievable that this wasteland survivor would so freaking useless at the outset. She doesn’t know how to fire a gun or use a knife, she’s of little use in hand-to-hand fights, and despite this being an action-heavy book she spends too much time in hiding or waiting to be rescued. The first half of the book felt repetitive with its focus on members of the gang getting captured, followed by thwarted rescue attempts, and then their eventual escape only to again find themselves captured by different people in a different setting. By the time Merbeth gets around to explaining why Kid lacks any sort of adeptness or situational awareness, it feels too little too late. And, although Kid eventually levels-up, I think there were better options than starting her off as a nearly-constant damsel in distress.
Tonally, the narrative strikes an uneasy balance between serious and aloof. At times, this felt like a Young Adult title trying too hard to be a foul-mouthed, adult actioneer, and characters like The Queen only served to amplify this imbalance. The Queen is shrill and loud-mouthed, but is mostly a caricature reduced to exclaiming things like “Get them!” in lieu of villainous depth.
Narrator Stephanie Willis inhabits the role of Kid nice and smoothly, and she does a fairly good job with the reading of Bite. In my purely subjective opinion, though I found some of her male voices, particularly Wolf’s, to be a little too over-the-top for my ears, and The Queen was gratingly cartoonish, but I’ll chalk some of that role up to the writing itself. Her delivery of Tank’s and Pretty Boy’s lines, though, were well-handled and far more realistic. The voices Willis adopted for the other female voices were nicely differentiated, and she helps give a character like Dolly a certain charm that might otherwise be lost in reading the text. Bite is certainly well-produced, as one should expect of a major publisher like Hachette, and the sound quality is even and comes through cleanly with nary a hiccup.
Mostly, I enjoyed Bite, but found it a touch too uneven to really satisfy. It does recall a bit of the charm from other post-apocalyptic wasteland adventures, like the Mad Max films and the Fallout video games, and I am at least curious enough to see what this cast of characters get up to next, particularly Kid, who exhibits a lot of promise by book’s end. Besides, who doesn’t want more irradiated cannibals in their life?
[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1478166/review-bite-by-k-s-merbeth-audiobook
Review: Bite by K.S. Merbeth (audiobook)
Review: 
My original Bite audiobook review and many others can be found at Audiobook Reviewer.
Bite, a post-apocalyptic offering from new author K.S. Merbeth, comes with a neat little hook with its focus on cannibal wasteland scavengers and killers, but I would have enjoyed a little more meat on the bone.
Kid, a young woman hitchhiking her way through the irradiated ruins of Australia, accepts a ride, only to learn she’s bit off way more than she can chew. In short order, she soon finds herself a part of the gang and on the run from various forces, many of whom, unsurprisingly, don’t look to kindly at having cannibals in their midst.
The premise alone is a huge part of the draw in Bite, and I appreciated Merbeth’s wasteland saga’s focus on a group of people who are, quite arguably, the bad guys. Kid quickly makes friends with these ne’er-do-wells, led by Wolf, a dread-locked survivor with a knack for pulling off scores by the seat of his pants, and they all soon find their survival linked to one another. Dolly, a blue-haired tough, is an easy standout for fan-favorite of the bunch, with her quiet ways and easy violence making her an unsettling sort, but also an attention-grabbing mystery.
My biggest hurdle in Bite, unfortunately, was the main character herself, Kid. I prefer my female heroines to have a bit more agency, and felt that Kid too often fell into role of victim who needs saving. Granted, this is a sort of hero’s journey and she grows and adapts as the story progresses, but frankly I found it a be too unbelievable that this wasteland survivor would so freaking useless at the outset. She doesn’t know how to fire a gun or use a knife, she’s of little use in hand-to-hand fights, and despite this being an action-heavy book she spends too much time in hiding or waiting to be rescued. The first half of the book felt repetitive with its focus on members of the gang getting captured, followed by thwarted rescue attempts, and then their eventual escape only to again find themselves captured by different people in a different setting. By the time Merbeth gets around to explaining why Kid lacks any sort of adeptness or situational awareness, it feels too little too late. And, although Kid eventually levels-up, I think there were better options than starting her off as a nearly-constant damsel in distress.
