New Feature Announcement!
A growing short story library, for you
Time to introduce a new feature of the Substack.
“It’s not the craft and skill that Michael Marshall Smith displays in his stories that I object to. It’s not the easy wit, or the comfortable way he deploys language as a weapon. It’s not even that way he can conjure people so real in so few words. It’s that, when a Mike Smith short story is over, it’s pretty much guaranteed there will be some moment, scene or revelation frozen in the back of my mind that I’ll never be able to get out of my head, not even if I scrub it with wire wool so it bleeds.”
— Neil Gaiman
Starting in two days, every two weeks a post with one of my published short stories in eBook format — featuring new covers designed by the author — will be delivered to your inbox, for you to download and keep.
This feature will be for paid subscribers only, though the first story (coming this Wednesday, June 7th) will go out to all. This is two short stories for $5 a month, which is about the cost of a Starbucks (now apparently universally accepted as the international unit of monetary comparison). With an annual sub it’s even less.
The initial series will go out every two weeks for the next six months, comprising a dozen stories and adding up to a small and bespoke collection unavailable elsewhere. If there’s sufficient interest and take-up, a second series will follow.
This is part of my drive to provide value for paid subscribers. Remember that you can up-subscribe on a monthly basis, and down-subscribe again with a single click.
Please pass the word to anybody you think might be interested…
BTW: I’m something of an Apple fundamentalist, so if anybody could provide concise instructions on how to use downloaded books on Android or PC so I can include them in the next post, that’d be super-helpful. Thank you.
Totally love this!
Ideally offer people their choice of .epub or .mobi, and optionally .pdf, too. You can create all three pretty painlessly using Calibre. (A quick internet search tells me you probably already have .epub for your Apple stuff? So you just need to create the other two versions.) David Gaughran has a great tutorial on creating ebooks. Scroll down straight to Part IV: Calibre, if you already have an epub.
https://davidgaughran.com/how-to-format-ebooks-for-free-ebook-formatting/#formatting-caliber
Very easy.
I use Bookfunnel to actually *deliver* the books, as it has all the troubleshooting, and instructions, etc set up to help people load their books.
Good luck!