His Own Mad Demons available on kindle

Copies of my collection of four long stories and a novelette, His Own Mad Demons, published by Hazardous Press are now available as kindle ebooks via Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk.

Print versions should be available shortly.

Product Description

David A. Riley’s first professionally published story was in the 11th Pan Book of Horror in 1970. Since then, he has been published in numerous anthologies from ROC Books, DAW Books, Robinson Books, Corgi Books, Doubleday, Playboy Paperbacks, and Sphere. Two recent notable anthologies in which he has appeared are The Century’s Best Horror Fiction, from Cemetery Dance, and Otto Penzler’s Zombies! Zombies! Zombies!, from Vintage Books.

In 1995, David and his wife Linden edited and published Beyond, a fantasy/SF magazine. His stories have been published in magazines such as Aboriginal Science Fiction, Dark Discoveries, Fear, Fantasy Tales, Whispers and World of Horror.

His Own Mad Demons contains his stories "Lock-In", "The Worst of All Possible Places", "The Fragile Mask on His Face", "Their Own Mad Demons", and "The True Spirit".

Goblin Mire - new cover, etc

I've had my fantasy novel Goblin Mire available as an ebook through Renaissance eBooks for about four and a half years, but it has not done very well. Part of this, I am sure, is because of the awful amateurish cover which my publisher slapped on it.

On his own initiative Joe Young produced an alternative cover, which I believe is considerably better and which I am really pleased with. As a result, I have emailed Renaissance eBooks to cancel my contract with them, so I can go through the novel and revise it before making it available again, probably through Amazon, as an ebook and a POD paperback, using Joe's cover.

Hopefully this time it will have more success.

This is Joe's cover:

Novel to be published

Self Publishing and E-Books

There is quite a lively debate on the BFS Forum over the small press, self publishing, etc.

One excellent idea put forward was the suggestion that an ideal array of formats for a book to be brought out in the small presses would be a limited hardback edition for collectors (or keen fans of the writer) of 100-150 numbered copies, and a paperback version published via POD, which will therefore be available constantly at a reasonable price, topped off with a e-book version. Using the same cover artwork, etc., this would reduce the overall costs and at least make the book as fully available as possible.

The discussion has now gone on to the issue of distribution and sales - an important matter for anyone spending serious money. And there's no doubt but that this does demand serious work by anyone concerned, including the writer.

Self Publishing and E-Books - Further

There's been a recent debate on the Horror Writers Association boards about self publishing and POD - something that was anathema there until recently. How times are changing!

Anyway, this was my contribution to the debate:

"I have begun to believe that certainly with collections of short stories POD may be the only answer for most writers, since mainstream publishers have little interest in short story collections for anyone outside a small circle of big name writers. The only alternative till recently has been to go to small presses for these, but with so many unreliable small presses around, I wonder whether most writers would be better off turning to POD instead. At least then they have full control over what their collection looks like - and will certainly collect more royalties from its sale."