Tonally, the narrative strikes an uneasy balance between serious and aloof. At times, this felt like a Young Adult title trying too hard to be a foul-mouthed, adult actioneer, and characters like The Queen only served to amplify this imbalance. The Queen is shrill and loud-mouthed, but is mostly a caricature reduced to exclaiming things like “Get them!” in lieu of villainous depth.
Narrator Stephanie Willis inhabits the role of Kid nice and smoothly, and she does a fairly good job with the reading of Bite. In my purely subjective opinion, though I found some of her male voices, particularly Wolf’s, to be a little too over-the-top for my ears, and The Queen was gratingly cartoonish, but I’ll chalk some of that role up to the writing itself. Her delivery of Tank’s and Pretty Boy’s lines, though, were well-handled and far more realistic. The voices Willis adopted for the other female voices were nicely differentiated, and she helps give a character like Dolly a certain charm that might otherwise be lost in reading the text. Bite is certainly well-produced, as one should expect of a major publisher like Hachette, and the sound quality is even and comes through cleanly with nary a hiccup.
Mostly, I enjoyed Bite, but found it a touch too uneven to really satisfy. It does recall a bit of the charm from other post-apocalyptic wasteland adventures, like the Mad Max films and the Fallout video games, and I am at least curious enough to see what this cast of characters get up to next, particularly Kid, who exhibits a lot of promise by book’s end. Besides, who doesn’t want more irradiated cannibals in their life?
[Audiobook provided for review by the audiobookreviewer.com.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1478166/review-bite-by-k-s-merbeth-audiobook
October 4, 2016
Review: Order to Kill by Kyle Mills
Review:
When Mitch Rapp returned last year with the help of a new author following the death of his creator, Vince Flynn, I was initially skeptical. Kyle Mills proved to be an adept writer fully capable of handling Flynn’s characters though, and The Survivor won me over pretty quickly. Order to Kill proves that Mill’s prior effort was hardly a fluke or one-off. Mills is not only capable of taking on Flynn’s rough-and-ready CIA assassin, but shows he’s the natural heir apparent to continue this series for the foreseeable future.
This fifteenth installment, which picks up mere weeks after the finale of The Survivor, finds Mitch Rapp squaring off against a Russian assassin who is not only Rapp’s equal, but may be even better. This is framed within a story of rogue Pakistani nukes and ISIS idiots, and a particularly violent, and personal, attack that strikes close to Rapp’s heart when a mission goes awry.
The most important element here for me, and one that I think Mills did a superb job with, was making Rapp a bit more three dimensional and human. In his latter books, Flynn was turning Rapp into very nearly a caricature of his former self, with his with-me-or-against-me attitude and desire to kill anybody who dared to disagree with him. Mills, thankfully, has dialed that way back and we see a Mitch Rapp who may finally be emerging from the darkness brought on by his wife’s death and who isn’t afraid to feel. While this certainly is not a guy who will soon be crying into his cup o’ tea anytime soon, there are certain events that occur here to remind Rapp that he is at least human and we see a man now seeking to reconnect with the people around him after so many devastating losses.
It’s these losses that I feel also highlight Mills work over these last two books. The operators and assassins of these novels are certainly men and women who fit into the Hero Worship mold pretty easily, and there’s a lot of extrajudicial fantasy stuff that goes into them (somebody says something about the Constitution you don’t like? Well, just snap their neck and grab a can of Coke afterward! And while we’re on the fantasy aspect, the next time one of these jihadist morons refers to our Christian Constitution, could we please have Rapp correct that erroneous, much too-widespread misunderstanding of this secular document before cracking their skull apart?), but too often they feel like larger-than-life superheroes. Mills has been working hard to make these people human, and while the characters are unquestionably adept and skilled at their jobs, they can still be hurt (and quite badly, at that) and killed. The Survivor presented a big shake-up to the status quo, and Order to Kill packs a certain punch of its own kind with a long-time series regular in serious danger.
