April update

Sorry to go dark for so long. I’ve been sick off and on for the last two months, first with a sinus infection, then with a lung infection, and lately with a persistent stomach flu. Thankfully, I’ve been functional through all of it, but not at 100%, which is why I’ve neglected the blog.

I have been writing, though. I’m currently about a third of the way through Victors in Liberty, and should finish it within the next few weeks. I’m also revising it as I go along, so as to have a publishable final draft. We’re still on track for a July release date.

In the last few weeks, I’ve been crunching a lot of book sales numbers and formulating a better business plan. The goal is to make the writing profitable enough to pay myself more than sweatshop wages. I think I’ve figured out a way to get there before the end of this year.

I also recently discovered Jordan Peterson, and have been listening to many of his lectures while doing mindless chop-wood carry-water tasks. He’s an incredible guy. One of the last few sane and reasonable people in the world with a large enough platform to counteract the constant assault of insanity that passes for today’s news cycle.

I’ve also published a double novel bundle for Bringing Stella Home and Heart of the Nebula. I originally published it exclusively on Kobo, to get around Amazon’s price matching policy so I could run useful promotions with KWL. But the Kobo promotions use coupon codes now, which means there’s no reason not to make this title available everywhere.

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I’m also experimenting a lot with my email list, trying out a new style for my newsletter and cycling through promotions more regularly. Makes a lot more work, since Amazon won’t make a book free unless you price match it first, but hey it’s not as bad as digging ditches.

Lots of other stuff going on behind the scenes, which I’d rather not get into just yet. When there’s significant movement, I’ll be sure to let you know.

I am so ready to finish the Sons of the Starfarers series. It’s been difficult to write at times, but I’m excited with how the last book is turning out and think it will provide an excellent ending to a story that has turned out better than I expected it to. Really looking forward to get it out there.

That’s just about it for now. Don’t worry about me: life is good and I’m still writing.

Seven years of ebook pricing data

Last October, Dean Wesley Smith wrote an interesting blog post on the subject of pricing. As an indie writer (or really, as a small business owner in general), pricing is one of those things that’s constantly on my mind. Pricing too high can be fatal for any business, but pricing too low can be a terrible mistake as well.

Dean Wesley Smith’s pricing strategy basically went like this:

Novels

$3.99 to $6.99
Price according to genre, not length
Romance on the lower end
Mystery on the higher end
SF&F in the middle

Short Stories

$1.99 to $3.99
Price according to length, not genre
$1.99 for under 3k words
$2.99 for 3k to 10k words
$3.99 for 10k to 20k words
Over 20k words price as a novel

From November until now, I’ve basically followed this strategy, with a few tweaks for short stories. Under 1k words, I’ve priced at $.99, and between 3k and 20k words, I’ve priced at $2.99. It’s only at 30k words that I’ve priced my books as novels.

This isn’t my first time experimenting with prices. I’ve been publishing since 2011, and have all of the sales reports and other data in one form or another. So last week, I decided to crunch that data and compare it with the last four months.

Genesis Earth is my first novel, and the book on which I have the most data. It’s a 70k word YA science fiction novel.

Crunching the data, I found that on average, the book performed best when priced at $3.99, with a few outliers at $2.99. However, most of those outliers are from 2011, before Kindle Unlimited or KDP Select, and before the book had fallen off of the 90 day cliff. Excluding the first two quarters of 2011, those outliers fall away.

Bringing Stella Home is the first book in the Gaia Nova series, and the book for which I have the most data that is also part of a series. It is a 110k word space opera novel.

Interestingly, the book appears to perform differently as a standalone than it does as part of a series. As a standalone, it appears to perform best at $4.99, but the series as a whole performs best when it’s priced at $3.99.

By the way, I tend to price all the Gaia Nova books at the same price point, so except for $.99 and $1.49, it’s fair to assume that all the books share the same price as Bringing Stella Home for any given datapoint.

Interestingly, the data tend to confirm the results of an ebook pricing survey I sent out to my email list about a year ago. The results are pictured above. More than half of respondents said that they were only willing to pay $3.99 or less for an ebook from an author they trust, and more than 80% weren’t willing to pay more than $2.99 for an unknown author.

