Joseph Rhea

For as long as I can remember, I have possessed the twin needs to "create" and "explore." In school, I excelled in both art and creative writing, but my need for exploration (partly fostered by watching Jacques Cousteau as a kid) led me in to the field of Oceanography. While science offered me a wonderful and challenging career, it wasn't quite enough. Therefore, my non-work hours began to fill up with more creative hobbies, which have included everything from creating CGI-based comics to building multi-player computer simulations with my brother. Then one day I decided to return to my creative-writing roots and began working on my first novel-length, science fiction story. What started out as a high-tech adventure, with a young man attempting to rescue his girlfriend from a virtual reality simulation against the backdrop of the "technological singularity," evolved into a story about accepting the choices of our past, as well as reconciling our rel...

Two days ago I set the list price for the Kindle, Apple, Nook, and Kobo editions of the first book in my new dystopian science fiction series, Novum , to zero dollars and zero cents. That's right, I am giving the book away for free. Why would I, or any author, do this? Some people call it a "loss leader" for a series, where you give the first book away, then hope it will lead to sales of the rest of the series. However, my reasons are even simpler. I want to save my readers money. That's right; I care about my readers. So here is the deal. If I charge what Amazon thinks I should be charging, which is $2.99 per book (anything lower and the author is penalized %50 in royalties) then it will cost you $6 for the first two books. If I sold each book for a more reasonable $1.99, it would cost you about $4 for the first two books, which isn't bad, but due to the penalties mentioned above, I would earn only $1.40 in royalties. However, by making the first book free, a...