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What's new at Hidden Knowledge?

31 July 2005: The Fortunes of Lal Faversham is on sale! This is the first-ever collection of the six "Lal Faversham" stories, unavailable since the 1920's, and never before collected in book form. Stirring adventures of the kind that made Sabatini famous, with an introduction by Jesse F. Knight. Visit our Adventure page for more information.

12 July 2005: We've finished the project to convert all our books to a full six formats. That's right: All our fiction is now available in (1) Acrobat/Adobe Reader (2) Microsoft Reader (3) Palm Reader (4) Mobipocket (5) HTML and (6) Palm DOC. And boy are our arms tired. Oh, yes, free trial versions in all six formats for all fiction books, too. And we'll be doing our non-fiction titles in new formats in a short while. Along with some new non-fiction books. Books with images. Books of short stories. Lost novels. Buy.

2 July 2005: Our Sabatini adventure books are all now available in three more formats: Mobipocket, HTML, and Palm DOC. But wait: There's more! They're also available as free trial versions in all six formats, so you can download them and compare formats, size, and appearance, and decide which ones you want to go with. Go to our Adventure page.

20 June 2005: The Lion's Skin is available for sale! We've been working behind the scenes here, which is another way of saying there were things that held up release of new books while we found new distributors and retailers, and some new ways to build books. We've got 'em. Look for more new titles in the coming months.

20 November 2003: Scaramouche is out! Buy it from the usual suspects.
     Next up, Sabatini's The Lion's Skin, a romantic adventure in England. It's set just after the South Sea Bubble, and takes us into Jacobite plots to restore the banished King, with twists and turns, a beautiful maiden who knows her own mind (even if she gets carried away sometimes) and a sardonic semi-anti-hero with too many secrets.

11 November 2003: Scaramouche, in our usual excellent version, available this month. Watch for it!

5 November 2003: We went to the World Fantasy Convention in Washington DC. Took a side trip to the Library of Congress to copy their microfilm of ALL-STORY MAGAZINE to get the text for an upcoming collection of unreprinted Sabatini stories about the French Revolution. More about this later.

We also made a couple of arrangements for e-book reissue rights for books currently available only in hardcover from small press publishers. We'll tell you more when we have something we can talk about publicly.

October 2003: Did wemention that we are now the webhosting sponsor of the independent group of Rafael Sabatini enthusiasts that hang out at RafaelSabatini.com? Check it out, survey says.

5 August 2003: Captain Blood is now available!

31 July 2003: In the next few days we introduce Sabatini's Captain Blood in Microsoft Reader, Acrobat/PDF, and Palm Reader formats. We've been working hard toward this ever since we started doing the Adventure series. Don't take our word for it; read the first quarter of the book for free. Check the Home page and/or the Adventure page for the latest updates.

15 July 2003: Work stop; time for fun. A new entry in Funstuff is Frederick L. Allen's musings on the life changes indicated by classified "swap" ads in an adventure pulp of the early 1920's. It starts on solid ground and rapidly flies into dreamspace. Have a laugh, our treat.

6 July 2003: OK, we've been working a lot, and now it's done. All the original titles and all of our adventure books are available in Palm Reader format. There are even "TRY" sample versions of these books so you can download a test case and see how you like them. Man, this was a lot like work. Buy some books.

1 July 2003: In honor of Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's "Grand Master" award we're reducing the price of her three books by $2.00 each. Buy more copies and we'll keep the new lower price. Other hand taketh-ing, we now ask $4.95 for each of the Sherman autobiographical volumes. (They're still free if you buy the CD-ROM editions of some of our titles.)

20 May 2003: The Outlaws of Falkensteig is now available from our online store. Acrobat/PDF, Microsoft Reader, HTML, or Palm DOC versions; $6.95 for any or all. Coming shortly: Palm Digital Media version.

17 May 2003: We've been working assiduously, in a focused manner, head down to the grindstone, and like all holy heck to bring you a veritable rucksack full of new e-books in the next few months. We start with the first "new" Sabatini book in over a decade: the story collection The Outlaws of Falkensteig, with an introduction by Sabatini scholar Jesse F. Knight. We have a great cover for you, too; it's adapted from the original magazine illustrations (1900) and hand-colored by Karen Schaffer in the style of contemporary engravings.

