Dragons & Jetpacks discussion

What self-published books do you recommend?

Excluding, of course, your own. . . .

I think my favorites are Wearing the Cape: A Superhero Story and its sequels, by Marion G. Harmon, and Torchship and its sequel Torchship Pilot by Karl K. Gallagher.

Hey, nice thread title. :)

Most self-published ones I've read are local authors.
I can highly recommend

Fire Light (urban fantasy)
Dane Curse (murder mystery in a superhero world)
Seeds in the Wind (a mix of sci fi, fantasy, and humor)

Also, horror/paranormal writer Michaelbrent Collings does only self-publishing, which I didn't even realize at first.

I have The Emperor's Edge on Kindle but haven't got to it yet.

Oh, yes, Nice Dragons Finish Last. And its sequels.

I've read quite a lot of small press stuff but never yet something self published I don't think. I once downloaded a friend's self published book on my kindle, but I lost the kindle shortly after that while on vacation (and haven't yet replaced the darn thing).

At least that's what you told him, right Greg?

Greg wrote: "I've read quite a lot of small press stuff but never yet something self published I don't think. I once downloaded a friend's self published book on my kindle, but I lost the kindle shortly after t..."

Of course, the difference can be hard to tell. What with single-author presses.

Ryan wrote: "At least that's what you told him, right Greg?"

Hahaha, no it's actually true!

The self-published books I come across are typically local authors.

The one I liked the most and think is a quality novel is Valkwitch (traditional fantasy).

In case it needs to be said, I am not the author.

These are the ten finalists (ranked) from the ~300 entries to last year's Self Published Fantasy Blog-Off (SPFBO)

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk...

and here are the finalists from this year's contest (culled from another 300)

http://mark---lawrence.blogspot.co.uk...

My personal favourite, Senlin Ascends, narrowly missed the final.

Great thread guys, thanks for addressing an issue calmly and coming up with a way to incorporate it into the group.

Stephen Renneberg's SF is good stuff. I saw it in the author promo section of another group and while I usually skip those, this one mentioned a Kirkus starred review which is a harder thing to get. He has other books but the SF starts with The Mothership, skips ahead to the far future for 2 books and then comes back. Interesting takes on first contact in the first book. The two far future books show humanity discovering that there are a lot of civilizations out there and we're just not all that in the galactic stage. The 4th book is a sequel to the first and has relations to the 2nd and 3rd. Fun reads for people who like large scale space SF.

I just finished reading "The Goddess's Choice" by Jamie Marchant.

It was a good fantasy read. It's the first in a trilogy so there are 2 more in the series. Haven't read them yet, but after reading the first I will definitely be reading the next installment.

In general, do people find self-published books (at least the good ones) to be different in terms of content than published books?

In other words, do self-published books address different themes or settings that standard published books haven't caught up to yet, or are they essentially the same but just haven't received the larger scale recognition?

Mike wrote: "In general, do people find self-published books (at least the good ones) to be different in terms of content than published books?

In other words, do self-published books address different themes..."

No big difference that I've seen, except they're less likely to have been edited properly.

I recently listened to Dawn of Wonder by Jonathan Renshaw. It's got a great narrator and it's a very entertaining coming of age story

I also own the first of the Sourcery Ascendant sequence by Mitchell Hogan but haven't gotten around to reading it

Is there an easy way to tell if a book is self published? Aside from, say, a page or pdf download from an author's website. I don't read a lot of ebooks so I'm not really sure I come across self published works very often. I like to support my local bookshops so still buy most of my books as physical copies, new and used.

It's just not something I've really thought about before.

It varies.

Odds are, yes, that you haven't run across them in your local bookstore -- maybe if the bookstore owner were a fan, or the author is local.

And while a lot of self-published authors do only ebooks, there's always some of us who do print as well. If the print edition says, "Createspace", it's self-published (like Wearing the Cape, the first one I recommended), but if the author set up a personal imprint, it will say that (like Torchship from Kelt Haven Press). Your best bet then is to google the imprint.

NPCs, Split the Party, and Going Rogue by Drew Hayes. Plus the fourth, still forth-coming work.

A bonus if you've ever played D&D

I've only read one self published ebook, The Troll: Book 1: The boy with the sliver of ice in his heart and it was the opposite of a gem :-(

Narilka wrote: "Is there an easy way to tell if a book is self published? Aside from, say, a page or pdf download from an author's website. I don't read a lot of ebooks so I'm not really sure I come across self pu..."

