Last week I shared Apple’s Free Series Starters sale (which is still going) and mentioned how indie authors have to mind their P’s & Q’s with the online stores. It’s easy to get suspended or banned when the house always wins. It’s hard to make money when the house skims quite a bit off the top.

So, I’m always looking for opportunities to sell directly to readers. Selling books from my store means I control my own destiny and, most important, know who’s buying my books! None of the online stores supply authors with information about their readers.

I can understand why some readers might actually like that. But Amazon, Apple, Kobo, etc. could offer buyers a checkbox allowing them if they’d like to join an author’s email list would be nice. But that’s a fantasy; they want to control everything.

So I jumped at the chance to join Buy Direct from Authors when I discovered it a few weeks back. They offer a bunch of benefits for indies, including their site:

You can use this place to search for authors by name or genre and head to the stores for ebooks, physical books, and audiobooks.

Check it out!

Free Fantasy & Science Fiction

It’s time for another collection of free fantasy and science books. I lost count at around thirty books over there, but I can highlight one of them:

C. Gockel’s I Bring the Fire series features a delightful version of everyone’s favorite trickster, Loki. I enjoyed that seriously a lot, and here’s the first book for free. Check it out, and the rest of this huge collection of SF&F!