Unfortunately, I don’t have enough pricing data for my novellas and short novels (under 50k words) to draw conclusions for any other price points besides $.99 and $2.99. Obviously, the $2.99 price point performs vastly better than $.99. There’s a little more nuance than that when it comes to series pricing, but I’m keeping that data close to the chest.

I have yet to crunch the data for my short stories. When I do, that will probably be the subject of another blog post.

From these results, it appears that $3.99 is the sweet spot, both for series and for standalone novels. The data from the last three months are not included in the graphs, but from what I’ve managed to gather my books do not perform as well when I use Dean Wesley Smith’s pricing strategy. It was worth trying out as an experiment, but four months during the prime bookselling time of the year is enough to conclude that it doesn’t work, at least for my books and my readership.

Here’s the pricing strategy I’ll be using from now on:

Novels (over 50k words)

$4.99 to $5.99 for frontlist and new releases
$3.99 for backlist
99¢ and free for promotions

Novellas and Short Novels (10k to 50k words)

$2.99 for frontlist and backlist
99¢ and free for promotions

Short stories (under 10k words)

I have no idea. Still need to figure that out.

Trope Tuesday: Manic Pixie Dream Girl

Oh dear. I’m probably going to take some heat for this one, especially if it gets picked up by File 770.

What is a “manic pixie dream girl”? Tvtropes puts it this way:

An upbeat young woman whose love gives the brooding male hero a new lease on life.

Wikipedia puts it this way:

…the MPDG “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer–directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” MPDGs are said to help their men without pursuing their own happiness, and such characters never grow up; thus, their men never grow up.

You know how the term “space opera” was originally a derogatory term for crappy science fiction? I’m going to go out on a lark, invoke tropes are tools, and argue that Wikipedia is wrong and there’s nothing inherently bad about this trope.

Anita Sarkeesian is not a huge fan of the manic pixie dream girl. In fact, it was the first trope she deconstructed way back 2011, before her scammy kickstarter. I’m not a huge fan of Anita Sarkeesian, but it’s worth rewatching her take on it:

In particular:

The manic pixie perpetuates the myth of women as caregivers at our very core—that we can go fix these lonely, sad men, so that they can go fix the world.

Here’s the thing, though: when you study the men who have fixed the world, you almost always find a strong, caregiving woman behind them. This is portrayed very well in The Darkest Hour, with Winston Churchill’s wife, Clementine:

Granted, Clementine Churchill is no manic pixie, but she did provide critical support to her husband, and was one of the key influences that shaped him into the great man of history that he ultimately proved to be.

Here’s the thing: men need women, just as women need men. All the feminist eye-rolling in the world doesn’t make that untrue. And for men who are lonely, depressed, or overly introspective, a perky outgoing woman can really have a positive impact.

The key to doing this trope well is to make the MPDG a complete character in her own right. Critics rightly point out that something is wrong when she exists solely for the benefit of the male protagonist. That’s not a feature of this trope, though: that’s just bad writing in general.

The best example of a MPDG in my own work is probably Deirdre from Heart of the Nebula. The rest of this post is going to be full of spoilers, so if it’s on your TBR list, you should probably skip to the end now.

Deirdre is very much a character in her own right. She’s the ship’s historian of the Chiran Spirit, a generation ship that James liberates from pirates before going into cryosleep. In spite of her perky, cheerful demeanor, she has experienced deep pain in her life. She immediately latches onto James, but over time this transforms from an interest in a living historical figure to genuine attraction and love.

James and Deirdre round off each others’ rough edges. She helps him to recover his optimism and self-respect, while he helps her to understand herself better and decide what she truly wants. They both help each other to reconcile with difficult baggage from each of their pasts, and though they both go through a period of disillusionment, they ultimately come out stronger for it on the other side.

Here’s the thing, though: if Deirdre was anything but a manic pixie dream girl, she wouldn’t have been able to help James through his darkest hour. It’s her bouncy enthusiasm, clumsy excitement, and unfailing optimism that draws him out of his callused shell. Without those characteristics, the story—and her character—wouldn’t have worked.

In short, I believe that the manic pixie dream girl trope very much has a place, and isn’t inherently sexist or mysoginistic at all. It can be, if done poorly, but when done well it points to the reality that men need women just as women need men, and that’s actually a good thing, no matter what the feminists say.