Thanks to Kyle Mills, Order to Kill is one of the best, and certainly most satisfying, Mitch Rapp novels in quite some time. With high-stakes action and some much-needed emotional development, and perhaps even a hint of romance to come, for our series hero, fans of Vince Flynn can rest easy with Mills at the helm.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title for review from the publisher, as part of their #MitchRappAmbassador Program.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1477536/review-order-to-kill-by-kyle-mills
Review: Order to Kill by Kyle Mills
Review:
When Mitch Rapp returned last year with the help of a new author following the death of his creator, Vince Flynn, I was initially skeptical. Kyle Mills proved to be an adept writer fully capable of handling Flynn's characters though, and The Survivor won me over pretty quickly. Order to Kill proves that Mill's prior effort was hardly a fluke or one-off. Mills is not only capable of taking on Flynn's rough-and-ready CIA assassin, but shows he's the natural heir apparent to continue this series for the foreseeable future.
This fifteenth installment, which picks up mere weeks after the finale of The Survivor, finds Mitch Rapp squaring off against a Russian assassin who is not only Rapp's equal, but may be even better. This is framed within a story of rogue Pakistani nukes and ISIS idiots, and a particularly violent, and personal, attack that strikes close to Rapp's heart when a mission goes awry.
The most important element here for me, and one that I think Mills did a superb job with, was making Rapp a bit more three dimensional and human. In his latter books, Flynn was turning Rapp into very nearly a caricature of his former self, with his with-me-or-against-me attitude and desire to kill anybody who dared to disagree with him. Mills, thankfully, has dialed that way back and we see a Mitch Rapp who may finally be emerging from the darkness brought on by his wife's death and who isn't afraid to feel. While this certainly is not a guy who will soon be crying into his cup o' tea anytime soon, there are certain events that occur here to remind Rapp that he is at least human and we see a man now seeking to reconnect with the people around him after so many devastating losses.
It's these losses that I feel also highlight Mills work over these last two books. The operators and assassins of these novels are certainly men and women who fit into the Hero Worship mold pretty easily, and there's a lot of extrajudicial fantasy stuff that goes into them (somebody says something about the Constitution you don't like? Well, just snap their neck and grab a can of Coke afterward! And while we're on the fantasy aspect, the next time one of these jihadist morons refers to our Christian Constitution, could we please have Rapp correct that erroneous, much too-widespread misunderstanding of this secular document before cracking their skull apart?), but too often they feel like larger-than-life superheroes. Mills has been working hard to make these people human, and while the characters are unquestionably adept and skilled at their jobs, they can still be hurt (and quite badly, at that) and killed. The Survivor presented a big shake-up to the status quo, and Order to Kill packs a certain punch of its own kind with a long-time series regular in serious danger.
Thanks to Kyle Mills, Order to Kill is one of the best, and certainly most satisfying, Mitch Rapp novels in quite some time. With high-stakes action and some much-needed emotional development, and perhaps even a hint of romance to come, for our series hero, fans of Vince Flynn can rest easy with Mills at the helm.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title for review from the publisher, as part of their #MitchRappAmbassador Program.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1477536/review-order-to-kill-by-kyle-mills
October 1, 2016
Sept. 2016 Read and Reviewed Roundup
Happy October! It’s hard to believe we’re closing in on the end of another year. Halloween is coming up soon, and it’ll be a short jaunt from there to Thanksgiving, and Christmas will rear up fast after that. Yowza.
