I had hoped to get a new Matador novel done and ready to go by the time the old ones went onto the market, but the reversion process went much quicker than I had been led to believe, and no point in waiting; best to make hay while the sun shines.
The details aren't done, but at the least, what this will entail will include the following:
All of these novels will be available as ebooks via Dan's FS& store, save for The Musashi Flex. This is because that one is still on the market at Amazon.com in that format. The titles are:
The Man Who Never Missed; Matadora; The Machiavelli Interface; The 97-Step; The Albino Knife; Black Steel; Brother Death.
The Omega Cage (with Michael Reaves), is already available there.
There will be a period of exclusivity with Dan; I dunno how long, but for a while, this will be the venue at which you can legally get 'em. I believe he said that as the publisher, he can get these into other markets. (Dan's books are in all the popular formats, easily read on Kindles, iPads 'n' Pods, phones, computers, Nooks, Kobos, etc. Buying direct makes him and me more money.)
There will be new covers, to the end of continuity, likely by an artist we both like who has done other cover work. Not the illo at the top of this post. We're talking to her now.
POD. This is a thorny problem. I've addressed this before, but let me explain why once again:
For those folks for whom treeware is a must-have, we are considering offering a formatted-print-on-demand file. What you do with this is take this on a flashmem stick to your university POD store, hand it to them, and go have lunch. They will print a book for you, about twelve bucks for a 300-pager, and have it ready when you get back. It will be designed to print just like a paper novel, margins, page numbers, etc, and will include the cover.
Alternatively, you can send it to several online book makers who will do the same thing cheaper than we can do it for you. Three hundred page book, with a cover, about eight bucks, plus shipping, so that's probably about the same cost.
And yeah, since you have to pay for the file, add that to the cost of the paper book. So in those scenarios, the book runs you $18–the cost of the POD file, the print cost, and shipping, if necessary.
Even if we can get the price down so it is close to what a pb would cost, there will still be shipping costs. If we didn't add any profit this way, if we let it go for cost, you still wind up paying twice what the e-version cost.
That would make us nice guys, but it isn't, um, economically feasible for us, to give them away. Not when our profit on the ebooks is 100% if we sell it direct, and a 70% royalty via Amazon.com. Do the math: Six bucks @ 100% = $6. At 70% = $4.20. If we take zero royalty on a POD, it'll still cost you $12 or $13 minimum, will ship in 3-5 working days, and however long it takes to get to your house. You pay twice as much and we don't get any of it.
If print is what readers want, we can facilitate that, but is gonna run you treeware fans two-and-a-half to three times as much per book.
And I have to say this right out: Because you say you want it in paper doesn't mean you will actually buy it in paper. I've had fans tell me, "Oh, yeah, well, if you put that out in paper, I'll snap it up!" And I know for a fact they didn't because I can track every sale that Lulu makes.
You see why retail POD isn't a good idea for a writer?
Back on the e-side, probably there will be some kind of omnibus, wherein you can buy a collection of some or all the books for a discount–we haven't talked about that, but it would make sense, and I expect that will be an option.
More as we firm things up. Stay tuned.