Heaven may be small, but the heart of Emily Schultz’s new publisher is large, indeed. House of Anansi Press announced that it has teamed up with Shortcovers, Indigo’s new online bookstore, to give away free digital copies of Schultz’s new novel, Heaven Is Small. The beneficence began yesterday, and will continue until this Friday, April 24, which is the book’s official publication date.
Anansi has experience giving away downloadable copies of frontlist titles. Last year, the company distributed free digital copies of Pasha Malla’s short-story collection, The Withdrawal Method, via their own website. However, this is the first time that the company has partnered with an outside electronic distribution outlet.
In the press release, Anansi publisher Lynn Henry says, “Reading this book digitally actually adds a layer of irony to one of the plot strands, which is about a man who discovers he is dead and then must adapt the technology of book publishing to communicate an important message to someone he has left behind among the living.”
With the Malla book, you could download it and read it at your leisure, online or off. With the Schultz book, all you can do is bookmark it via Shortcovers. You can’t download it, it must be read online, and if you don’t finish it in time, you’ll have to pay to read the rest after Friday. As a marketing strategy, it’s fine but Anansi is not being nearly as generous this time.
To clarify, once a book is bookmarked at Shortcovers you can read it for all eternity provided the file continues to be hosted by Shortcovers, be it online, or from a selection of mobile readers. Anyone who goes to bookmark “Heaven is Small” will be able to revisit that title — for free — even after the special offer is over. Enjoy!
Whatever way you look at it this is a great enticement. I stopped reading after a few pages because I want to read the rest in old technology book form. I might not have given Shultz’s book a thought otherwise.