Early January Update

The holidays are over. Blergh.

I don’t generally do well when my routine gets broken up by outside forces, which is why this blog has fallen by the wayside for the last week or so. I’m also not very good at creating structure in my life where none exists, so during times like the holidays I don’t tend to do very well. This is definitely a skill that I need to work on.

In any case, the holidays are over, which means it’s time to get back to work. Thank goodness!

I am about 10,000 words from finishing my current WIP, An Empire in Disarray. With the work on my friends’ basement finished and my roommate starting school in Salt Lake today, there shouldn’t be any more interruptions between now and the end of next week. This bodes well.

When that’s done, I’ll jump right into work on Victors in Liberty. I’ve got to admit, there are other projects I’d really like to work on right now, but finishing Sons of the Starfarers takes priority.

The series was supposed to be finished way back in 2015. But I underestimated the volume of work I’d taken on—and that was before I got a girlfriend. I fell behind on my writing as the relationship got really serious, and then we broke up, which didn’t help with productivity either.

Long story short, I did a lot of things wrong back in 2014. But I learned from my mistakes, and I think my books are better because of it. So instead of finishing up Sons of the Starfarers in 2015, I’m finishing it now in 2018. And then I’m moving on to other projects.

Edenfall is at the top of that list. It’s been years since I started the Genesis Earth trilogy, which is another ball that I’ve dropped. Genesis Earth does stand alone, but I’ve been promising to finish the trilogy since I published it in 2011, and judging from the reviews (as well as the slow but remarkably steady trickle of sales), this is a WIP that deserves to get priority.

One thing I’m really trying to do this year is to get better at structuring things: my writing, my publishing and marketing efforts, my daily routine, etc. Towards that end, I’ve put together a publishing schedule for 2018. Here it is as it stands at the beginning of the new year:

JANUARY — Patriots in Retreat (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 6)
FEBRUARY — The Janus Anomaly: A Short Story
MARCH — A Queen in Hiding (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 7)
APRIL — Time and Space in Amish Country: A Short Story
MAY — An Empire in Disarray (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 8)
JUNE — Lizzie-99XT: A Short Story
JULY — Victors in Liberty (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 9)
AUGUST — Edenfall (Genesis Earth Trilogy, Book 2)
SEPTEMBER — Sholpan
OCTOBER — The Sword Bearer (The Twelfth Sword Trilogy, Book 2)
NOVEMBER — In the Beginning: A Short Story
DECEMBER — Gunslinger to the Galaxy (Gunslingers Trilogy, Book 2)

Lots of book 2s and finishing series. I suppose you could say this is the year where I start to finish what I’ve started.

And while the schedule may seem a bit daunting, the first four books are already ready to go, with Patriots in Retreat and A Queen in Hiding already up for preorder. Of the ones that are left, half are already written. So even though it seems ambitious, it’s actually quite doable, even if something crazy happens and I end up eloping to Mongolia before the end of the summer.

So that’s what I’m up to. I’ll get back to blogging as I can, but my first priority is writing, followed closely by publishing. Lots of behind the scenes stuff happening which I don’t have time to get into right now.

Take care, and thanks for reading!

Joe

Trope Tuesday: The Chessmaster

The Chessmaster is a fun trope, especially when done well. A good villain is always at least one step ahead of the good guys, so when it turns out that he’s three or four or ten steps ahead of them, it can make for some interesting plot twists.

Of course, the chessmaster isn’t always the bad guy. Sometimes, it turns out that the mysterious figure behind the scenes pulling all the strings is actually working for good, even though he may sacrifice a few pawns along the way. Or is he? There’s always that tension, simply because of the chessmaster’s manipulative nature.

I’ve played it both ways. The last time I wrote a chessmaster was Gunslinger to the Stars, but the Patrician in Heart of the Nebula definitely also qualifies. In both cases, the character was introduced as a mysterious employer. I won’t tell you which one was the bad guy, and which one was the good guy.

I’ve never written a story from the perspective of the chessmaster. I imagine it would be quite difficult, since all of the plot twists would have to be telegraphed and/or th reader would have to be kept in the dark about the main character’s plans. Dune is an excellent example of the former, but I can’t think of any good examples of the latter. The Davinci Code comes to mind, but the way it kept the viewer in the dark (seen the movie, haven’t read the book) didn’t work for me.

