FAQs
Here you will find a list of FAQs. Here, for the sake of the very bored, we have listed some of the very many questions we get asked for your continued bemusement. Please feel free to email or comment with any of your queries, thoughts or concerns. Until then, here are the top answers to the very best questions.
Why are you giving away books for free?
Why not? The vast majority of readers never pay to read books. Paperback books are generally shared around among friends and family, none of whom pay to read them. Even more people borrow them from sources that don’t charge, such as libraries. None of this hurts writers as we rely on generating a following in the hope of developing sufficient trust that people are willing to give our future work a try. Authors and writers make a very small amount of money, if any, from our work. We’re used to not earning much from our lifetime investment in mastering the craft.
Do we have to create an account or sign in to get a free copy of your book?
No. There’s no signup involved. If we did include any means to caputure your email details for our marketing, we would only end up annoying you and our communications would end up in your spam filters. Our audience knows where we are when they want to come and read a free book and we are always adding something fun to read. We don’t intend to chase anyone or demand anything. It never works.
What is Edgeverse and Edgecafe?
Edgeverse is the personal site of Jack and Seth. It’s where we do our own thing without the need to remain professional and entirely focused on publishing. Check us out there to find out what we’re interested in. Go to Edgecafe to find out what we do that’s completely unrelated to writing. Spoilers – it involves such a horrendous amount of caffeine that we built a coffee shop.
What's the brickverse?
All the books written by A.P. Atkinson (Jack) and Seth Godwynn are set in a universe that only exists in the imagination of a sentient brick – or not. But, one thing we are sure about is that all the books exist in one cohesive universe and the characters frequently reference each other.
What do you mean by 'better than free'?
One of the concepts we believe in is the advertising model known as ‘better than free’. It’s not a new idea, although a lot of people find it quite confusing, at first. It means that although something is free, it’s still worth buying, if buying it means that you get a better deal by doing so. This has existed for a very long time. Radio stations played songs and paid nothing to the artists that created them. The musicians understood that the airplay and the exposure they earned helped to sell their albums and live performances. It’s a similar story when people can watch a movie on TV but still prefer to buy a boxset. In both of these examples, people have understood that buying the better version gives them something they can’t get by enjoying the free version. It might be simply the convenience of owning a copy of the music so that you can play it whenever you choose, of it might be that you get bonus material. But, in all cases, there is a better option than getting it for nothing.
With our books, the free option is fairly basic. You can download a watermarked PDF or Epub version. It has our logo embedded in it and no additional material. Epub, while popular, does tend to be buggy. You can cheaply buy a better, more convenient version of our work or support us with a tip. We appreciate all the support we get.
Do other authors submit their work to the site?
Yes. We have ‘The World About Turns’ by the greatest poet of our generation, ‘Al Warcock’ and a young-adult book by new author, Carolina Sorn. We are open to hosting free works from other independent authors who agree with our philosophy and are looking to grow their audience.
I'm an author. What do I need to do to submit my work?
Get in touch and let us know about yourself. In order to be considered, you must be an author who is willing to have a complete novel released without charge to our audience and believe in free-speech. You must also be meeting a professional writing standard. Writing is an organic and human process and we don’t expect any work of writing to be absolutely perfect but we do expect it to conform to grammatical standards and be an original, well-written piece of work. Put simply, if we would read it, we will consider publishing it.
Isn't free expression just an excuse to be mean to people?
Not at all, it’s an essential basic standard of freedom that we should all aspire to. Our work doesn’t deliberately victimise anyone and would have been considered quite liberal a few decades ago. But now, some of the concepts expressed in literature are considered ‘problematic’ and we believe that’s unacceptable. We want to write freely, expressing ourselves about the ideas that interest us. We will not compromise on our right to speak our own minds.
What genres do you write in?
We will publish work in almost any genre. The Edgeverse books are generally written with a science-fiction leaning but we have also written comedy, horror, drama and other kinds of stories. We don’t have any problem with people’s preferences, we will consider publishing anything that is fit to publish.