10,000 copies sold!

My Military Sci-fi thriller, MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP has now sold over TEN THOUSAND copies. Maybe that's not New York Times bestseller numbers, but it's pretty rare for an unknown self-published author. :)

MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP is currently available on Amazon in 12 countries: http://smarturl.it/MyOtherCarSpaceship. To find out more about my books, go to my blog at http://tesserene.blogspot.com or my website: http://MarkTerenceChapman.com.

Audiobook version of My Other Car is a Spaceship is coming soon!

I will be working with a very talented voice actor named Mark Westfield to produce an audiobook version of MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP. If all goes according to plan, it should be available for sale in December on Amazon, Audible, and iTunes.

For anyone not familiar with the book, it was the #1 bestselling military sci-fi novel on Amazon.

When space pirates threaten to take over the shipping lanes, retired air force fighter pilot Hal Nellis is recruited to fight them. It all comes down to a final battle for the spaceways. Win, and the pirate threat is crushed forever. Lose, and the people of Earth and countless other backwater worlds are doomed to enslavement and death.

MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP is available on Amazon in 12 countries: http://smarturl.it/MyOtherCarSpaceship. To find out more about my books, go to my blog at http://tesserene.blogspot.com or my website: http://MarkTerenceChapman.com.

Readers love My Other Car is a Spaceship!

There's a reason MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP has been consistently #1 or #2 on Amazon's list of military sci-fi titles for almost two weeks. There aren't a lot of reader reviews yet on Amazon, but most of them are 4- and 5-stars. Here are some of them:


“Spell binding read that keeps you turning the pages. Great action adventure with a space opera theme. Well developed characters with a true sense of duty and honor.” *****Five Stars*****—Kendrick Knight


“Very Satisfying. "My Other Car is a Spaceship" reads like a good effort from a top writer. The science fiction is plausible, the dialogue is believable, the plot and backstory are well-crafted. Mr Chapman keeps the action going, offers up some good jokes, a couple of homages - all in all, a very satisfying read. I recommend this book and I will read more from this author.” *****Five Stars*****—Stoney “stoney”


“I loved it. Almost nonstop action from Chapter 3 on. The action sequences are exciting and the banter between the two main characters is funny. The good guys somehow manage to win despite impossible odds. There are battle sequences aplenty, guerilla warfare, and lots of ingenuity displayed by the heroes,(and the author). A great read. I couldn't put it down.” *****Five Stars*****—Russ Allen


“Fast paced and keeps your interest. Hal is smart, and a great hero who thinks fast on his feet[;] teamed with the captain and the Dr. They are an unbeatable team.” *****Five Stars*****—Amazon Customer


"A very enjoyable, action pack[ed] military [SF] against pirates. Well worth buying. I started and could not stop reading it. I will definitely buy the next book in the series." *****Five Stars*****—Robert P Lowrey


“Great read. Good story, I would have renamed the ship "Merrys Revenge". Want to know which ship I am referring too? You will just have to read this entertaining book to find out. Anxiously waiting book two.” *****Five Stars*****—David W. Kohn


“I found this book very interesting, and hard to put down. There is almost non stop action from about the fourth chapter. I've taken away a star for a couple of cuss-words, but other than that this was a good read. I'd recommend this to science fiction fans.” ****Four Stars****—Jacob Ward


“[G]ood fun old fashioned Space-Opera. [I]t is a good fun tour d' force. I enjoyed the read, and I will read the next book in the series.” ****Four Stars****—Texican “headhunter”


“[T]he author has done a great job with the story line and characters. ... I had a ha[r]d time putting it down after the third chapter.” ****Four Stars****—Dave R


To read the full reviews, go to the Amazon sales page. MY OTHER CAR IS A SPACESHIP is available on Amazon in 12 countries: http://smarturl.it/MyOtherCarSpaceship. To find out more about my books, go to my  website: http://MarkTerenceChapman.com.

The Imperative Chronicles series is starting to catch on

As of today, The Mars Imperative (Book One of The Imperative Chronicles) reached #51 on the Amazon Top 100 list of Space Colonization books and The Tesserene Imperative (Book Two of The Imperative Chronicles) hit #83 on the list of Space Exploration.

The Mars Imperative and The Tesserene Imperative are available on Amazon in 12 countries at:  http://smarturl.it/TheMarsImperative and http://smarturl.it/TessereneImperative.

#1 bestseller!

My sci-fi short story, Harvey-467 Makes a Bride, was released by Red Rose Publishing on Thursday as an ebook. When I checked the RRP bestseller list Thursday afternoon, I was pleased to note that it was #2. It was still #2 Friday morning, but by Friday evening it had jumped to #1, where it remains as of Saturday morning. Wow!

If you're interested, you can buy it here for only 99 cents. You can't beat a deal like that!

Here's the story blurb, and a short excerpt:

Harvey-467 is a typical 25^th century android--blond, blue-eyed, and perfect in every way. Except he’s constrained by his programming. He yearns to be creative, but it’s impossible. Everything in his life is planned, deliberate, precise.

One day he concludes that it's time to get married, to have a soul mate with which to share his life. So he custom-orders a bride from a catalog: beautiful, talented, and equally perfect.