Even as a non-viewpoint character, the chessmaster can be difficult to write. Careful plotting is key, of course, but so is the iceberg principle. For everything the reader can see, there has to be a bunch of stuff beneath the surface that they can’t see. It doesn’t require the same level of detail as the surface level stuff, of course, but you have to at least have an idea of what the chessmaster would do if the story went in a very different direction. Even if the chessmaster never reveals those plans, you can bet that he still has them figured out.

In part, this is what made Heart of the Nebula so difficult to write. The final draft bears little resemblance to the first draft, with characters and subplots cut out or combined with others. Still, I’m satisfied with how it turned out, and it seems that the readers are as well.

In Sons of the Starfarers, Gulchina isn’t a chessmaster so much as a magnificent bastard with delusions of grandeur. She has plans and does tend to be three or four steps ahead of everyone else, but she’s less interested in manipulating events than she is in manipulating people. Her ultimate goal, as revealed in Captives in Obscurity, is to establish a proud warrior race that will one day wipe out and take over both the Empire and the Outworlds. She doesn’t know how that’s going to happen, but she knows what needs to be done to lay the foundation for that work.

The chessmaster is a challenging trope to write well, but I’m sure I’ll use it many more times in the future. The storytelling potential is just too great to leave it out.

Late September update

I am not a pleasant person to be around when I’m struggling to finish a difficult book.

Me: There’s just not enough time in the day.

Dad: I know how you feel, son.

Me: I don’t think that you do. You’ve never been self-employed.

Later…

Me: I need to quit my job.

Dad: But Joe, what about the benefits?

Me: Screw the benefits! I don’t want to be dependent on anyone for “benefits.” Besides, there’s a public pension crisis looming over this country, and in ten years your teacher’s pensions are all going to dry up. You can thank a decade of 0% interest rates for those “benefits.”

Like I said, not very pleasant.

So I had to push the deadline back another week for A Queen in Hiding. Really hate to do that. Problem is, the only writing time I can carve out of my schedule comes in short 1-2 hour chunks, and a single interruption can throw off everything. Like when a truck shows up during my lunch break. Or like when I’m playing catch-up and sleep in past my alarm.

It doesn’t help that every chapter, I run up against a wall that forces me to go back two or three chapters and completely change the direction of the story. This is definitely one of the weirdest books I’ve ever written. It’ll come together eventually, but it’s definitely taking more effort than it’s worth. Should lead the series in an interesting direction, though, and tie into the Gaia Nova series much further down the road. If I ever write any more of those books.

Anyway, so that’s coming along slowly. On the marketing end, I’m trying out a bunch of new things and/or working harder at things I’ve been doing for a while. All of my free and 99¢ book deals are scheduled through August 2018—now I just need to figure out how I’m going to promote them.

Not much is happening on the publishing front, other than The Sword Keeper which comes out this weekend. I’ve got a release schedule that runs through August 2018, which is part of the reason why I’m so stressed about getting Sons of the Starfarers finished. That series WILL be complete before the end of 2018, hopefully before July 2018. Four more books, of which 1.5 are currently written.

So that’s what I’ve been up to. Time to get back to writing.

Free and 99¢ books for September!

Hey guys, just a quick update to let you know about some book deals I have going on right now.

First, I have a free short story this month!

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Second, Desert Stars is 99¢ for the rest of September! I believe this is one of my best books, and it won’t be on sale again for a while, so be sure to pick it up now!

Desert Stars

$13.99eBook: $4.99

Author: Joe Vasicek
Series: Hameji Cycle, Book 2
Genres: Science Fiction, Science Fiction, Space Opera
Tag: 2011 Release

He is sheikh’s sole heir, a young man raised by desert tribesmen after falling from the stars. She is the sheikh’s most beautiful daughter, promised his hand in marriage—but only if she can convince him to stay.

Together, they must travel to a land where glass covers the sky and men traverse the stars as easily as tribesmen cross the desert. At the ancient temple dedicated to the memory of Earth, they hope to find the answers that will lead them home.

But the call of the stars soon threatens to bring their budding romance to an end. And as the moment of decision draws near, the choices they must make will drive them toward a future that neither can foresee.

