Sorry Borders, you lost me a while ago.

When you first opened up in out area, I Loved you. Unlike B&N, you carried small press and specialty Books. I bought my “Letters of H.P.Lovecraft” from you. I discovered Borderlands and Crossroads press. While I browsed the Horror and Sci-Fi sections, My family spent time in the Videos and the well stocked Children’s area.

But you began to abuse the relationship. Our two local Indie bookshops closed under pressure from the two behemoths. That wasn’t unusual. It was the 90s. Competing big chain drugstores were building stores on opposite corners, driving out mom and pops. Big Box stores were driving the old, established department stores out of business. The malls began to struggle as Anchor stores that had been there for a generation changed hands and names. Strouss’s became Kauffmans became Higbees became Macy’s.

And like an abuser you made promises you couldn’t keep. “See?” you said. “I’ll always have Arkham House. Look at this small Press Digest. Have you ever seen it anywhere else? Could Twice-Loved Books ever stock all these RPGs?”

And Like a fool I gave in. It was an abusive relationship. I’d go in, and not only was the horror section shrunk, but the shelves that had it were gone. Aisles widened to make it look like you were still fully stocked. When the Entertainment superstore concept failed and CDs and DVDs went away, you didn’t even bother. The area was replaced with stacks of Close-outs, coffee table books no one wanted in the first place, no marked down to $9.99.

My Loyalty card began to feel like an albatross. I paid good money and my discount was now based on points. Or was it? I don’t know. I wanted out of the relationship. I began to avoid you, only stopping in at christmas. And you made me apologize for my behavior. I’m sorry, I said. I didn’t mean to be gone so long, but…

That ended, what? Two years ago? I remember the final event. We just stopped by the old place after a show. It was sad. You were a shell of your former self. The child went back to the kids section. Books were shoved into shelves. It was obvious no one had bought anything in a good long while. Inventory kept coming in, there was no place to put it. Alex was overwhelmed. For the first time in her life, she didn’t want to look for a book. The rest of the store was as bad. Section were either bare, or overstocked. The overstock was Teen Vampires, Old calendars, Anime, Out dated texts. The Bare shelves were gifts, fiction, magazines.

I Wasn’t sad to see you go. You had destroyed my relationships with other, better stores. Twice-Loved Books was gone, out of my life forever. The Book worm, Gone. Hot Shots, the Hobby store where I got all my Miskatonic University shirts, couldn’t compete. Perhaps some of them will come back in some form. I can’t support a store on my own buying my small magazines and horror books. But maybe I’m not as alone as I feel.

You left me with one Bookstore- B&N, your twin brother. Like you, they drove the others away. Like you, they have stopped carrying the unique items the older stores carried. They never had as much personality as you in your heyday. But they could see the writing on the wall and changed to keep us there.

I’m not ready to commit to them: You’ve hurt me too much. But they’re the only relationship I’ve got. For that, I can never forgive you.

I’m on reddit and this post catches my eye: A free book!

Yeah, Right I think. Another first draft, random pass aspiring teenager lloking for free promotion. But I click on it anyway. And am Pleasantly Surprised. There’s the usual appeal: I just finished, Don’t know anything, want to see if anyone likes it here try the links.  But the writer has a compelling voice. Self-effacing without being shy. And there’s no typos, misspellings or grammar errors in the post. Good Signs.

So I take the chance and click on the Google Books link. Five pages in and I’ve bought the Kindle Copy. Ten pages in and I message the author- I’d like to try to help market this book. Really. Stephen is good. Really good. I’m jealous. I’m jealous of his drive. I’m jealous of his voice and I’m jealous of his talent. Download the free copy and see if you don’t agree. Is it perfect? No.  It probably could use a close line edit. It’s obviously the work of a young writer honing his craft. And Stephen seems to have a thing against dialogue tags. Seriously, a few “saids” would’ve helped. But it’s interesting and fun.  If you like it, please retweet this special guest post and buy Abraham on Kindle or Smashwords. You really need to support this author. He’s that good.

Stephen was gracious enough to provide the following introduction:

Stephen Marshall on “Abraham”

After a few months of driving my fingers into a keyboard, cocooned in soft drink cans and wary of what trees might do after such a great leave of absence, I realized I had written a novel. This is actually not at all what happened (I think), but it might as well have been. I stared at the screen before me, at my beautiful abomination.

What the hell was I supposed to do now?

So I did a bit of research about getting my book, Abraham, out into the open. And surprisingly enough, I learned things. Unfortunate things. Terrible, awful, just-kidding-it’s-way-more-than-unfortunate things. Agents, as it turns out, take months to respond. Publishers are about the same. Assuming that each party ingests my book and farts pure happiness, the whole shebang would likely take over a year.

