Against the Grain, Free Novel
Against the Grain is available to U.S. members for free Wednesday, September 21st through Sunday, September 25th, and heavily discounted for international members. For international members, I set the price as low as possible in all the Amazon international stores. I am unable to set the price to free internationally at this time. To go to the free deal, click here: Amazon Against the Grain
A tyrannical high school principal.
A young anarchist with nothing left to lose.
One way or another, this place is goin’ down.
Matt Moyer is an orphaned teen growing up on a primitive farm in the Pennsylvania coal region. He’s homeschooled by his eccentric and philosophical great-uncle, who’s a stickler for logic, reason, and intellectual honesty. Despite his uncle’s reverence for veracity, inconsistencies arise regarding the old man’s shady past and the teen’s parents.
Through a harrowing sequence of events, Matt is forced to attend a public school. The feral teen finds it difficult to cope with the hypocrisy, propaganda, and misinformation that adults and children so readily accept. Faced with the possibility of expulsion, arrest, and ostracism, he must make a choice. Will he choose the easy lie or the hard truth?
Adult language and content.
- Marketing
- Harvesting and preserving produce from the garden and orchard. Weeding and catching up on maintenance. (This isn’t BS. Denise and I get about half of our food from what we produce on our land)
- Updating the website.
- Updating and improving ad copy and book blurbs.
- Working with the animator on the cartoon. (Also not BS, it looks really cool so far! I think it’s going to be hilarious.)
- Coaching high school football. (Is total BS because it’s a game, but also not because hopefully I make a tiny difference for some of the players I coach.)
- Working on a video and advertising for the permaculture club that I am a co-founder of. (Definitely an unpaid labor of love, but the hope is to transform our community one garden at a time, and to influence local politics to back off our gardens and chickens, or else!)
- Writing a bit on my blog FoodProduction101.com.
- House maintenance. (Filling up salt for water softener, and adding distilled water to our battery back up. We have a solar setup on our roof that feeds a battery bank.)
The Propaganda Project (Nonfiction) is still on time for an October release, and you’ll have a chance to grab a free copy. It contains a lot of inflammatory information that some people might find offensive, but it is all factual, to the best of my ability. I ended up with over a hundred sources and eight hundred footnotes. I’m not sure how it will go over, but you can’t tell the truth without pissing off a few people along the way.
Last month’s release of Initiation was hugely disappointing, and it’s making me question my marketing plan. I may have to change course a bit. It could just be that Initiation is a book that doesn’t fit into a genre. I think it is my best written and most entertaining novel to date. It’s also Denise’s favorite book. Who knows, maybe it will find an audience. Again, I need to work on my marketing plan, specifically the mechanisms that I am using to build this e-mail list. In case you’re wondering, my devious marketing plan is to grow this e-mail list as much as possible.
But Phil, how are you ever going to make a living if you give everything away for free?
How many times do you read a good book, then forget the author’s name? It happens to me all the time. My thinking is that if I can capture readers on this e-mail list, they won’t forget about me, because I’ll be reminding them who I am once a month. Then when they download a book for free, great, it helps me in the rankings. Maybe they never buy anything, but they write some reviews, also great! They might tell a friend about one of my books, or they might not want to wait for a free book, and they might buy some of my other books. They are only three or four bucks.
Anyway, it’s all about exposure. I figure if I work really hard and provide a quality product to many people for free or inexpensive, it will payoff in the end with loyal readers and friends.
In fact, it’s already paying off. Last month, I mentioned that Cesspool could use some more reviews, and almost immediately, reviews appeared. THANK YOU! Reviews are HUGE. Enough about me. Jeez, authors are so self-centered sometimes.
I hope everyone has a great month, and feel free to e-mail me anytime by replying to this e-mail. Seriously. Thank you for subscribing!
Sincerely,
Phil M. Williams