More info →

$1 off the ebook with coupon code: BUY DIRECT

FREE ebook when you buy the audiobook direct!

FREE ebook when you buy the paperback direct!

Finally, if you’re looking for a good free read, or perhaps you want to try out some new authors, I have books in three InstaFreebie group promos going on right now. Check them out!

SFF Book Bonanza (11 – 17 September)

September Sci-Fi (11 – 17 September)

Science Fiction, Fantasy, & Horror Full Length Novels to Chill and Thrill You! (10 – 30 September)

That does it for now. Thanks for reading!

Joe

Beginning of September Update

It’s September, my favorite month of the year! Maybe I’ll revisit that post in a blast from the past or something. So many reasons why September is awesome.

Things are going well on the writing front. I’ve switched up my daily routine to make more writing time, and it’s working well so far. My alarm goes off at 5:45 am (just after oh-dark-thirty) and I write for about an hour before heading off to my part time job. I’ve found that I tend to write a lot more when I start first thing in the day, so the earlier I can start, the better.

I won’t bore you with the rest of my routine, unless you want me to write a post about it. There’s a bunch of interesting lifestyle tweaks I’ve been trying out, like reading a couple chapters from one of the books I’m reading as soon as I get back from work in the afternoon, in order to refill the creative well and not get caught in a Youtube / general internet trap. Stuff like that.

My current WIP is A Queen in Hiding (Sons of the Starfarers, Book 7) which is proving to be a surprisingly difficult book. It’s definitely one of the weirdest things I’ve ever written, and that’s saying a lot. In Captives in Obscurity, Reva and Isaac get assimilated into a hive mind, and things only get crazier from there.

Sometimes, stories come really easy, almost like they spring fully formed from the mind. Other times, I’ve found I have to throw out almost the entire first draft before I discover the story.

The weird thing is that it has nothing to do with actual book length. Stars of Blood and Glory and Outworlder are totally different lengths, but they both came out almost perfect in the first draft. However, almost all of the Star Wanderers novellas took multiple drafts filled with stuff that had to be cut. Heart of the Nebula took years to finish, and I had to throw out multiple characters and subplots. I struggled for a long time with Genesis Earth, until I decided to throw the whole thing out and start with a blank page. The book was finished less than four weeks later.

The holy grail, of course, is to write a perfect book in four to six weeks (or less!) every time I set off to start a new one. But as awesome as it would be to barf rainbows and poop gold, all of those things sadly remain out of reach.

My goal at this point is to publish the last four Sons of the Starfarers books in 2018, two months apart from each other. Ideally, I’d like to have the next one up for preorder in time for the previous one’s release. It’s going to take some coordination, but I already have all the covers, which leaves just the writing and editing (metadata and formatting doesn’t take more than a day).

Unfortunately, that isn’t going to happen unless I can get A Queen in Hiding ready to go by December. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

Gunslinger to the Galaxy is on hold for now, though so far it’s coming along very nicely. I should be able to pick it up and finish without too much trouble. Edenfall is also on hold, for how much longer I really don’t know. Before the end of 2018, I’d like to publish either the one or the other, but publishing them both is probably a bit of a stretch.

Also, I haven’t even started The Sword Bearer yet (second book in the Twelfth Sword Trilogy), though I have lots of great ideas for it. Since The Sword Keeper is coming out in just a couple weeks, I should probably get on that.

On the publishing side, I dropped the ball a bit in August. It took so much energy to get The Sword Keeper ready for publication that I totally spaced publishing anything. I do have a bunch of shorts that are nearing the end of the submissions gauntlet, and some bundles that can go up too.

I don’t sell many print books, but I want to get print versions of all of my books up, including short stories. That’s going to be an ongoing project for a while. I also want to put up audiobook versions eventually, but it’s going to take some time to get that ball rolling. However, it has moved up the priority list.

That’s pretty much it. So much stuff I want to do, so little time to do it. Time, money, or youth: you can only pick two (and one of them isn’t your choice).

Take care, and thanks for reading!

All of my books and stories, in series order

A friend of mine recently asked me to give him a list of all my books in series order. That was just the kick in the pants I needed to put this page together. For your convenience, I’m putting it up as a blog post too. The links to all the book pages will appear on the series page as soon as I can get around to it.

