So thrilled to announce this! Machine of Death is now available in a variety of digital formats. Here’s the full rundown but I’ll just hit the highlights:
• FREE DOWNLOADABLE PDF. You hear that? Grab the whole book for free. We even got two versions of it, depending on the dimensions you prefer. We want you to have it. As we say on the site:
Why are we doing this? Aren’t we worried about hurting our book sales?
In a word: no. You have proven time and again that you are willing to pay for content that you find valuable. You have shown that you are driven to share material that you fall in love with. And we are committed to ensuring that you can experience our work whether you can afford to buy a book or not; whether you live in a country that Amazon ships to or not; whether you have space in your life for a stack of paper or not.
Please, download, read, share and enjoy!
• KINDLE VERSION. Instantly downloadable from Amazon, worldwide. Only $9.99 and available right this second.
• EPUB VERSION. Instantly downloadable via a link here, same price.
• NOOK/iBOOKS versions are in the works; not ready quite yet.
(And remember! You can get a free ebook version — meaning Kindle, ePub, or rich-text — just by forwarding us your order confirmation from a print version! The order can be from Amazon or TopatoCo, it doesn’t matter which. But you have to send it to info at machineofdeath dot net by midnight this Friday! The free-ebook offer will end after Friday.)
• PODCAST. That’s right! We’re recording audio versions of every story in the book and will be releasing them as a free podcast, about once a week. That means you have around thirty-four weeks of free entertainment to look forward to! Many of the stories are read by their authors, while others are read by generous and talented friends and colleagues. The first episode is available now and it’s great.
You can also subscribe to the podcast in iTunes by clicking here: http://www.itunes.com/podcast?id=402077546
Or here’s the direct feed address if you want to pop it into a non-iTunes podcatcher. For iTunes subscriptions, though, please use the link above — that way the subscription goes through iTunes’ servers and lets them know that folks are listening.
I also spoke briefly with American Public Media’s John Moe — one of my favorite radio hosts — on today’s Marketplace Tech Report about our campaign of loading you up with all this free stuff! (The segment with me starts about 3:30 in.)
Thank you for all your support! We couldn’t be more amazingly thrilled and proud of the book itself and everything that’s happened — and continuing to happen — around it. We hope you love it too!
Just as I was despairing that I would have to down load the PDF and fight with it on the iPad, I noticed that the Kindle version has been published. Hurrah. (and you get paid too.)
Have you considered putting the podcast through Podiobooks.com as well? This is exactly the kind of project they love.
@Mike – We have, and we’d love to! It needs to be complete, though, I think? And we haven’t finished all the recordings quite yet. (I may be wrong about that requirement.)
UPDATE: I am wrong about that requirement. Well, we’ve kind of made our bed with the iTunes Store for the moment. We’ll keep in mind moving forward!
I bought the Kindle version, and while I am mostly delighted with it so far, there’s a problem in “Almond”. The [SPOILER]results that are meant to be superimposed aren’t, but are simply displayed one after the other as a compound word, only larger than the surrounding text and in what looks like Courier. I didn’t even realize they were meant to BE superimposed, and was quite confused by the characters’ initial speculations, until I reached the narrator’s little epiphany.[/SPOILER]
Is there any way to fix this? I know Kindle formatting is quite limited. It might have to be an inline image file. Will it allow inline images?
Haven’t bought the book yet, but it’s on my Christmas list. I’m torn as to whether I want to read some of the PDF or wait till I can hold the book in my hands.
actually, the epub format will work fine for the Nook, just needs to be sideloaded.
@ShinyHappyGoth: Thank you so much for the feedback. We’ve corrected the file on our end and are working with Amazon to get it updated in the Kindle store. Hopefully the corrected version can be sent to purchasers automatically using Amazon’s magic, but if any purchaser would like an updated .mobi file to put on their Kindle manually, please email us and we’ll hook you up!
@Jen: We’re trying to load it into the Barnes & Noble e-store, is all.
@David Malki !: Well, I doubt it’ll update all by itself, but hopefully if I remove it from my Kindle and then tell it to download again, I’ll get the fixed copy. I’ll let you know the outcome once it’s up to be tested.