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RA · P04
No Name On The Cover
Robert Anthony is not my name.
That was not meant as a marketing device. I wanted the books read without the small biography that attaches itself to a person — the age, the country, the previous job, the author photograph that tells you how to take the first page before you have read it. There is a face behind this. It is not interesting, and it is not the point.
The books are not on Amazon
They will not be. I should be honest about what that costs you, because it costs you something real.
There are no reviews to reassure you. There is no one-click. You cannot look me up and find nine hundred strangers agreeing. You have to make up your own mind about a book without a crowd to check it against — which is, I would argue, how it used to be done, but I am aware it is more work.
What you get in exchange is that nothing between us has been optimised by a third party. No ranking. No recommendation engine. No system deciding which of these you are statistically most likely to finish, and quietly showing you that one. Given what the novels are about, I could not publish them that way and keep a straight face.
The price
Nothing. Every novel is free to download, complete, not a sample. It is not a launch offer, and there is no price waiting behind it.
I set it there deliberately. Any price, however small, turns a book into a decision, and a decision has to be justified — to yourself, mostly, which is the hardest audience. At nothing it is not a decision at all. I would rather you took a chance on me than deliberated about me.
And now the part I owe you
Nothing here costs money, and this page is still selling to you. What it wants is scarcer than money: your hours.
Everything on it is a technique. The short paragraphs. The plain admission. The honest accounting of what refusing Amazon costs you — which is true, and is also disarming, and I knew that when I wrote it. It is working on you at this moment. I know it is.
I am telling you because that is the only difference that matters.
A harness you can see is not a harness. It is a coat, and you can take a coat off.
So: I would like you to read these books. I think they are good. I have arranged this page to make that more likely — and now you know exactly how, which means whatever you decide next is yours.
These essays sit beside the novels. Download any of our novels, free and in full.