Joe Vasicek

Gaia Nova

The Gaia Nova books are all mid-sized novels (75k to 110k words). It is a far-future space opera series that takes place in a galactic empire long after Earth has been lost to legend. They can be read in any order, but they take place in the same universe with recurring characters. They are listed in the order in which they were published. Heart of the Nebula is a direct sequel to Bringing Stella Home.

Bringing Stella Home
Desert Stars
Stars of Blood and Glory
Heart of the Nebula
Mercenary Savior (forthcoming)
Empress of the Last Free Stars (forthcoming)

Star Wanderers

The Star Wanderers books are novellas (15k to 35k). They take place in the same universe as Gaia Nova one thousand years earlier. The first four books are linear, while the last four books are parallaxes of the first four, from the point of view of the side characters.

Outworlder
Fidelity
Sacrifice
Homeworld
Dreamweaver
Benefactor
Reproach
Deliverance

The Jeremiah Chronicles (Omnibus 1-4)
Tales of the Far Outworlds (Omnibus 5-6)

Sons of the Starfarers

The Sons of the Starfarer books are short novels (35k to 45k words) that take place in the same universe as Star Wanderers, with a few recurring minor characters from those books. It is a linear series.

Brother in Exile
Comrades in Hope
Strangers in Flight
Friends in Command
Captives in Obscurity
Patriots in Retreat (forthcoming)
A Queen in Hiding (forthcoming)
An Empire in Disarray (forthcoming)
Victors in Liberty (forthcoming)

Sons of the Starfarers (Omnibus 1-3)

Gunslinger Trilogy

These books are all short to mid-sized novels (50k to 90k words). They take place about 40 years in the future, after Earth makes contact with the galactics.

Gunslinger to the Stars
Gunslinger to the Galaxy (forthcoming)
Gunslinger to Earth (forthcoming)

The Twelfth Sword Trilogy

These epic fantasy books are all mid-sized to long novels (85k words and up).

The Sword Keeper (forthcoming)
The Sword Bearer (forthcoming)
The Sword Mistress (forthcoming)

Genesis Earth Trilogy

These are all mid-sized novels (about 70k words) that take place in the near to mid-future.

Genesis Earth
Edenfall (forthcoming)
The Stars of Redemption (forthcoming)

Short Stories and Novelettes

Below are all of my short stories and novelettes, in the order in which they were published. If they first appeared in a magazine or anthology, I’ve included that in parentheses.

Decision LZ1527 (Leading Edge Magazine, December 2009)
Memoirs of a Snowflake
A Hill on Which to Die
Starchild
L’enfer, c’est la Solitude (Perehilion SF, March 2016)
The Curse of the Lifewalker (Sci Phi Journal, June 2016)
The Gettysburg Paradox
Utahraptors at Dawn
Welcome to Condescension
Killing Mister Wilson
My Name is For My Friends
Jane Carter of Earth and the Rescue that Never Was
The Open Source Time Machine

J.M. Wight

Short Stories

Worlds Without Number

Check out the sci-fi story bundle!

Hey guys! Awesome news: there’s a new sci-fi adventure bundle up on storybundle.com, and Bringing Stella Home is one of the bonus novels! This is a big collaboration with a bunch of really great authors, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it. To explain it a little more, here’s the curator Joseph R. Lallo:

The Sci-Fi Adventure Bundle – Curated by Joseph R. Lallo

My history with StoryBundle goes all the way back to the very beginning, literally to the Big Bang (Bundle) that started it all. Since then, both StoryBundle and I have been on a remarkable a journey. I’ve published over a dozen new titles and found my way to the top of charts around the globe. StoryBundle has worked with some of the finest authors in the world and continued to help worthwhile charities. A few things have remained constant. StoryBundle is still dedicated to gathering and distributing hand-picked indie books from talented authors, and we’ve both kept a soft spot in our hearts for the science fiction action and adventure that brought us together in the first place.

When I was asked to curate this bundle, we felt the history of the bundle and that initial sci-fi flavor would be a fine theme to build it around. Over the years I’ve collaborated with some of the superstars of indie publishing as well as some talented up-and-comers, and they each had exciting new projects to offer. Quick and witty dialogue, chilling and realistic settings, deep and philosophical quandaries, and good old fashioned carnage fill these pages from cover to cover. Each one embodies the intrigue and excitement that you can only get from quality science fiction.

