“What does it mean to be alive today?”
That question can be an excellent inspiration for fiction—and that’s as true now as it has been in the past. Tomely, an online ebookstore platform for indie publishers and authors, currently has a pay-what-you-want deal for their Zeitgeisty Books Bundle.
The bundle includes:
- These Days by Jack Cheng
- So Say the Waiters (episodes 1-5) by Justin Sirois
- Annabel Scheme by Robin Sloan
- Rontel by Sam Pink
- Lost at the Con by Bryan Young
If you pay at least $10, you’ll also get Treknology by Justin MacLachlan and Man Against the Future by Bryan Young. And there’s also a “social media bonus” that you get if you tweet or post about the bundle on Facebook: Hand Made High Tech, a book of essays about the future of writing and reading in a future tilted towards the digital edited by Simon Groth. The books are DRM-free, and by default 10% of each sale goes to the Australian Literacy and Numeracy Foundation.
I mentioned These Days when it was part of the 24-Hour Bookclub, and I was also a fan of Robin Sloan’s Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore, so I’m interested to see what else he has written. I’m not familiar with the other authors in the bundle, but I’m willing to give it a shot—it’s about $45 worth of books purchased separately and, hey, you can pay whatever you like! Just remember that a good portion of your payment goes directly to the writers and publishers, so be generous!
And if you’re an indie writer yourself, you might give Tomely itself a closer look. Amazon is probably the 900-pound gorilla when it comes to self-publishing ebooks, but there are some more sites getting in on the action. Here’s a description of Tomely from co-founder Connor O’Brien:
Tomely is a next-gen ebookstore platform for indie publishers and authors. (If you’re familiar with Bandcamp, it’s kind of like that, but for ebooks). A few points of difference: Tomely facilitates direct payments between readers and authors/publishers, and is linked to a bunch of platforms so readers can send purchased DRM-free books to Readmill, their Kindle, or pretty much any ereader. Tomely also has a bunch of tools that let authors/publishers manage their own promotions, generate pay-with-a-tweet-style discounts, and integrate their bookstore into their existing blog or site. Last thing that’s kinda silly and kinda neat is our Infinite Book, which mashes up snippets of everything uploaded to Tomely and displays them at random on an endless page… it’s kinda like Horse Ebooks, but for great independent writing. We’re positioning Tomely as the digital equivalent of your archetypal friendly indie bookstore.
Visit Tomely for more about the Zeitgeisty Books Bundle. The deal lasts until July 29.
