Counting Words Release

Today, October 25 2024, marks the release of a new collection of poems from Stephen Brooke, "Counting Words." The book is  available from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) in print or as free ebooks (PDF and EPUB). Stop by and get your copy!

Blog and Site

It may be noted that this blog is now incorporated (after a fashion) into arachispress.com, via a linked tab in the site navigation. If we'd known it was that simple, we would have done it quite some time ago, but we'd been exploring ways to embed a blog instead. This should word just fine and announcements can easily be found by visiting the Arachis Press site. Or just come here.

Combined Donzalo

We have decided to re-release the all-in-one edition of Stephen Brooke’s epic fantasy, “Donalo’s Destiny,” in paperback (no hard cover, at least for now). It was withdrawn from publication when we released newly edited and typeset versions of the four constituent novels (more or less novels though one can see DD as one long novels), “The Song of the Sword,” “The Shadow of Asak,” “The Sign of the Arrow,” and “The Hand of Sorcerer.” Plans are to make the book available before the end of the year.

However, the separate volumes remain available, both in print and as free ebooks, and will continue so, at Arachis Press (arachispress.com).

Countdown to Counting Words

We have decided not to hold Stephen Brooke's new poetry collection, 'Counting Words,' until next year, as originally intended. The release date now (and this is fairly solid) is October 25. More news, cover reveal, and so on to come in a bit (once 'The City and the Sword' is out). 'Counting Words' is a collection of poems with an emphasis on language and its uses, both serious and for play.

Promo for The City and the Sword

 A promotional image for Stephen Brooke's upcoming fantasy novel, The City and the Sword.

The City and the Sword Release Date

The official release date for Stephen Brooke's new fantasy novel, THE CITY AND THE SWORD is August 23,  2024, which gets it out there before the Labor Day weekend. Admittedly, official releases don't mean as much in these days of ebooks and print-on-demand. Here's the rear cover blurb:

Famod had fallen. Young Lellie and fellow orphan Nib had barely escaped the sack of the port and its attendant horrors. Where could they reach sanctuary and a new life? Across the hills in Tesra, City of Wizardry, seemed the only choice.

There, under the tutelage of Zil, merchant and spy, Lellie finds a purpose she had not known, learning the ways of the sword and much more—all while discovering her own self as she becomes a young woman.

More info will be upcoming. As ever, the book will be available as print paperback and free ebooks (EPUB and PDF).

 

Stempel Garamond

Stempel Garamond was first issued by the Stempel foundry almost a hundred years ago as Garamond-Antiqua. It was—and remains—one of the more faithful and attractive revivals of the Garamond typefaces. There have been a number of versions since, clones, reissues, digitalizations. One of the better known would be the free URW++ Garmond No.8, which may be found readily online. It is ‘almost’ an open license font; a publisher needn’t worry about using it for print or embedding it in a PDF. I see it pretty much as a publisher’s starting kit, dependable and usable for pretty much any project.

Incidentally, its italics are based on ones actually designed by Claude Garamond, where many other Garamond typefaces use italics by Robert Granjon, a respected successor of Garamond.

The Garamond Original typeface—a name used by both Bitstream and SoftMaker—is essentially a clone of Stempel. As with Garamond No.8, they lack opentype features for those who want or need them, though SoftMaker does offer separate small caps. That makes up for much. The typeface is included in SoftMaker’s MegaFont collection, which remains a rather good deal.

Not surprisingly, various opentype projects based on Garamond No.8 have popped up over the last couple decades but none have seemed to go much of anywhere. Be that as it may, the versions that are available are quite viable alternatives to commercial Garamonds or the popular EB Garamond and other open license Garamond (or Garamond-like) fonts. Stempel Garamond, under whatever name, is a good choice for anyone producing books.

We have used versions in all Stephen Brooke’s fantasy novels set among the Mora (the Malvern Trilogy, the Mora Trilogy, etc). We are entirely likely to use Stempel again in books to come. Indeed, we consider it our default for novels.

Free Books

For every one of our print books, we also create a downloadable PDF version. This is in most respects identical to the print edition, the main difference being equal margins throughout (no need for gutters), and the removal of a few unnecessary blank pages and the ISBN. We also add a color cover at the beginning.

These are all available free on the download page at the Arachis Press site (arachispress.com), as are EPUB versions of many. No strings attached—if one wishes to support us, the print editions can be purchased and there is also a merchandise shop, the Peanut Road Emporium (https://www.cafepress.com/peanutroad). And, of course, reviews are welcome, wherever they appear.

Most of all, we wish you to enjoy the books.

