Did I mention my new novel was available in ebook form? And for a dollar ninety-nine ! Yep! A whole penny less than two dollars! That’s roughly the price of half-a-pack of cigarettes and it is considerably better for you–unless you try to smoke it, in which case I’m guessing inhaling all the plastics and what not in your ereader would be pretty bad for your lungs as well.

Also, I should point out, it is next to impossible to buy only half-a-pack of cigarettes anywhere, so don’t waste you time, money and health trying. Just buy my book. For one dollar and ninety-nine cents.

But why is my new novel (New Hope for Small Men—available here )  only in ebook form? you ask or I imagine you asking in order to move this article forward. Well for a number of reasons, really, chief among them being: because I could, followed closely by chief reason number two: because I had to.

As surprising as it might be to you, it would seem that the flesh and blood world of ink and paper publishing was not all  that interested in a 32544 word novel about a very short man who lives in an efficiency and works at the call center of a cable company. Yes. Digest this sad fact about the current state of the publishing industry for a moment: nobody has been waiting with bated breath for the next great short novel whose title was cadged from a Penis Enlargement ad back in the 80s . This may be a sign of our cultural decline, for all of you who missed the earlier sign of Snooki being a best selling novelist.

But can I blame the publishing world? Can I resent a business for wanting to make sound business decisions? Can I hold it against the industry for preferring to peddle teenage vampires in love to an eager and paying audience rather than trying to convince consumers to purchase a smallish novel that uses the F-word 19 times within the first two paragraphs and yet contains next to no actual sex within its subsequent 175 or so pages?

Strangely enough, yes I can. I blame them completely. I mutter “cowards” under my breath every time I see a best seller list. I throw eggs at books stores (except the ones that carried my first two novels—still available at Amazon for prices as depressingly  low as 1 cent!)  I write blistering letters to Dean Koontz and James Patterson that I send via incontinent carrier pigeon.

But along with these completely healthy coping mechanisms, I have have also decided to publish my book in ebook form (1.99! Available now!) because it is relatively easy and virtually free to do so and I am nothing if not both lazy and cheap.

More than all this, though—or very nearly as much—there is something completely liberating about the idea of being able to sell ones book directly to the reading public without the filter of market concerns and also without having to resort to making these sales out of the trunk of a car parked in the far corner of the neighborhood Piggly Wiggly parking lot.

It is indeed, a brave new world, and while it might be a world soon glutted with the works of authors who maybe should have had something standing between them and the general public,  for these fleeting moments in history, it is a heady time of promise and excitement. The author, for a moment, controls his fate. And my book, if I have not mentioned it, is avaialable in all ebook forms for the low, low price of 1.99. That’s less than half a pack of cigarettes. And what is more, it is full flavored and completely unfiltered.

About the Author

Grant Bailie

Grant Bailie is the author of the novels Cloud 8 and Mortarville, as well as numerous stories online and in print. His latest novel, New Hope for Small Men is available in e-book form under the auspices of Necessary Fiction, where it was first serialized. His book TomorrowLand--an illustrated novel of sorts--is due out in the fall through Red Giant Books Mr. Bailie currently lives in Lakewood, Ohio, which is a stone’s throw from Cleveland. He knows this because sometimes the people in Cleveland throw stones.

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