2 April 2003: Cleveland Public Library has ordered three of our e-books as test examples in an on-site/remote "check-out" program developed by our distributor, Content Reserve. You can read the details at CR's website. We're psyched that they've chosen our books, and hope it's just the first instance of a new approach to libraries with e-books.

29 March 2003: Chelsea Quinn Yarbro has just been named horror writing's Grand Master by the World Horror Convention. Way to go, Quinn! The award will be presented at WHC in Kansas City, Missouri (held April 17th-20th, 2003). The list of previous Grand Masters, beginning with Robert Bloch, is a guide to the greatest writers in the history of the field of modern horror writing. Buy her books, including Hidden Knowledge's e-books Magnificat, In the Face of Death, and Alas, Poor Yorick.

7 March 2003: Bardelys the Magnificent is out! Go buy it.

5 March 2003: We're about to release our third Rafael Sabatini book. Bardelys the Magnificent is set in the early 1600's in the France of Louis XIII ("the Just") and it's great adventure and a grand old love story.

We now have agreements with Sabatini scholar Jesse F. Knight for electronic editions of his two collections of previously unreprinted Sabatini stories. The Outlaws of Falkensteig and Camisade and Other Stories of the French Revolution will be out later this year in our standard formats. Both books have never had mass editions; if you want a print copy you'll have to pay hundreds of dollars (they were issued in editions of 35 and 75 copies each).

We've been quiet for a bit because we've been revamping our tech. We have new software for generating Microsoft Reader titles, and we've improved the conversion process for HTML formats as well. This will allow us to do some of our reissue series a bit more quickly and even more exactly perfect than they already were. It's been kind of fun, actually.

February 2003: We're moving to a new web hosting company (there have been problems with the old one). If there's a glitch in e-mail or the site becomes invisible for a day—that's why.

2 February 2003: We've been working hard! We now have e-books in the Palm "DOC" format; the first one is Jim Killus' SunSmoke. As always, if you buy directly from us you get any format, or all formats, with full freedom to put a copy on your second computer (or PDA) or print out a copy.

20 January 2003: SunSmoke is out! Go read about it, and buy a copy. As always, we have a free samples for you to read: the first third of the book. Read the samples. Then buy it.

4 December 2002: A Christmas present to all of you: Dreams of wealth untold. Well, actually, told in detail in Arthur Train's " The Spanish Prisoner," the fully deconstructed and totally out-of-control reductio ad absurdum of this perennial scheme for gaining ill-deserved wealth. Part of our Funstuff pages.

25 November 2002: We're in page proofs for James Killus' SunSmoke, first in our science fiction reissue line. This novel was published by Ace in 1985, but has been out of print for some years. Like the books in our "Originals" line, it crosses genre boundaries with the majesty of indifference to walls, visiting high tech, martial arts, and fantasy. It's the only fiction ever reviewed in the scientific journal Atmospheric Environment.

16 November 2002: Our second Rafael Sabatini novel, The Sea-Hawk, is now available at our web storefront! As before, you can read the first quarter of the book for free, and buy a copy in either Microsoft Reader or Acrobat eBook/PDF format.

15 November 2002: The second volume of William Tecumseh Sherman's Memoirs, is now available at our web storefront. It's free! Fully edited and corrected for accuracy, and based on the final 1891 (4th) edition, it covers Sherman's career from the beginning of the Battle of Atlanta, through the March to the Sea, the final surrender of the Confederate armies, and the years running the Army under President Grant. Reading his own words is the only way you can start to understand this complex character, a true American hero.

13 November 2002 (Update): We'll be at the following upcoming science fiction / fantasy conventions; look for us there and we can show you samples of the CD-ROMs and how the e-books look on a small Notebook computer:

(Looks like we're not going to be at either Orycon
     or Loscon.)

Look for us in 2003 at—

Boskone (maybe)
Potlatch (or else! Karen is chair...)
Wiscon
Westercon (maybe)
Worldcon in Toronto (absolutely)
World Fantasy in Washington DC (absolutely)

10 November 2002: The CD-ROM version of Alas, Poor Yorick is available! Visit at our web storefront. You can always read more about the book before you buy it. But don't forget to buy it.