This is one of the biggest and best bundles we’ve ever put together. Oasis by New York Times Bestseller Dima Zales will blur the line of utopia and dystopia. The complete Big Sigma Series will take you blazing through the galaxy with a desperate race pilot and a quirky AI. Cyborg Legacy, the latest from the prolific and talented Lindsay Buroker is available for the first time anywhere in this bundle. Tim Ward takes the world of Hugh Howey’s Sand in cinematic and thrilling new directions with Scavenger: Evolution. Tammy Salyer assembles a rugged team of space marines in Contract of Defiance and Contract of Betrayal. Geoffrey Morrison returns to his deep-sea world of devastation and decay with Undersea Atrophia, and that still only scratches the surface. We’ve got brilliant series-starters by Patty Jansen, M. Pax, and Joe Vasicek that are sure to hook you from the first page and never let you go. All told, that’s fifteen titles from nine authors in one colossal bundle.

Every title is a cunningly woven tale of sci-fi mastery. We’ve got aquatic wastelands and complex time loops. There are hard-edge military stories and tales of the struggle to survive. The triumph of the human spirit, the fall of civilizations, and everything in between can all be yours. Just name your own price and dive into the action! – Joseph R. Lallo

And for three weeks only, the Sci-Fi Adventure bundle authors are gifting you with not just one, but TWO free books! WE’ve got The Backworlds by M. Pax, and Ambassador 1: Seeing Red by Patty Jansen. That’s two free books in addition to the 13 already in the bundle!

The initial titles in the Sci-Fi Adventure Bundle (minimum $5 to purchase) are:

Cyborg Legacy by Lindsay Buroker
The Big Sigma Collection Volume 1 by Joseph R. Lallo
Undersea by Geoffrey Morrison
The Spectras Arise Trilogy Book 1: Contract of Defiance by Tammy Salyer
Shifting Reality by Patty Jansen

If you pay more than the bonus price of just $15, you get all five of the regular titles, plus EIGHT more!

Bringing Stella Home by Joe Vasicek
Temporal Contingency by Joseph R. Lallo
Undersea Atrophia by Geoffrey Morrison
Oasis by Dima Zales
Stopover at the Backworlds’ Edge by M. Pax
Ambassador 1A: The Sahara Conspiracy by Patty Jansen
The Spectras Arise Trilogy Book 2: Contract of Betrayal by Tammy Salyer
Scavenger: Evolution by Timothy C. Ward

This bundle is available only for a limited time via http://www.storybundle.com. It allows easy reading on computers, smartphones, and tablets as well as Kindle and other ereaders via file transfer, email, and other methods. You get multiple DRM-free formats (.epub and .mobi) for all books!

It’s also super easy to give the gift of reading with StoryBundle, thanks to our gift cards – which allow you to send someone a code that they can redeem for any future StoryBundle bundle – and timed delivery, which allows you to control exactly when your recipient will get the gift of StoryBundle.

Why StoryBundle? Here are just a few benefits StoryBundle provides.

Get quality reads: We’ve chosen works from excellent authors to bundle together in one convenient package.
Pay what you want (minimum $5): You decide how much these fantastic books are worth. If you can only spare a little, that’s fine! You’ll still get access to a batch of exceptional titles.
Support authors who support DRM-free books: StoryBundle is a platform for authors to get exposure for their works, both for the titles featured in the bundle and for the rest of their catalog. Supporting authors who let you read their books on any device you want—restriction free—will show everyone there’s nothing wrong with ditching DRM.
Give to worthy causes: Bundle buyers have a chance to donate a portion of their proceeds to Mighty Writers and Girls Write Now!
Receive extra books: If you beat the bonus price, you’ll get the bonus books!

StoryBundle was created to give a platform for independent authors to showcase their work, and a source of quality titles for thirsty readers. StoryBundle works with authors to create bundles of ebooks that can be purchased by readers at their desired price. Before starting StoryBundle, Founder Jason Chen covered technology and software as an editor for Gizmodo.com and Lifehacker.com.

For more information, visit our website at storybundle.com, tweet us at @storybundle and like us on Facebook. For press inquiries, please email press@storybundle.com.