It’s always good to know if you’re suspicious to the government. For a quick diagnosis, take this handy quiz based on my novels We, The Watched and Divided We Fall.
For more dystopian fun, play Watched Sweeper — an HTML5 game about surveillance!
Hey, Adam here — I am super excited to announce the release of my new novel, DIVIDED WE FALL in paperback and eBook. Writing this book was a long labor of love. It was crafted in the late hours after the work day and in spare moments of the weekend. But in my mind I was working on it always, inspired by news about government surveillance and my day job at the time reporting on the U.S. Congress.
This novel brings to an end the journey that Seven began in WE, THE WATCHED. However, for those who have not yet read that story, I encourage you to read these books in any order you like.
This is also a self-published work and I thank you in advance for your support.
The paperback costs $13.99 and the eBook is $3.99. Also, if you buy the print book on Amazon you can get the digital version for free through Kindle MatchBook! Below is a list of stores where you can buy DIVIDED WE FALL. There may be a delay in some stores posting the book — I will update this list as more stores come online.
Paperback
eBook
Even more info is available at the official website for DIVIDED WE FALL — www.wethedivided.com
And here’s a sample of the eBook version, courtesy of Scribd.
Divided We Fall by Adam Bender
3 CommentsThe popularity of the Kindle and tablets like the iPad have driven eBook sales in recent years. Their beautiful screens, light weight and anywhere, anytime store interfaces have convinced readers from around the world that digital books can be just as nice to read as the traditional paper version.
As an author, it’s been great. When I first released We, The Watched online, most people didn’t have eReaders and the best I could expect was for people to read my novel in their web browsers or–maybe, if they had the ink to spare–download the PDF and print it out. Now, with eReaders widespread and my self-published book available on all of the major eBook stores, I have a much wider potential audience than when I began.
Of course, the essential problem with self-publishing remains: how to convince people to give my book a try when I have only a limited marketing budget. Why take a chance spending money on my book when you haven’t heard of it and there’s plenty of other books out there that your friends have been talking about?
It’s a good point. Sure, I could spend all day telling you how great my book is, but why would you take my word for it? I’m no LeVar Burton.
This is why I am so excited about a new wave in eBook publishing: subscriptions!
Following the model of Netflix and Spotify, new sites are popping up promising readers unlimited reading for a small monthly subscription price. These include Oyster and a revamped reading service from Scribd.
Oyster charges $9.95 per month for unlimited reading through an app for the Apple iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Scribd charges $8.99 for unlimited reading through its own app for those Apple devices plus Android phones and tablets. Both have promotions offering the first month for free.
While I’m not sure I read enough books to make this worth it for me personally, I know a lot of people who do. And the ability to discover new books without any risk is pretty cool.
As an author, I am excited. Thanks to some great deals worked out by Smashwords (one of my eBook distributors) We, The Watched is now available on Oyster and will soon be released on Scribd.
This means that readers can try my novel–and read it to the end–and not pay a penny more than the subscription price they would have paid anyway. And I even get about the same royalty as I would have from a traditional sale.
It’s an exciting concept, and I am hoping it is the beginning of a trend. Perhaps in the future, we will see the bigger eBook stores try similar price models. It is certainly a great development for authors and one that will make an even better business case for going self-published.
Leave a CommentTo everyone waiting for the sequel to my dystopian novel, We, The Watched, I thought I’d provide an update with a few juicy details.
First of all, the title is Divided We Fall. I’ve been couching that as the “tentative title” for a while now, but it’s been that for long enough now that it’s unlikely to change. Besides cleverly bringing the word “We” back into the title, the title nicely captures two major elements of the story — the made-up nation’s masochistic conflict between “Patriots” and “Heretics,” and the complicated relationship between our hero Seven and the lover from his former life. Originally I was calling the sequel “The War Comes Home,” but I decided that was a bit too literal.
Here’s some trivia for you: The original tentative name for We, The Watched was “Ignited.”
Divided We Fall is divided into two parts. Each is about the same length or a little shorter than the entirety of We, The Watched. I’ve completed writing Part One and am a few chapters into Part Two. I’m planning this as the conclusion of the Seven storyline, though I’m not writing off the possibility of coming back to this world later.
Of course, if you haven’t read We, The Watched yet, you’re missing out. You can sample the first few chapters of the Kindle, Nook, iPad and PC-compatible eBook for free at Smashwords and other popular eBook stores. If you like what you read, you can get the whole thing for only $2.99 (about the price of a Starbucks coffee).
Update (4/28): We, The Watched is featured today on NewBookJournal.com!
2 CommentsI entered WE, THE WATCHED for Amazon.com’s annual Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award (ABNA) for unpublished and self-published novels. The grand prize is a publishing contract with Penguin, including a $15,000 advance. So, yeah, wish me luck.
If telecommunications law is more your thing, you may be interested to know I recently moderated a panel about the new Congress and a potential rewrite of the Telecom Act. The panel included executives from USTelecom, NTCA, CompTel and Qwest. While I’m not sure I like seeing myself on tape, I’ve included the video of the full event below. Enjoy…or at least learn.
Broadband Breakfast: Will Congress Reopen the 1996 Telecommunications Act? from Broadband Breakfast on Vimeo.
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