Gumroad: A New Way to Sell

There’s a new start-up business which could turn out to be very useful to indie authors, game producers etc.

Gumroad is a sales service where everything is contained within a link. This seems, to me, to be perfect for indie authors and game publishers as a short-link is eminently sharable and essentially allows the ‘shop’ for an individual product to go viral across Twitter, Facebook etc. It also means you can code a ‘store’ with basic HTML by listing the sales links and while it lacks a shopping cart for multiple it seems bloody useful otherwise, particularly because of the immediacy.

You’ll lose 30 cents plus 5%, which for cheap items (smallest price is a buck) is not really any worse or better than most middle-man storefronts (35% being a typical cut taken). As your prices rise though, the rate of return improves quickly until it outstrips the offerings of most storefronts.

For people with a pre-existing, built in audience and a strong social media presence, this could be a fantasy solution.

I’m testing it out, but I don’t know that I have the audience to make it work yet, I’ll let you know how it goes. So far my only problem is that it seems to create every link twice! That’s probably just me being a spooner though.

Doubletap: Two short pulp stories, $2 https://gumroad.com/l/UcZf

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Red Phone Box Pre-Order

Hello everyone.

I’ve been heavily involved with the Red Phone Box collaborative novel that has been organised by the delightful Salome Jones and which will include a story by Warren Ellis amongst a whole fistful of other authors, including myself.

We’re getting closer to the publication date now and you can get on the pre-order list. So please do!

It’s a whole bunch of stories of the weird and the strange, all situated around a particular red phone box that seems to be a juncture in space, time – and mind.

Pre-order information is HERE

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