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).