I write books primarily for digital media, known as electronic or e-books. If you want to know more about e-books, skip down to read What's an e-book, Cat?, below. Otherwise, click on one of the following links to read about my books.

novels books over 35,000 words

novellas books under 35,000 words

sundown books under 35,000 words linked in the Sundown series

 

I also have several books published in paperback format. To see these, please visit the print page.

What's an e-book, Cat?

I'm glad you asked me. An e-book is a bit like an MP3 music file. Instead of going to a shop and buying a CD, you go to an online music vendor and download a music file, which you can play on your computer, copy to disc, or your MP3 player like an iPod or Sony Walkman.

E-books work in the same way. You generally buy them direct from the publisher such as Changeling Press or Ellora's Cave, or from a third-party vendor like My Bookstore and More. You pay to download the file, and then it's yours to read over and over without the pages getting thin. You save trees, and money, because e-books are usually a lot cheaper than print books. If you want, you can print out your e-book (but that would take a lot of paper, trust me!), or copy it to disc or memory stick if you want to read it on another computer, or you can download it to a portable device such as a PDA or dedicated e-reader, such as the Amazon Kindle.

E-books come in a variety for formats to suit different e-readers. If you don't have one (I don't) then you might find it easier to stick with the PDF (Portable Document Format) file, which can be read on most PDAs and all computers, with completely free software.

 

But are they real books?

As real as the music coming out of your iPod. E-books are written and edited with just the same care as print books. In fact, many publishers produce exactly the same books in both print and electronic formats. While e-books began as a niche market, produced by a few small dedicated companies, now traditional large print houses have also begun stocking their back catalogues as e-books.

E-books are registered with an ISBN, just as print books are (although it's usually a different number for each edition). They're submitted, edited, and quite often rejected in exactly the same way as print books. Sales of e-books also produce royalties for the author, which due to the lack of overhead costs are usually a significantly higher percentage than for print books.

 

Yarr! Beware the pie-rats!

Um, I mean, pirates. E-books, like other files which can easily be transferred from computer to computer, are extremely vulnerable to piracy. Sites offering free downloads of e-books are completely illegal, and if you find one you should email both the site owner, and the publisher of the books, immediately. E-books sold in this way deprive authors and publishers of income (and we're not all as rich as JK Rowling, you know) and constitute copyright infringement, which is illegal just about everywhere you go--and can actually be punishable by a fine and/or jail sentence.

So now you know! Please buy e-books from genuine sellers, and don't download, or copy them, for free.

 

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