Tales From The Bell Club

Tales From The Bell Club, published by Knightwatch Press. Edited by Paul Mannering.

Including stories from some fantastic authors from New Zealand, Australia and around the world.

“Welcome to the Bell Club,” he said. 

“Commiserations on your membership.” 

~ Helen Stubbs, Sayuri’s Revenge

Table of Contents:

The Kiss - Jason Nahrung

The Adventure of the Laboratory - Kathleen Dale

The Quarantine Station - Lee Clark Zumpe

A Gentleman's Folly - Phil Hickes

The Widow Dotridge - Douglas J. Moore

Sayuri’s Revenge - Helen Stubbs

Divine Providence - Robert J. Santa

Tell Tom Tildrum - Edward M. Erdelac

Fluke - Lynne Jamneck

Spawn Of The Crocodile God - John McNee

Life and Limb - Andrew Freudenberg

The Girl In The Cabin - Richard Barnes

The Wager - Jeff C. Carter

The Shrieking Woman - Doug Manllen

Beer

I drank a lot of beer over the last few weeks. Firstly there was my 40th birthday to celebrate. But more importantly, before that I saw Tankbread go up on Amazon.

It has been a long term goal of mine to have a book for sale before my 40th. So I achieved that. Actually I achieved that twice.

Tankbread is also available through Smashwords, and now I have removed the reference to the Kindle edition it should go into their premium catalog which means it should be available through other sites - like Apple and Barnes and Noble some time in about a week.

I'm mildly bi-polar (it was the official diagnosis about 20 years ago) so I've crashed a bit after the birthday. It's why I haven't updated the blog in a while and why I haven't sealed the deal with putting Tankbread out in a print edition.

The ebook editions are selling, of both books. Marketing is not a full time job so I'm not retiring soon. I'm experimenting with price and the idea of imputed value. It will be interesting to see what the right price for both books are.

Of course I'm writing flat out. I have a new collection of short stories in the works the title story is 'The Tao of The Tattoo' which I am still writing.

I'm also editing an anthology for Knightwatch Press, working on various other novel ideas, managing Tankbread: The Audio Book Edition and producing another Audiobook called 'The Last Ringbearer' which is a story set in Middle Earth told from the POV of the orcs.

I'd rather be read than rich!

When Amazon's top sellers are the cheapest e-books even the main-stream publishers are taking notes.

Consider that with Amazon if you sell an e-book through them at $2.99 you get $2.00

At $0.99 you get 35 cents.

If a top seller sells 75,000 copies a month at $2.99 and 3780,000 copies at $0.99 he makes a comparable income of over $128,000 a month (less tax) the key difference is that at $2.99 he makes that by only selling 75,000 copies, and at $0.99 he sells over 370,000

All writers will tell you they would rather have readers than income. Most of my published work never earns me a dime - but a recent check on BrokenSea's Doctor Who series download stats shows we have over 2000 downloads a week. Not bad for minimal promotion on our part.

My self-published books this year are going to be sold for $0.99 cents. That's a couple years worth of work for each of them and I value it at a lot more - but I have a job. I don't need to sell books to eat or pay rent.

I'd rather be read than rich!