And that's when everything goes terribly wrong.

Excerpt:

When consciousness resumed, he checked his internal chrono and was stunned to find that 1.86 hours had elapsed since shutdown. It was well past midnight.

Wow, my cortex must really have gotten hot if it took this long to cool down to safe levels.

He became aware of his surroundings. But how did I get from the living room to the back porch?

I wonder what Maya must have thought when I froze up. She was so angry I wouldn’t be surprised if she went on for ten minutes before noticing.

He chuckled at the image of her berating the back of his inanimate head, and then becoming twice as incensed that he hadn’t heard a word she’d said all that time.

She must have been so mad she carried me out here. Well, I guess I’d better get it over with. I hope she didn’t lock me out.

He sighed and tried the door handle. It turned.

What he saw in the living room shocked him to the processor core. There lay Maya, her beautiful face smashed flat and her cortex spilling out of massive rends in her cranium plate. The spark of sentience was gone from her lovely green eyes. Red hydraulic fluid had leaked all over the mint green Berber carpet she’d insisted on buying. More had sprayed the walls and ceiling.

But how? Who? What happened here? Who would murder an android—and why?

I also have a novel, Sunrise Destiny, available for sale at RRP. For more about my writing, see my website or my blog. I hope you enjoy them! Mark.

eBook resales: good or bad idea?

There's a thriving business in the resale of used books. It's a great way to clear our shelves of books we no longer want, and these sales can generate some cash for the purchase of new books. Even though the resale of these books deprives the author of royalties for the additional sales, no one really minds. This is because resales are a small percentage of total book sales, and may open new markets (to readers who hadn't previously read a particular offer). The same is true if you lend or give a book to a friend.

The same dynamic should apply to ebooks (books sold in various electronic formats), right?

Unfortunately, no. When you give or sell a printed book to someone, they get one copy and the most they can do is resell or give away one copy. But with ebooks, the one copy you give/sell can be copied hundreds, even thousands of times. So, instead of the author losing the royalties for a single resale, he or she potentially can lose thousands of dollars in royalties--and that's just from a single copy. Think about the impact on that author's income if hundreds of readers each give away copies that are passed on to hundreds of others. (Not to mention the losses suffered by the publishers and those they employ.)

Before you say, "But authors like Stephen King and J.K. Rowling make millions from their books. They won't miss it.", consider this: For every author who's a millionaire, there are hundreds of authors who barely make a living from writing, and hundreds more who write as a second income because writing alone won't pay the bills. If they made more money, perhaps they could quit their day jobs and write full-time (producing more of the books you love).

And before you say, "But my reading an ebook that a friend gave me won't make a difference.", consider this: There are pirate websites and blogs whose sole reason for existence is the sharing of ebooks, CDs, DVDs, and other copyrighted materials. Thre are literally thousands of people trading thousands of books, albums, and movies without paying for a single one. Collectively, that's many millions of dollars in income the artists never get. So it's not just you, it's many people depriving a lot of hard-working artists of the money they've rightfully earned.

Because it's not just you doing it, it won't matter whether you keep doing it or not, right? Sure it does! By participating in this illegal activity (breaking federal and international copyright laws and perhaps illegally trafficking in stolen merchandise across state lines**), you contribute to the problem and even encourage it.

So what can you do about it? Simple:

1) Stop selling/sharing ebooks. If you can't help yourself, and you just have to read the one a friend gave you, fine. When you're done reading it, delete it and buy a copy from a legitimate source. But whatever you do, don't share your copy with anyone outside your immediate family. Certainly, don't post them to the internet or sell them on eBay.

2) Point your friends who buy/sell/share ebooks to this blog, so they can be educated, too.

3) If you know of websites and blogs that share ebooks, report them to the AuthorsAgainstE-BookTheft group on Yahoo.

Remember, the selling and sharing of ebooks without compensation to the publisher and the author is ILLEGAL and harms the industry as a whole. Do you really want to contribute to a publisher laying off employees or even going bankrupt (and perhaps depriving you of the latest work from one of your favorite authors?)

Unless we all (authors, publishers, and concerned readers) work together to stamp out the illegal sharing/selling of ebooks, the problem will only get worse. Think about it.

Mark.

** WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this or any copyrighted work is illegal. File sharing is an International crime, prosecuted by the United States Department of Justice and the United States Border Patrol, Division of Cyber Crimes, in partnership with Interpol. Criminal copyright infringement, including infringement without monetary gain, is punishable by seizure of computers, up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250,000 per reported instance.

The Mars Imperative is a bestseller

According to Amazon.com, the Kindle (ebook reader) edition of The Mars Imperative is currently ranked #40 on its list of Bestselling Science Fiction Series. It's in good company, surrounded by books from Kevin J. Anderson, Anne McCaffrey, Alan Dean Foster, Vonda McIntyre, and Lois McMaster Bujold, among others.

Of course, "bestseller" is a relative term. I have no idea how many copies of any of those books are selling yet. (Just how many Kindles exist today?) Still, it's gratifying to see that people are buying my book in that format. (And the reader ratings are still at 4+-out-of-5 stars.)

Click here to go to The Mars Imperative Kindle Edition page directly.

Mark.