21 October 2002: We've just introduced the first in our new line of Adventure e-Books, with Love-at-Arms by Rafael Sabatini, the greatest swashbuckler of them all. You can read the first quarter of the book for free, and buy a copy in either Microsoft Reader or Acrobat eBook/PDF format, at our web storefront .

3 October 2002: We've just signed up as an affiliate of eBooks.com, which not only carries our e-books, but maintains a huge catalog of e-books from other publishers as well. Some prices discounted! Check them out.

Download an eBook today

28 September 2002: Alas, Poor Yorick is now available for sale! Go to the Yorick pages to read about the book, and buy it.

9 September 2002: ConJose (the World Science Fiction Convention, here in San Jose) was a blast. Mike was on three panels discussing electronic and small-press publishing, and got interviewed by the SAN JOSE BUSINESS JOURNAL. SJBJ ran the interview as part of an article on the state of e-publishing, complete with a large picture of Mike holding up the Yorick CD-ROM. You can read the full article online (though they didn't include the picture), but first you'll have to fill in the free registration forms.

We'll be at the following upcoming science fiction / fantasy conventions; look for us there and we can show you samples of the CD-ROMs and how the e-books look on a Sony Notebook:

World Fantasy Convention, Minneapolis MN,
   Hallowe'en
and
Orycon, Portland OR, 22-24 November
or else
LOSCON, Nov 29-December 1 in Burbank CA

15 August 2002: The Alas, Poor Yorick pages have gone live, which means that the book is nearly ready for release for download sales. We'll have CD-ROM copies for you at the Worldcon at the end of the month!

3 August 2002: Final schedule for the Worldcon in San Jose has been sent out. Mike will be on two panels on e-book futures and methods, and one on small-press publishing. Come to the program items and participate in the discussions. This is your chance to ask questions about what we're doing, how, and why.

22 July 2002: The working typeset galley for Alas, Poor Yorick has gone to Quinn Yarbro for final edits and corrections. We're on track for release before Worldcon in San Jose.

15 July 2002: We're back from our whirlwind tour of Westercon and Readercon, where Mike was on small-press and e-book panels at both conventions. A particular highlight was the Readercon panel: really a dialogue with Rob Sawyer (past president of SFWA) in which Rob and Mike totally agreed on e-books as the future for specialty and genre publishing.

29 May 2002: The detailed military organization and battle casualty Tables from Volume Two of Sherman's Memoirs are now online. You can click on a thumbnail and download the full page image. The thumbnails are captioned to correspond to the designators in the text.

28 May 2002: Volume Two of Sherman's Memoirs has been released. Check out our Sherman web page for further information. Price: FREE!

8 May 2002: The CD-ROM edition of Charnas' Strange Seas is out! Visit the web pages for the book, or go directly to our web storefront to order it.

We're editing in the final corrections to Sherman's Memoirs, Volume 2, and expect to have it out before the end of May.

13 September 2001: We've updated the web storefront for the CD-ROM edition of In the Face of Death, and the free downloads of Shermans Memoirs.

8 September 2001: Amazon now carries both Magnificat and In the Face of Death as digital e-book downloads for the Microsoft Reader. The Acrobat/PDF versions are right behind them. Amazon says you can't use these on PDA's and handhelds, but they should be just fine; we'll get that clarified this workweek. You can always buy them from us, of course, and if you do we pass on more money to the author. (For books sold through our distributor, such as these on Amazon, we only get 45% of the list price; this 55% discount is standard practice in the book biz.) Next up: sales through Barnes&Noble.com, and a large number of direct web sales locations.

5 September 2001: LIBRARY JOURNAL contacted us to confirm that our current books are all originals, and not e-book reissues of earlier printed books. They'll have a review of In The Face of Death this month. They reviewed Strange Seas in August, but we haven't seen a copy yet.

2 September 2001: Sold a number of copies of the Face at the Worldcon, and the advance reading copies of Strange Seas on CD-ROM got plenty of positive comment. Dave Howell of Alexandria Digital Literature gave us a free plug on the Small Press panel. We can supply the CD-ROM directly to you right now, if you pay by check or MO; price $14.95 (U.S.)(plus shipping and applicable taxes); write for info. It'll be in the web store as soon as we can set it up there.

25 August 2001: The CD-ROM version of In the Face of Death is ready! We'll have copies at the World Science Fiction Convention in Philadelphia over Labor Day Weekend, and it will be available from the web storefront beginning the second week of September.

