image Richard Herley, the prize-winning author of such books as The Stone Arrow and The Penal Colony, lost faith some four months ago in his read-before-you-buy strategy. But now he tells me: "I have had a change of heart about richardherley.com and am now back online."

Speaking of heart, a lady friend made the difference. She "was of the opinion that e-reading will soon become the norm. She told me that I did not give the experiment long enough: that of those 11,000 downloads, a large number would not even have been looked at, never mind read, for such also is the way of people who download free or pirated music and movies—it seems they just like to fill their hard disks.

"…I am content to let word-of-mouth do the promotion for me, even though it may be glacially slow. I am also content to wait and see what proportion of readers end up paying and what written feedback, if any, I get from them."

"In my happiest state when composing fiction"

Richard also writes: "My six-month break from writing and the whole literary/e-book scene has also made me realize that, like it or not, I am in my happiest state when composing fiction."

Since the return of the "Prodigal Son," as the British novelist calls himself, much has changed in e-bookdom—notably the growth of the iPhone/Touch as an e-book platform, more buyers of the Kindle and Sony Reader and, of course, the continuing rise of the ePub standard.

iPod Touch owner and potential Stanza user

Richard himself now owns an iPod Touch, and I’ve tipped him off about the glories of e-books as displayed on the iPhone or Touch via Stanza—through which you can download great reads directly via arrangements with Feedbooks, Munseys and others. Among the offerings: his own books, complete with bios and pointers to his Web site.

Best of luck to Richard. The Penal Colony isn’t my normal kind of book, but I breezed through it, and can imagine what the pleasure it could give the usual fans of adventure stories.

Related: Earlier TeleRead mentions of Richard Herley. Also see Free serialized novel ‘Corduroy Manions’ to begin (MR).

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4 COMMENTS

  1. Thank you very much, David! A new thriller is on its way.

    If any Teleblog readers have read one of my e-books, or even if not, and you wish to leave a comment or review — positive or otherwise –, please visit my blog (linked on my home page), which I hope to develop into something interesting.

  4. According to Cory Doctorow, even if people download a million copies of your e-book without paying, you’ll still be ahead of the game.

    Most people who download the book don’t end up buying it, but they wouldn’t have bought it in any event, so I haven’t lost any sales, I’ve just won an audience. A tiny minority of downloaders treat the free e-book as a substitute for the printed book–those are the lost sales. But a much larger minority treat the e-book as an enticement to buy the printed book. They’re gained sales. As long as gained sales outnumber lost sales, I’m ahead of the game. After all, distributing nearly a million copies of my book has cost me nothing.

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