It pays to advertise

If you don't know about Polymoth Books, click here.

I wish to announce a rather crazy scheme on my part: a package of 22 of the best books I have written this century, all curated and presented as DRM-free PDF files. This is now in place, if you click on this link.

Note that all of the books are available as Kindle e-books and Amazon Print-on-demand books as well (but I can do mates rates).

The main aim of this PDF scheme is to set my intellectual property loose in schools. Teacher-librarians will be allowed to make class sets of any book (or books), for one term, once they have paid a one-off fee of AUD$50 for the collection, on either a CD-ROM or a USB stick. That includes postage and GST, but you need to order, get an invoice and pay first.

At the end of the term, I ask that TLs delete the files from devices, but if they wish, they can immediately copy them again. I rely on the ethics of TLs, and won't be checking. I also have no plan to check the credentials of purchasers, and will declare all such to be honorary teacher-librarians. My aim is to influence minds, not to make money, so if you fulfil any TL-like role, that's good enough for me. Ordinary librarians count as well, and friends are welcome.

Some of the books in this scheme came out through mainstream publishers and some of them won awards, but were allowed to lapse by lazy publishers, others were excellent ideas that nervous publishers shied away from. All have been seized back, meticulously curated and brought up to date. It has to be conceded that small portions of text (and some illustrations) may appear in more than one volume, because there are certain themes I harp on.

Any good educator does exactly that, repeating the key points.

As you can read on a link that I will post by the end of the month, this century, my work has been awarded:

• Seven CBCA long listings (notables), two CBCA short listings, one Honour Book and one Book of the Year;
• One Short Listing in the NSW Premier's History Awards, Young People's History Prize ;
• Two Australian Awards for Excellence in Educational Publishing;
• One WA Premier's Book Award for Children's Literature;
• One international White Ravens List entry (Germany);
• One Wilderness Society Short List entry, and
• Two Whitley awards.

In other words, there's some serious intellectual merit here.

The titles involved are: 

Australia's Hidden Heroes; sample here

Australia's Pioneers Heroes and Fools; a sort of sample here

Australian Backyard Explorer; sample here

Australian Backyard Naturalist; sample here

Curious Minds; sort of sample here

Kokoda Track: 101 Days; sample here

Looking at Small Things; sample here

Mistaken for Granite; sample here

The Monster Maintenance Manual; sample here

Mr Darwin's Incredible Shrinking World; sample here

Nature of North Head; sample here

Not Your Usual Bushrangers; sample here

Not Your Usual Clever Ideas; sample here

Not Your Usual Gold Stories; sample here

Not Your Usual Treatments; sample here

Not Your Usual Villains; sample here

Old Grandpa's Book of Practical Poems; sort of sample here

Playwiths; sample here

The Lawn a Social History; sample here

The Speed of Nearly Everything; sample here

They Saw The Difference;  (sample) and 

You Missed a Bit. Typical example

I already have a marketing operation in place, and dead-tree versions of all of these books (and also individual e-books with DRM) are available from Polymoth Books, and you can find out about the contents of each title through that link.

I will, in the near future, be providing sample chapters or excerpts through this blog, each bearing the title of the book they come from.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have some files to sort.