In hindsight, September was pretty busy and hectic. On a personal note, it was my son’s very first birthday. My baby has grown into a little boy, and he’s hitting all the right milestones pretty much on target. He is also thoroughly a mama’s boy, big-time, but I on occasion he’s willing to tolerate me and I can get to make him laugh, which always feels amazing. His birthday required a good deal of preparation as we gathered the family at a park for kiddo’s cake smash, which he enjoyed quite a lot. By the end of that, he was pretty covered in frosting and smiling exhaustedly. I think I was even more tired than him by the end of it all, though.
Book-wise, I read, mostly, a lot of good stuff and some very, very good stuff. Chills hit some sweet spots for me, but Barry Eisler’s upcoming release, Livia Lone, was easily the best book of the month for me.
Red Right Hand by Chris Holm
The X-Files: The Truth Is Out There (audiobook), edited by Jonathan Maberry
Devils In Dark Houses by B.E. Scully
Out by Natsuo Kirino (audiobook)
Chills by Mary SanGiovanni
The Warren by Brian Evenson
Livia Lone by Barry Eisler
Stranded by Bracken MacLeod
Corpse Rider by Tim Curran
Ship the Kids on Ahead by Bill Stokes (audiobook)
Looking ahead a bit, expect a review on the latest Vince Flynn novel, Order to Kill, by Kyle Mills soonish. I’m reading a paperback ARC of it, which the publishers were kind enough to send my way after selecting me to be a Mitch Rapp Ambassador. I was pretty geeked about that! And I just bought the latest Alastair Reynolds title, Revenger, which is sitting pretty on my Kindle. Hopefully I can get to that one next!
September 30, 2016
Review: Ship the Kids on Ahead by Bill Stokes (Audiobook)
Review:
Let me say at the outset that Ship the Kids on Ahead is not the typical sort of audiobook or reading material that I tend to gravitate toward, even in the realm of non-fiction. The time I’ve devoted to reading non-fiction as a whole is woefully inadequate, unfortunately, and tends to lean toward science-related topics or historical events rather than the slice-of-life minutia that Bill Stokes wrote about for the Wisconsin State Journal.
Happily, I found myself surprisingly entertained by Stokes view of small-town America circa the 1950s and ’60s. Obviously, quite a lot has changed since that era, but there are still plenty of timeless experiences that are easy to relate to, particularly in the matters of family and parenting, which is a topic that Stokes turns to fairly often. And I’m right there with him in thinking there needs to be time off work for the random occurrences of dumb days, those days that begin with a sudden breaking of a shoe lace and a small piece of shell in your eggs, portents that this will be a no-good, very bad, rotten day, one better spent in bed, perhaps reading a book.
These short stories are narrated by a handful of performers and all of them are up to the task of bringing Stokes’s words to life. RC Bray and Joe Hempel in particular were stand-outs for me, and they seemed to really connect with the material. Xe Sands, too, brought a nice feminine touch to the production for a few segments and it’s clear that I’ll have to keep an eye out for more of her work in the future.
Ship the Kids on Ahead presents the kind of columns we no longer see very much of in newspapers (at least by my estimation), and Stokes words in particular were designed to give the reader a smile or a bit of a chuckle after reading some of the more sobering stories print journalism brought to your doorstep. These are stories of daily life, of being stuck in traffic, or putting up a pegboard to hang tools from, or watering the Christmas tree and imbibing a bit too much in the process. Short, quirky, and entertaining, there is a broad appeal to the columns recorded here, and plenty to relate to.
[Note: I received a copy of this title from the publisher, Paul Stokes, in exchange for an honest review.]
Buy Ship The Kids On Ahead At Amazon
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1475884/review-ship-the-kids-on-ahead-by-bill-stokes-audiobook
September 29, 2016
Review: Corpse Rider by Tim Curran
Review:
A few years ago, thanks to the Horror Aficionados group on Goodreads, I discovered a new-to-me author when it was suggested I check out Dead Sea by Tim Curran. I don’t remember which awesome reader suggested it, but I owe that person a huge, hearty thank you. I devoured that book and instantly bought a bunch more of Curran’s titles to add to my TBR, and have been a fan ever since.