Discounts and Distribution

At one time, we were able to sell our print books directly through our distributor at a considerable discount from the price of books distributed to retailers (Amazon, B&N, etc). Then, alas, this option was dropped and books cost just as much at our store as they did elsewhere. Were we to drop distribution and sell direct only we could knock at least a third off the price of most. With smaller books, such as poetry collections, this comes closer to half off.

So, we have already removed the poetry from distribution and now plan to do the same with the rest of the catalog. In the world of online book-selling, distribution may not matter much—and we recognize the books are not going to show up in physical bookstores.

So expect us to roll out new editions and new pricing at our store, and for the print books to disappear from other sites. For now, this will be at the Arachis Press store at Lulu (https://www.lulu.com/spotlight/arachispress). Every print book we offer is at our site and linked to the store. Every ebook version is also at arachispress.com and they continue to be free to download.

There will continue to be occasional discount deals, which we will post here at the AP blog.

Children's Titles

As we did recently with our poetry titles, we have removed Stephen Brooke's two children's chapter books, THE CONTRARY FAIRY and DAISY DAYS (together being the Periwinkle series) from distribution. They remain available directly from our site and, of course, the ebooks are still free. As with the poetry books, this allows us to charge about half the previous price.

The savings are somewhat less with larger books so we will continue to distribute our novels.

Dihjauti

When we first published Stephen Brooke’s trilogy of Cully Beach mystery novels, we used Bitstream’s Transitional 521 as the text typeface. We sorta-kinda were licensed to use it; a large Bitstream catalog came bundled with our Corel software (which we still use). The licensing, however, was admittedly a bit vague about how the fonts could be used commercially. POD and desktop publishing were not on much of anyone's radar at the time.

We decided a while back, therefor, to no longer work with their fonts. Not that anyone was ever likely to complain but we are now using open source/open license typefaces where practical, and type from the Softmaker catalog (for which we are fully licensed) when necessary. Transitional 521 was Bitstream’s clone of Electra. A lovely typeface, by the way, so when we decided to replace it we wanted something with a similar vibe to it. What we ended up with was Dihjauti by T. Christopher White, a free font issued under the SIL license.

It looks good in print, at least as body text, and we are satisfied with it in the newer editions of the Cully Beach books. That does not mean we would use it if the series ever expands beyond the original trilogy. We might wish to differentiate any new books and there are plenty of other good choices. Dihjauti is readily available online from the various free font sites.

Smoky Festival

With the Florida Folk Festival coming up at the end of this month (one of the longest-running music festivals in the USA), it is only right we mention that Stephen Brooke's third Cully Beach mystery novel, SMOKE, takes place in part at the event. Available from Arachis Press (arachispress.com) in print and as a free ebook.

It is set in the first year the author attended that festival, 2001. Lots of forest fires that year made it very smoky at the Stephen Foster State Park (in White Springs Florida), hence the title of the book.

 

Amazon

We have (again) contacted Amazon asking them to take down our Kindle books, as we no longer have control of the account and have been giving our ebooks away for some time now. We remind you once again not to buy from Amazon but get the books free at our site (and actually 'own' the digital files on your device of choice).

Revamped Blog

After some thirteen years of publishing this AP blog in Courier New, we have revamped it with new typefaces. There's really no reason to use the old web-safe fonts; indeed, in these days of mobile devices, they are no longer ubiquitous and may even slow down page-loading. Plus, Courier New is not a particularly attractive typeface nor could we find anything similar we care for.

Therefor, a completely different direction but still with a businesslike (one might even say industrial) appearance, utilizing Oswald and Vollkorn. Maybe we'll stick with them for another thirteen years!

Shallow Poet Release

Stephen Brooke's new poetry collection, SHALLOW POET, is now available at our store: https://www.lulu.com/shop/stephen-brooke/shallow-poet/paperback/product-95qk475.html

The book is also available as a free download in PDF and EPUB formats from arachispress.com

We have removed all our print poetry titles from distribution to bookstores, which means they can only be purchased directly from Arachis Press. It also means we were able to cut our prices almost in half. They remain available as free ebooks at our site.

Distribution

Although 'Shallow Poet' (out in less than a month now) is going to be released with an ISBN and full distribution, we are still seriously considering removing all the poetry books from distribution to retailers. This would allow us to offer them at a considerably reduced price. The ISBN's  cost is negligible; it is the mark-up for retail that hurts, and nearly doubles the price on these smaller books (it's somewhat less noticeable on a thick novel).

Be all that as it may. This release will be distributed and we'll worry about changing anything of that sort further down the line. Of, course, 'Shallow Poet' will be free as an ebook (PDF and EPUB) at the Arachis Press site. In the mean time, we are doing re-reads of most of our titles and inevitably discovering the occasional typo or such. New editions will appear as necessary, though none of it is at all pressing.