Sunday, January 13, 2019

Giving Back What I Can


I don’t have a lot of new pictures of fun adventures to share this week, so I’ll use book covers. We had a big ‘yard’ sale in the RV park Saturday and I sold a book! What a treat, however, to find that two other people came by to tell me they had already read or were reading City Limits and enjoying it.
Those are kind people who buy books. I’ve seen precious few of those around in the past year. On the other hand, I’ve started giving them away. It’s what I can do.

Back in April, before I officially released City Limits, I serialized it online. For free! If you like or tolerate reading books online instead of having a physical or electronic copy downloaded to your fingertips, check this out. I worked hard to make a good reading experience for you at http://www.nathaneverett.com/releases/citylimits/.
Releasing it for free before it released commercially helped sales as I had people buying the book who had already read it or part of it. I’ll do the same with Wild Woods when it releases this spring.

But I discovered over the years there are many readers who can’t or don’t afford books, yet love to read. I understand that. The price of a $15 paperback is the same as a steak dinner at our local restaurant here in Quartzsite—including tip. A $5 eBook is the same price as a meal at home. I’m very careful about what I buy. My income isn’t getting any bigger!

So I followed up the release of City Limits with For Money or Mayhem, a Dag Hamar mystery. Once again, chapters were read online 75,000 times! For free! Sales of For Money or Mayhem on Amazon were the highest since its release with phenomenal new reviews. Now you can read the book online for free at http://www.nathaneverett.com/releases/money/.
It was with a little worry that I decided to release my most popular novel, The Gutenberg Rubric online. But the people who were writing to me and commenting often mentioned that they would never have been able to buy one of my books and were grateful that I was publishing them where they could access them for free. I began posting The Gutenberg Rubric online for free in October and it became my highest rated of the three books, scoring 8.6 out of 10 in reader votes. And there were matching sales online from those who could purchase the book and wanted to support the author. Now you can read The Gutenberg Rubric on my site for free at http://www.nathaneverett.com/releases/gutenberg/.
The latest entry into the field started free posting this week: For Blood or Money. My first published novel, For Blood or Money has been a staple of my backlist, seemingly rediscovered repeatedly. Now I’m offering it at no charge to readers who can’t afford it.
“Nathan, why was there no free reader link?”

The answer is simple. On my website, I release the book first to my sponsors so they get the first glimpse. They pay for making it available to other readers for free. As a result, they get to read it first. These are the people I’m pleased to call my Fellow Traveler Patrons. https://www.patreon.com/join/NathanEverett

I have two Patreon accounts and both provide income that I use for site maintenance, software, conversion of files, and cover art. The other site is for those interested in adult romance and adventure, often with a sexual theme. I protect the Nathan Everett patrons from that but if you are interested in the works of Devon Layne, you might try https://www.patreon.com/join/aroslav. Just this year, Devon has released three lengthy novels for his Advance Release Community before they were available for free to the public.


    
His newest work, Double Take, is currently being made available. Devon’s site, featuring all twenty-eight of his released books is http://www.devonlayne.com/.
It seems the one thing I have an abundance of is words. They might not be great words, but for many people they provide entertainment, inspiration, and even comfort. I’m making those words available to people who cannot or will not afford them as my little gift to the world and with the grateful support of my Patrons.


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