The End is Here!

Published: May 12, 2020 / Updated: June 13, 2020 Rob Steiner books, e-readers, ebooks, Kindle, Natta Magus, Nook, novels, Rome

Natta MagusNo, not the end of handshaking. It’s the end of the Journals of Natta Magus! Been a long time coming, but NATTA MAGUS, the fourth and final book in the series, is now published.

Natta has seen and done a lot in ancient Rome after he got stuck there, but nothing has prepared him for the decision he must face in this last book.

Here’s the blurb:

Natta Magus has a chance to do the one thing he’s wanted since he got stuck in ancient Rome: Go back home to 21st century Detroit.

But there’s a catch. He must do one last job for Octavian Caesar Augustus. The same tyrant a-hole who had him kidnapped from Carthage where he was celebrating with his friends and new girlfriend, Helva Ptolemy. A rogue Roman agent is accumulating magical weapons from the 21st century to overthrow Augustus and start a new Roman civil war. Augustus wants Natta to guide a team of Praetorians into modern Detroit and bring the traitor back to Rome for justice.

If Natta refuses, he never gets the chance to go home, and Rome descends into a brutal civil war fought with 21st century magics. If he accepts, he can go home…but he’ll never again see the people in Rome he’s come to love.

In the final chapter of the Journals of Natta Magus series, Natta must decide where he truly belongs.

NATTA MAGUS is available on Kindle and all major ebook retailers for $4.99, and in trade paperback for $12.99.

Get it on Kindle | Get it on EPUB | Get the trade paperback

Download All Four Books in One

Now that the series is ended, you can get all four volumes (CITIZEN MAGUS, SHADOW MAGUS, WOUNDED MAGUS, and NATTA MAGUS) in one ebook for $9.99 on Amazon Kindle and all major ebook retailers.

Get it on Kindle | Get it on EPUB

ZERVAKAN – Published!

February 14, 2013 Rob Steiner books, e-readers, ebooks, free stuff, Kindle, novels, ZERVAKAN

It’s been a long time coming, but my latest fantasy novel, ZERVAKAN, is now published.  It’s a story about faith versus science: Are they mutually exclusive, or two sides of the same coin?

Here’s the summary:

Reason and science gave the Recindian Compact wonders like steam engines, telegraphs, and gunpowder. The world had order. It made sense.

Until one night two multi-colored bands of light split the sky, spanning the horizons like rings around the planet. Soon after, unnatural storms assaulted the Compact’s cities. Whispers spread of ghoulish creatures haunting Compact forests. And then a message from a legendary race called the Mystics – “ally with us to fight the growing evil, or we all perish.”

The Compact’s desperate leaders turn to disgraced history professor Taran Abraeu. Taran spent years searching in vain for the ancient healing magic of the Mystics to save his dying daughter. His family and colleagues once mocked him. Now his research might save them.

When the Compact asks Taran to accompany a secret delegation to the Mystic homeland, he is swept up in an adventure that forces him to fight a horrifying enemy that only he among all his people can comprehend.

ZERVAKAN is available in print and eBook ($1.99 eBooks for a limited time!).

Paperback | Kindle | Nook | Apple iBooks | Smashwords

Want a free eBook? Go to Smashwords.com, enter the coupon code FV93C, and then download your preferred format. All I ask in return is an honest review on Amazon. Reviews are gold to authors, and even just a few lines helps.

Prefer print? How about a coupon for $6 off the price of the print version? Go to CreateSpace.com and enter the coupon code PCW5M8Y3 upon purchase. Same deal as with the free eBook — just write an honest review on Amazon.

Hope you all enjoy the book.

Ebook Pricing Wars: Episode 1,209,843

February 16, 2012 Rob Steiner e-readers, ebooks, Kindle, Nook, THE LAST KEY, writing

Zoe Winters wrote a thoughtful and reasoned post on ebook pricing yesterday that’s worth the read for all you indie publishers struggling with the pricing question. An excerpt:

I am bolding this next part because if you don’t hear any of the rest of this, please hear this:

99 cent and free ebooks are not glutting the ebook market. They are glutting the BARGAIN ebook market.

