ALLi News Editor, Dan Holloway
This coming week is the annual renewal of one of the staples of the indie calendar. Smashwords is, as it has done for many years, celebrating Read an eBook Week by inviting authors to offer heavy or full discounts on what it expects to be more than 100,000 books taking part. You can enroll your books through Smashwords directly or through Draft2Digital if that’s how you distribute to them. As always, the company has a full marketing toolkit of images and copy for authors to use to promote their work.
I’ll round out this update with one of those stories I come across from time to time that tickle me as someone who chose the indie way because, among other things, of a certain puckish mischief.
One of the few bona fide legends in the world of competitive creative thinking, the late great Bruce Birchall, regularly went by the pen name Loki. It’s a reminder that the link between the creative life and pranskterism is as old as the Norse gods at the very least. In modern times it has taken in Dada, Situationism, Oulipo, and Yellowism, and artists as diverse as the literary giant George Perec and the cash-burning crooners of the KLF.
This week has seen another entry in the annals of creative mischief as writer Gabriel Smith pranked the singer Charli XCX. Both writer and singer have soon to be released works out titled Brat. Smith posted on X a (clearly fake) picture of an email purportedly from the singer declaring how honoured she would be to name her new album after the latest work of an author she so greatly admired.
Smith has prankish form, but that did not stop the post reaching arts of the internet that were unaware and considered his words in all seriousness leading to embarrassment for a BBC Radio 1 host among others. The Guardian has a fascinating article looking at some of the more, and in some cases very much less, lighthearted literary pranksters, including at least one I have reported on in this column.
Happy Read and eBook Week to all.