His latest, Corpse Rider, is a hearty ghost story that exemplifies the notion that no good deed goes unpunished. While visiting her mother’s grave, Christina picks away the weeds from an older, long-untended headstone. This minor act upends her life, connecting her with the spirit of something hideous. While it’s certainly bad news for Christina, it’s a lot of good for readers.
Curran has remarkable skill at crafting disturbing scenes of grotesqueness and violence, and a few of the visuals he stuck in my head here will be with me for a while. Christina makes for a nicely flawed heroine, and the story surrounding her is rooted in an appropriately creepy historical context. Mostly, though, this is just a cool, gory, little ghost story (it comes in at around a smidge over 100 pages), and if you’re looking for a breezy read to help kick off some October scares leading up to Halloween, this is a great place to start.
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1475470/review-corpse-rider-by-tim-curran
September 27, 2016
Review: Stranded by Bracken MacLeod
Review:
Stranded is the type of book that made me glad to be reading it indoors, in the known security and confines of my home, where I was nice and warm and comfortable, and had a nip of whiskey or Irish Mist to help keep the chills Bracken MacLeod was generating at bay.
Caught in an arctic storm, the ship Arctic Promise is thrown off-course from its destination and lost in the fog. Soon enough, the ship finds itself embedded in ice. In the distance, the flat horizon is broken only by the hump of an odd, indiscernible shape. The crew are sick with a mysterious illness, except for Noah, who finds himself constantly at odds with most of the crew. And the sick are seeing…something.
Right from the outset, MacLeod throws readers into the thick of things. His writing of the violent storm Noah and his shipmates find themselves in is phenomenally hair-raising and chaotic, and the unique threats of the arctic landscape itself are well posed and chillingly executed.
Much of the horror in Stranded is derived from the environment itself, as much as the crazed crewmen Noah is forced to contend with, and there’s a heavy, freezing atmosphere that permeates MacLeod’s writing. It’s strong stuff, and reminded me a bit of another arctic powerhouse horror-thriller in Dan Simmon’s The Terror. (If you want to know why I love arctic horror, this and The Terror are two books to check out for prime examples of environmental scares done right.)
MacLeod also does some great work with the characters here, although it is a bit of slow-boil to learn why Noah is so despised by so many of his shipmates. Noah catches a lot of flack, for various reasons, and I personally would not have minded getting a bit more information up front rather than having details parceled out piecemeal over the course of the book’s first half. This is a minor complaint in an otherwise strong work, though, but the motivations behind the firmly anti-Noah characters make for rich conflict, particularly in the book’s later segments.
Stranded is an impressive and visceral work of achingly cold environmental horror with a nifty sci-fi twist, and a work that has ensured Bracken MacLeod is an author whose releases I will be watching out for.
[Note: I received an advanced copy of this title for review from the publisher via NetGalley.]
Original post:
MichaelPatrickHicks.booklikes.com/post/1474165/review-stranded-by-bracken-macleod
September 22, 2016
Book Releases Going Wide…Again
When I began publishing back in 2014, I had made my books available on all platforms. The idea was to reach as wide an audience as possible and get onto readers’ Nooks, Kobos, iPads, iPhones, and whatever else I could.
Eventually sales stagnated and I grew impatient. Amazon is, and has been, the eight-hundred pound gorilla in the middle of the room. Kindle has brand recognition and the most amount of readers. I myself own a Kindle, like a hell of a lot of others and I love it to death. Before I broke down and bought my Fire HD tablet, I had the Kindle app on my iPhone and on my wife’s iPad. Amazon virtually owns the ebook market, especially in the US. At that time, it made sense to align myself with the big guy and enroll in KDP Select.
For indie authors and small presses that sell exclusively on Amazon, there are certain luxuries available through Kindle Direct Publishing if you enroll in their KDP Select program. This allows readers to borrow your books through Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited program, and for you to be paid for each page read. You can do countdown deals and offer free promotions, which is pretty great. Lots of indie authors have had much success with their KDP Select enrollment. I did not.
