Authors Electric

On the 4th and 5th of this month I decided to give away my eBook: Anansi - The Trickster Spider ( UK link - US link ). Although numbers downloaded were not huge my book did appear inside the top 50 Amazon books for a period, which I consider a result.   Now I've been asked why do authors give away books?  The answer is simple - marketing. In order to gain loyal followers we need to encourage people to read our books. One of the issues with ePublishing is many believe eBooks are badly written, poorly edited etc. etc. The only way to overcome this preconceived idea is to prove (by giving away books) our books are the best we can create and as good (if not better in some cases) than traditionally published books. By giving away one of my Anansi books I'm hoping I prove my stories are worth paying for and readers will pay for and download my second title Anansi - Trickier Than Ever ( UK link - US link ). However I'm not just relying on giving away entire collect...

Last month I posted a few activity sheets to this blog that compliment my first ebook featuring the fun and naughty character Anansi - The Trickster Spider ( UK Amazon link - US Amazon link ). If you missed them they can be found by clicking here .    In the midst of the mayhem of helping organise our hugely successful ebook giveaway on the 23rd and 24th April I also managed, with a lot of help from my partner Jon to publish a follow on title Anansi - Trickier Than Ever ( UK Amazon link - US Amazon link ). This title includes 8 new fun stories aimed at adults who love to share humorous stories with the children in their lives. The stories featured are: How Anansi missed four parties in one night Anansi invites Turtle to tea How Anansi, Fly and Ant won the sun Anansi and the talking melon Anansi and the moss covered rock Why Anansi has thin, long legs Anansi and the field of corn Anansi and the tug of war This month I wanted to give a few new activity sheet...

When I started to research for my first collection of Anansi stories I listened to and borrowed books from a friend (who listened to Anansi stories as a child in Ghana) and borrowed books from my local libraries. Since publishing this title as an eBook last year it has sold well. So in January 2012 I decided to write a follow on title. Knowing I'd exhausted the local avenues of research I had available to me I decided to discover if I could source old versions of the stories. By old I mean stories in books that were published at least 100 years ago. By using old books I felt I was getting nearer to the original story. It also meant I would be using material that was in the public domain (the copyright had expired). This was extremely important to me as I didn't want to infringe on another writers copyright. I was already aware of the Gutenberg Project , so that was my first port of call. This website contains 38,000 free eBooks on a huge variety of subjects, most of which ar...

'HEAD AND TALES' by Susan Price: cover by Andrew Price           The first story in my new e-book collection of folk-legends, HEAD AND TALES, is ‘ The Boy and The Blacksmith’ .           In short, the story is of a blacksmith challenged to a trial of skill by the King’s goldsmith.  On his way to the trial, the blacksmith meets ‘a raggedy navvy-boy’, who tags along with him.           Before the king and court, the blacksmith makes mundane horse-shoes, a scythe blade and a ploughshare – which will, he claims, ‘feed people’.  The navvy-boy visits the goldsmith’s shop and reports that the goldsmith is making wondrous things – a living apple-tree, a living fish, a corn-wreath, all of gold.           With the boy’s help, the blacksmith creates an iron deer, which kills the gold tree; an iron o...