Karavansara

East of Constantinople, West of Shanghai


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Birthday book haul, a preview: going Baroque

At the end of May I am in the habit of celebrating my birthday – because life cycles, growing older and wiser, that sort of stuff.
I usually celebrate with a fine dinner (details as soon as we’ve settled for a menu), and by spending an inordinate amount of money in books and ebooks.
This year I started early, because special offers and massive discounts don’t wait for the aforementioned cycles.
So yes, it’s still two weeks away, but I went and bought a few ebooks “for my birthday”.

And right now I’ve just finished cleaning up and setting straight my old Kindle reader, because one of the birthday books is the complete Baroque Cycle, by Neal Stephenson.
All the 3500 pages of it.

Neal Stephenson and Peter F. Hamilton are, to me, the best reason to invest in an e-reader: the guys write great books, but also, alas, BIG books. They don’t seem to be able to keep it under 1000 pages.
This means their books, while being a lot of fun, are also heavy, expensive, and require a lot of shelf space.
And believe me, I’ve fallen asleep while reading Hamilton’s Great North Road, and it hurt.

So, I spent an hour looking for online how-tos and stuff, and breathed new life in my old Kindle, and then loaded the 4 mega file of the Baroque books.
It will be a pleasant summer night read.


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Free Adventurers Weekend

While of limited interest for my English-speaking readers, here’s news worth spreading: starting tomorrow, the 13th of September, at 00 am, Pacific Standard Time (7 am GMT), and for the whole weekend, my pulp-non-fiction ebook, Avventurieri sul Crocevia del Mondo (Italian Edition), will be available for free on Amazon worldwide.
The Free Adventurers Weekend ends on September the 15th, at midnight PST.


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Tyrannosaurus Tex

ttexcover2smallI’m happy to announce that my somewhat steampunkish short story, Tyrannosaurus Tex, is now available, in English, through Amazon.

Because in spite of all the stuffed shirts in Harvard and Chicago and Konigsberg, the medicine men in the hills, the books and articles and all the rest of the stories, the Age of Reptiles ended on the twenty-ninth of October, 1879, when the last of the cursed beasts died in Moderation, Arizona Territory, shot in the forehead with a forty-four bullet in a regular duel.
Yessir.
I should know.
I was there.

The true story of how the Age of Reptiles ended – and How the West was Won – Tyrannosaurus Tex is a 20 pages, DRM-free ebook, and it goes for 99 cents – or the equivalent in your currency of choice.

 


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Ebook file formats

Ok, let’s do a request.

Friend allsho wrote

Maybe in one of your next posts you might tell us why you keep your options open about mobi and epub and how you choose from time to time between them.

Nice question.

I’ll begin by saying that, as a writer, my purpose is reaching the widest audience possible among those parties that might be interested in what I write.
The last bit is – to me – essential, as I do not believe in bombing the whole world with my ebooks, as I know the whole world is not interested in what I do.
I prefer to focus my energies and meagre resources on “my readers”, while keeping my options open.

So far, it seems to work.
My ebooks have a good enough ciurculation – being in Italian and all that, I can claim a few thousand copies for a total of eight titles, four non fiction and four fiction.
Circulation depends on publicity, platform and – especially for small acts like mine – file format.

So, let’s talk formats. Continue reading