If you are selling to that market or you are a reader in that market, it’s very easy to imagine it’s the only market and OMG we all have to price at 99 cents because other people are MAKING US with their low-priced ebooks.

Not so.

My own experience corroborates Zoe here. I almost fell into this trap last year when I considered tinkering with the price of my fantasy novel, THE LAST KEY.

Should I go high or should I go low?

If I go high, I thought, why would anyone pay $4.99 for my book with all the 99-cent/free books out there?

But then I wondered, If I go low, how would anyone notice my book with all the 99-cent/free books out there?

I decided to go high and priced THE LAST KEY at $4.99 (a common price-point for novels with 75,000+ words). Since I did that in December, my sales rates have…stayed the same.

And that’s good. It means I’m getting the same number of sales and making more money than when the book was priced lower. I may not be tapping into the BARGAIN market, but I am getting noticed by a different market. I like to think it’s the LOVERS OF HIGH QUALITY FANTASY market…

Thinking of KDP Select? Read the fine print…

Published: December 8, 2011 / Updated: December 10, 2011 Rob Steiner e-readers, ebooks, Kindle, writing

Amazon just gave a big fat middle-finger to all the other ebook stores out there with the announcement of their KDP Select program. It sounds great:

KDP Select gives you access to a whole new source of royalties and readers – you not only benefit from a new way of making money, but you also get the chance to reach even more readers by getting your book in front of a growing number of US Amazon Prime customers: readers and future fans of your books that you may have not had a chance to reach before! Additionally, the ability to offer your book for free will help expand your worldwide reader base.

But as with all things that “sound great,” you need to read the fine print:

1 Exclusivity. When you include a Digital Book in KDP Select, you give us the exclusive right to sell and distribute your Digital Book in digital format while your book is in KDP Select. During this period of exclusivity, you cannot sell or distribute, or give anyone else the right to sell or distribute, your Digital Book (or content that is reasonably likely to compete commercially with your Digital Book, diminish its value, or be confused with it), in digital format in any territory where you have rights.

In other words, if you also published your ebook on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iBooks, etc., you’ll have to remove it from those sites while you’re in the KDP Select program.

Now this is a brand new program, so I don’t pretend to know if placing my ebooks in it is worth the lost sales from the other online bookstores I use. I’ll wait for all the first-adopters to be my guinea pigs.

But the program’s costs/benefits aren’t the most interesting thing about it to me.

What’s interesting is that KDP Select’s “Exclusivity” clause means Amazon has just declared war on every other ebook store. Now authors will have to think about whether their ebooks will get more exposure/sales from KDP Select’s — admittedly — large marketing mega-phone, or if they’ll do better on the virtual shelves of multiple ebook stores. Many authors will choose KDP Select and give up placing their ebooks elsewhere.

The other ebook stores must respond to this. They have no choice. Whatever they do, though, it’ll only benefit authors. They’re fighting over us and want to lure us into their stores with the better deal. Without authors, they have no product to sell.

Feels nice to be fought over.

Gutenberg’s toy will never take off…

Published: March 26, 2010 / Updated: April 8, 2010 Rob Steiner e-readers, Kindle

Peter Suderman of Reason Magazine says don’t fear the e-reader. They may be imperfect today, but so was the printed book back in Gutenberg’s day:

Kindles and other e-readers are imperfect devices, but there’s no denying they have touched a consumer nerve. Unlike the iPod, the portable music device to which they are often compared, the e-readers we’ve seen so far aren’t so much a revolution as the proof of concept for one that may eventually happen. The true value of e-readers isn’t what they’re doing now so much as how they’ve opened up the public imagination to rethinking the way we read.

[The printed book] too was initially imperfect. Elaborate illustrations had to be tossed aside, as did many of the personal flourishes that scribes put on their works. But the advantages of mass production won out and quickly made printed books a fixture of middle-class life. These days it’s a cliché to say that the printed book’s ability to store and transmit information cheaply changed the world. But the cliché is true.

E-readers are only going to get better, cheaper, and more widely used. I love my Kindle and I love my printed books, but my 3-year-old daughter will someday look at my shelves full of dead trees and see collector’s items.