A year.

That soaked in me for about as long as the average person lets a flame soak into them. In my wonderful world of youth, a year is something just shy of an eternity. Like hell, I thought to myself while beating my chest and other choice body parts, am I going to wait a year. I have things to do. I don’t know what those things are, but by golly I’m going to have some if anyone asks. Or maybe I was lazy. I forget.

Two months passed while I did, ahem, “stuff”. Youthful things occurred. I put Abraham up on Google Books and Amazon, but I hadn’t done anything substantial with it save anxious glances here and there to make sure it didn’t read like a sixth-grader’s report on hurricanes. I made one post on the Amazon forums during this time and realized that I was pouring a single bottle of possibly-okay water into an ocean of piss. Outside of telling friends and family, I had essentially told no-one. It was out there. People could read it. I was busy with school (i.e. doing almost nothing) at the time, so I thought, eh. I’ll deal with it later.

Later, like the deathward knell, has arrived.

So I’ve been throwing Abraham around now. Working on getting seen, maybe getting some sales, maybe (maybe) getting the eye of a publisher. I made a post on Reddit which was well-received and generously upvoted to prominence for a few ego-inflating days. People bought it, and I received quite a few compliments. Criticisms too. They’re interesting, actually. People who should be doing important things, like sleeping, or going to rehab, or not typing, are ever-so-eager to offer advice on the whole book after reading only a single chapter. I suppose I appreciate the effort: you really wanted me to know about how the first chapter basically “reads funny, and not like ha-ha”. That sort of determination is endearing, in a Forrest Gump kind of way.

Self-publishing has been fun, if initially depressing (the slag-hordes of Amazon must be seen to be believed). I enjoy it. And seriously, I appreciate any feedback. If it’s good, really good, I may make an edit or two. If you’ve made it this far, thanks! You can read Abraham for free on Google Books, because I want you to like what you purchase! Now buy the goddamn book.

Bio: Stephen Marshall is a student from Kansas who fancies himself a writer. His stubborn and generally terrible personality has led to people calling him “charming”, among other things. When Stephen is not writing, Stephen is busy playing video games or masturbating. He reads too, apparently. Stephen is also perturbed by the standard use of third person in Bios, or when people take him too seriously, which happens frequently. Stephen now feels uncomfortable.

Links:

Amazon Kindle: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OR1QZ8

Google Books: http://books.google.com/books?id=UA_gH6agil0C&lpg=PP1&pg=PP1#v=onepage&q&f=false

Smashwords: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/57408

PRLog (Press Release)Nov 08, 2010 – If you have considered getting into publishing, maybe strongly consider online publishing, in the form of ebook creation.

Recent statistics show that sales of ebooks, or electronic books as they are offer referred, are quickly on the rise with around $996 million in sales by the end of 2010.

Considering only around 7% of online adults actually read ebooks, that’s still huge, and the potential to grow.
If we think back not so long ago to the digital music revolution and how quickly it expanded, plus the fact that we already have major companies such as Apple and Amazon already creating the hardware to read ebooks on, the ebook revolution is set to boom.

People who own a Kindle , e-reader or an iPad already read around 60% of their books digitally, and that trend will continue as the devices become more affordable.

And when you think of the main advantages of ebooks vs print you can see why:

Print is dead. Electronic is alive!

A collection of the “best of the best” science fiction stories published in 2009 by current and emerging masters of the genre. In “Erosion,” by Ian Creasey, a man tests the limits of his exo-suit prior to leaving a dying Earth. In “As Women Fight,” by Sara Genge, a hunter, in a society of body-switchers, has no time to train for a fight to inhabit his wife’s body. In “A Story, with Beans,” by Steven Gould, the role of religion in a dystopian future plagued with metal-eating bugs is considered. In “Events Preceding the Helvetican Renaissance,” by John Kessel, a monk, in the far future, steals the only copy of a set of plays from a repressive regime and uses this loot to free his people. In “On the Human Plan,” by Jay Lake, a mysterious alien visits a far-future, dying Earth in search of the death of Death. In “Crimes and Glory,” by Paul McAuley, set in the author’s Jackaroo sequence, a detective chases a thief to recover alien technology (more…)

As expected, samples for Kindle on the web are starting to show up in searches. For all the Independent publishers and authors out there, here’sThe One Hour Guide to Self-Publishing: Straight Talk For Fiction & Nonfiction Writers About Producing & Marketing Your Own Books
“, a quick (And I do mean quick) guide to getting your book published as professionally as you can.