In my estimation (and your mileage may vary), KDP Select is awesome for authors who can continuously churn out new releases on a regular basis, or who already have a large virtual footprint with a large catalog of titles available. If you’re publishing six titles a year, it may be best to target Amazon readers specifically. I’m not one of those authors, and have time and money to only publish once or twice a year. And at this point, the virtual shelf space my name and titles occupies is fairly limited.
There were periodic spikes in sales and borrows, especially around the release of two fairly high-profile anthologies (The Cyborg Chronicles and CLONES, specifically), but those trailed off rather quickly and my Amazon sales dashboard has, over the last few months, become a rather disappointingly flat line.
I’ve also become a bit less than enamored with a few of Amazon’s business decisions, as both a reader, customer, and independent author-publisher. KDP Select is fairly easy to game (there have been instances of authors producing phone-book sized titles that are mostly ads and junk in order to increase the page count), and authors compete against one another for whatever bonus Amazon has set aside to those who generate the most pages read. The monthly payout per author varies and can go higher or lower depending on nothing more than the whims of Amazon.
I’m also not thrilled with Amazon’s easy-to-game review system and its enforcement to ensure legitimate reviews are posted. Too often, I see reviews on various books from people who have clearly not read the material, and even admit to such in their reviews. Check out virtually any traditionally published title, and you’ll find one-star reviews because the customer disagrees with the publisher’s price (like this recent review for a Kindle Worlds Legacy Fleet title from the Sisters of Slaughter, Michelle Garza and Melissa Lason). Or one-star reviews from readers with a bone to pick over an author’s inclusion of homosexual characters or other progressive politics, as was the case with Chuck Wendig’s Star Wars title last year, or because readers hate whatever they’re gonna hate, and they have an agenda, and they blame the author or publisher for not producing material suitable to their preferred echo chamber. Those reviews all get posted, and yet legitimate reviews can get pulled if Amazon finds out you are a reader who follows an author on Twitter and Facebook, and decides you’re in cahoots, legitimately or otherwise. There is also the specter of being banned by Amazon. A few months ago I listened to an episode of The Horror Show with Brian Keene with an erotic horror author whose work had been de-listed and banned from Amazon.While this may never happen to me, or many other authors, I also do not want to risk keeping all of my work for sale on a single site that could, one day, make it all disappear and lock me out just because.
All of these are factors for why I think it’s time to diversify once again. Dwindling sales and corporate practices are, for me, two good reasons to launch wide again, wherever possible. However, I will still be exclusive to Amazon for at least one upcoming title, which will be set in a new Kindle Worlds series (more on this in the coming weeks), and I expect the anthologies I’ve been involved in to remain exclusive to Amazon for the foreseeable future, as well. It’s also entirely possible that I may one day sign, maybe, with a publisher (or publishers) that sell exclusively on Amazon. The rest of my titles, though, are now available on Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and iBooks, in addition to Amazon. When I can diversify, I will, simply because I prefer to not keep all of my eggs in one basket.
I will say that in the course of spreading my works out onto these various sites, I’ve already earned more than I did throughout the last few months of my KDP Select period. Granted, this may not last very long, but the hope is that I increase my discoverability and widen my footprint by being more accessible to an increased set of readers.
I’ve also released my first audiobook, Revolver (Audible | iTunes), further diversifying not just where my books are available, but how they can be enjoyed. Hopefully you’ll check it out. If enough listeners snag a copy, and if I’m fortunate enough to turn a profit, this could help pave the way for many more audiobooks to come. I’d love to work with Revolver’s narrator, Patricia Santomasso, again, and if you’d like to hear more of her reading my words, we need your support. But, if you’re a non-Kindle reader and non-audiobook listener, you can find links to your preferred bookstore at the pages of any of my solo titles listed right at the top of my homepage.
