To celebrate a great partnership, Thomas & Mercer and I are coordinating a limited-time sale of all my titles. For three days only, every one of my stories except The Detachment—self-published, T&M-published, novels, short works, fiction and non fiction—is on sale for only 99 cents. Only in the Kindle Store, and only from today through Sunday (May 24, 25, and 26). Been thinking about acquiring the entire Rain backlist in digital? This is your chance to do it for less than a buck a book. Get 'em while you can!
Click on the covers below to buy—and here's more information on all the books, including the new covers and titles.
Barry
I don't know why, but Amazon lists all your books for $3.62. Maybe it's because I'm in Europe.
ReplyDeleteThe Detachment is still $3.99 for the US Kindle version.
ReplyDeleteJust FYI, I assume you had good reasons for the title changes, but figuring out which books I'd already bought was a minor pain I didn't enjoy.
Still bought 'em all, though. So there's that.
Karen, apologies, the books cost a bit more in other markets for reasons I don't fully understand.
ReplyDeleteDavid, The Detachment is the only title that's not part of the sale. Thanks for bearing with me on the title changes. I've tried to make the changes as obvious and easy to understand as possible. To that end, "Previously Published as" appears prominently on every book's cover, in bold face at the top of the product description, and even in the titles themselves. I've even uploaded customer images of the previous covers and titles, along with a "Previously published as" note for each. I've also explained the change at the top of my Amazon Author Central Page, I link to the explanation on the top page of my website, and I include the explanation at the beginning of each new edition, accessible through Amazon's "look inside" feature. I know that despite all this, the change might be confusing to existing readers, but I think on balance it's worth it. I'll post the explanation why as the next comment.
ReplyDeleteA Note On The New Titles
ReplyDeleteWhy have I changed the titles of the Rain books? Simply because I've never thought the titles were right for the stories. The right title matters--if only because the wrong one has the same effect as an inappropriate frame around an otherwise beautiful painting. Not only does the painting not look good in the wrong frame; it will sell for less, as well. And if you're the artist behind the painting, having to see it in the wrong frame, and having to live with the suboptimal commercial results, is aggravating.
The sad story of the original Rain titles began with the moniker Rain Fall for the first in the series. It was a silly play on the protagonist's name, and led to an unfortunate and unimaginative sequence of similar such meaningless, interchangeable titles: Hard Rain, Rain Storm, Killing Rain (the British titles were better, but still not right: Blood from Blood for #2; Choke Point for #3; One Last Kill for #4). By the fifth book, I was desperate for something different, and persuaded my publisher to go with The Last Assassin, instead. In general, I think The Last Assassin is a good title, but in fairness it really has nothing to do with the story in the fifth book beyond the fact that there's an assassin in it. But it was better than more of Rain This and Rain That. The good news is, the fifth book did very well indeed; the bad news is, the book's success persuaded my publisher that assassin was a magic word and that what we needed now was to use the word assassin in every title. And so my publisher told me that although they didn't care for my proposed title for the sixth book--The Killer Ascendant--they were pleased to have come up with something far better. The sixth book, they told me proudly, would be known as The Quiet Assassin.
I tried to explain that while not quite as redundant as, say, The Deadly Assassin or The Lethal Assassin, a title suggesting an assassin might be notable for his quietness was at best uninteresting (as opposed to, say, Margret Atwood's The Blind Assassin, which immediately engages the mind because of the connection of two seemingly contradictory qualities). The publisher was adamant. I told them that if they really were hell-bent on using assassin in a title that otherwise had nothing to do with the book, couldn't we at least call the book The Da Vinci Assassin, or The Sudoku Assassin? In the end, we compromised on Requiem for an Assassin, a title I think would be good for some other book but is unrelated to the one I wrote--beyond, again, the bare fact of the presence of an assassin in the story.
Now that I have my rights back and no longer have to make ridiculous compromises about these matters, I've given the books the titles I always wanted them to have--titles that actually have something to do with the stories, that capture some essential aspect of the stories, and that act as both vessel and amplifier for what's most meaningful in the stories. For me, it's like seeing these books for the first time in the frames they always deserved. It's exciting, satisfying, and even liberating. Have a look yourself and I hope you'll enjoy them.
Thanks, got most of them! Have the paperback copies of several but wanted the e-books! Love your writing! Will spread the word about the sale!! =)
ReplyDeleteCool Barry. My kindle will be happy to see these works.
ReplyDeleteOne thought...
For those, like myself, that have none digital a full bundle set could be a nice sales approach.
ahhhh. Do you have a recommended reading order for those books? yeah. I got'em.
ReplyDeleteDid I miss any of your fiction?
The Lost Coast -- A Larison Short Story
Paris Is A Bitch -- A Rain/Delilah Short Story
The Killer Ascendant (previously published as Requiem for an Assassin)
Extremis (previously published as The Last Assassin)
Inside Out
Redemption Games (previously published as Killing Rain/One Last Kill)
The Khmer Kill: A Dox Short Story (Kindle Single)
Winner Take All (previously published as Rain Storm/Choke Point)
A Lonely Resurrection (previously published as Hard Rain/Blood From Blood)
Fault Line
A Clean Kill in Tokyo (previously published as Rain Fall)
London Twist: A Delilah Novella
The Detachment (John Rain Thrillers)
Thanks again everyone. Unknown, you can read them in any order you like. Again, more info at the link in the second paragraph of the post.
ReplyDeleteDrat. I missed this by one day. Are you going to do it again sometime? I already have all of your books in hardcopy format but would like to get them on Kindle someday.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that whoever compiled the data felt that the last 200+ years was a reasonably large sample set. What he failed to see, I guess, was that for people sufficiently determined to view our violence as noble defense and their violence as unjustified conquest, no quantity or type of data at all will be sufficient.
ReplyDeleteGosh, I'm sorry I missed that sale. Not that I don't have anything to read. But that offer would have been so tempting I couldn't refuse.
ReplyDeleteBut, hey, keep up the good work.
I missed the sale, too. But I don't mind paying full price either. It's just that sales are nice.
ReplyDelete