I usually check for the publisher on amazon.

Mary wrote: "NPCs, Split the Party, and Going Rogue by Drew Hayes. Plus the fourth, still forth-coming work.

A bonus if you've ever played D&D"

Thank you for this recommendation, just finished NPCs and it was quite enjoyable, I'm interested to see where the next one goes.

Hope you enjoy them!

Mary wrote: "NPCs, Split the Party, and Going Rogue by Drew Hayes. Plus the fourth, still forth-coming work.

A bonus if you've ever played D&D"

Those do look fun.

Not gonna lie, a book about RPG NPCs sound like it could be fun! There's a Youtube series to that effect too, Epic NPC Man.

There's also Order of the Stick starting with Dungeon Crawlin' Fools for the D&D fan. And -- since it's Giant in the Playground Games as publisher, it qualifies.

Ahh I love Epic NPC Man - so many gamer truths!

One for the fairy tale geeks. Heidi Anne Heiner's collections:

Beauty and the Beast Tales from Around the World

Rapunzel And Other Maiden In The Tower Tales From Around The World
Twelve Dancing Princesses Tales from Around the World
The Frog Prince and Other Frog Tales from Around the World: Fairy Tales, Fables and Folklore about Frogs
Cinderella Tales from Around the World

and more

Unfortunately, she seems to have taken
Sleeping Beauties: Sleeping Beauty and Snow White Tales from Around the World out of print.

Steampunk. Magic. Lost colony planets. All in one series: Jack Campbell's Pillars of Reality, starting with The Dragons of Dorcastle

I just finished The Longest Con by Michaelbrent Collings -- a funny urban fantasy murder mystery set at a comic con.

Review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Quarter Share by Nathan Lowell

a tale of a boy forced unexpectedly to take to space on a merchant ship and what follows after.

Amazingly compelling for a low drama tale.

A Net of Dawn and Bones by C. Chancy

A rather different urban fantasy

I had just finished Aaron Yeager's Isle of Wisteria series and went to his panel at Comic Con, and he was so happy that I'd read it, and it was great just talking with him. It really is a great self-published series.

How To Be A Vigilante: A Diary by Luke Smitherd

I'm not sure how much of a gem this book is as I have not read it yet, but I did stumble across it in my news feed and figured I would share it with the group. Congratulations to your moderator/author/challenge organizer Wayland Smith on the publication of his novel Cadre Clash. I bet the book will fit a challenge or two for anyone on the Defenders/Wackos!

Congratulations Wayland!

Congrats Wayland!!

Good job ol' chap!

Very nice! congrats!

Congratulations Wayland!

Wow Wayland!! So cool, huge congrats to you!!

I came across a self-published book I really enjoyed, once again found in Mark Lawrence's self published contest. I've read both book 1, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, and book 2, On the Shoulders of Titans, of the Arcane Ascension series. This book is of the sub-genre LitRPG with each character having specific amounts of mana and their powers level up as they get stronger. I had never heard of this sub-genre, but now that I have I'm absolutely going to be reading more of them.

That sounds familiar. I think I marked it earlier.

I know there are book by Amanda Quick and Krentz called the Arcane Society? Any relationship?

Sandy wrote: "I know there are book by Amanda Quick and Krentz called the Arcane Society? Any relationship?"

Nope, not from what I can tell.

A Small Fiction by James Mark Miller

A collection of short works. As in, Twitter sized.

I can confirm that Sufficiently Advanced Magic is well-written and entertaining, and much better than I had expected. :-)

Roger wrote: "I came across a self-published book I really enjoyed, once again found in Mark Lawrence's self published contest. I've read both book 1, Sufficiently Advanced Magic, and book 2, [bo..."

My prediction of myself was not wrong here :) I've read over 100 litrpgs since I made this post :)

I'm from a small group chat that we call the International Writers lol. It's just us 4, we have no professional experience, but we were born to tell stories. Their works are:
Terith by J. S. Spaulding (sci-fi, 1 of 3)
Once Lost Always by Ife Disu (fantasy, Peter Pan retelling, stand-alone)
and Angelina Singer has 4 books out with a 5th on the way. One is a silly coming-of-age and the trilogy is a dystopia. I've reviewed some so checks those out if you're curious!

a trilogy starting Kamikaze. It's about characters transported to and fighting in another world. unusually in that the military aspects are treated perfectly seriously.