Next up will be the CD-ROM version of Strange Seas.

20 August 2001: We've snuck a new title into the catalog! Reading In the Face of Death got us to wondering what Sherman was really like, so we read his Memoirs and his personal Home Letters. These were so interesting that we decided to issue them (three volumes) as e-books. The first one is done! Volume One of the Memoirs is now available in PDF and Microsoft Reader formats; if demand exists we'll put it into HTML as well. The second volume will along later this year, and the Home Letters a bit after that.

Like all important things this started out simple and got very messy. There is a public domain version of the text of the Memoirs available from Project Gutenberg; we thought could reformat it, do a nice layout (like we always do), and reissue it as a real e-book. However, it is full of errors and never should have been released as it was. [That didn't stop people from using it! There are versions on the web even as we speak.]

So we gave it the full edit and proofreading process. Those of you who know publishing will understand just what's involved in this. In the end we had to go back to the original creator of the e-text to answer some questions; he was most helpful.

We're putting Volume One on the CD-ROM version of In the Face of Death, for free, no charge, as part of the background information. We'll probably sell a three-volume package of the two volumes of the Memoirs with the Home Letters, which do NOT exist in any etext form. [In this case, we've scanned a copy of the book and will OCR and edit it from scratch. So it will take a little extra work...]

16 August 2001: Take a look a the background information and links we've added for both In the Face of Death and Strange Seas! We add new material to these, too, as we find it.

7 August 2001: Our books are now listed in the e-book directory at "Mind Like Water," a set of enterprises which also wants to be an e-directory. Worth a look to see what you can find.

Also: Be it noted here that Alas, Poor Yorick will be Quinn's 70th published book. Yes!

5 August 2001: Bookpage has reviewed In the Face of Death, and given it a high marks:

"this superb historical novel full of insight and romantic drama..."

"In the Face of Death is strong fare indeed."

"Readers who embrace the heady hybrid of romance, history and horror will welcome a new novel by Chelsea Quinn Yarbro, the best-selling author of more than 60 novels, including the popular Saint-Germain vampire series."

"And readers fascinated by the Civil War will devour In the Face of Death..."

[and, just in case you forgot]
"Quinn Yarbro thrilled readers with her first e-book offering, Magnificat,..."

2 August 2001: We've just reached agreement with Chelsea Quinn Yarbro to publish a third novel. Alas, Poor Yorick is the inside story of the political and family intrigues that Will Shakespeare chronicled in his play "Hamlet." But now, after these many years, the truth will out, in the personal recollections of Yorick the Fool (famed possessor of the most famous skull in all the history of Drama). To be published in early 2002, in standard e-book formats.

July 2001: Hidden Knowledge has signed contracts with two major e-book distributors. Look for us in the e-book sales (web) pages of Amazon, Powell's, and other major e-book retailers. And don't forget that you can always buy our e-books directly from our web storefront.

June 2001: Jeff Ward will be doing the CD-ROM cover and advertising art for Suzy Charnas' e-book Strange Seas. Look for a poster advertising campaign (especially at major SF/F conventions) and postcard and bookmark tie-ins. (AFAWK he's not related to the Publisher, and got the job on merit.)


Underwriters help pay the bills. Click on one of the buttons you find around the website and take a look; read our unbiased commentaries; buy something and help fund this enterprise.

If it weren't for Peet's Coffee we'd never wake up in the morning. We've been drinking it here since the 1970's. Years ago, when I used to dream about living in the mountains and writing obscure novels, only the absence of really, really good coffee (the kind I bought at Peet's, ground from beans, and filtered with distilled water) held me back. One day Peet's announced they would ship coffee anywhere in the U.S. I was forced to come to terms with reality, and haven't left since. Peet's Coffee, grounding coffee drinkers since 1966.

Nov. 2002: Peet's has suspended their underwriting programs, but we're leaving the ad here. Everything I said is still true, even if they don't pay us anything.


Places you can go on the Hidden Knowledge websites:
| Buy Our e-Books | Latest News | Our e-Book Store | About e-Books |
| Homage to Writer Rafael Sabatini | Magazine Cover Art Archive |
| Burton Holmes, Extraordinary Traveler | The Travel History Home Page |
| The Trans-Siberian Railroad | Personal Pages |

 

News page updated as often as we can