Arc Manor is a small press that publishes mostly science fiction/fantasy, and also some romance. Their imprints include: Phoenix Pick, Caezik SF&F, Galaxy’s Edge magazine, and Caezik Romance. They have a periodic free book offer through Publisher’s Pick, and this month it’s a Robert A. Heinlein title, The Number of the Beast. The way it works is that you sign up for their email newsletter, and then each month (more-or-less), you’ll get an email telling you what the free book is. When you go to their website to get it, there will be a suggested non-zero price in the checkout, but you are free to edit the price down to whatever you think is fair, including $0.00. So it is a free book, but if you really like what you are getting, you can pay them a little bit – or a lot!
They also usually offer some pretty good discounts on several other books by the same author. This month, the other books include both volumes of Heinlein’s Expanded Universe, Podkayne of Mars, Double Star, Time for the Stars, Friday, Red Planet and Take Back Your Government. Prices range from $1.99 to $3.99 on these books, and can’t be edited down. But if you need a Heinlein title or two, take a look! I don’t see these sale prices at any of the big e-retailers, at least right now, just on their website.
Oh yeah, and here’s the link to the Publisher’s Pick website, although you’ll have to sign up for the free e-book program first before you can get the free book: https://www.publisherspick.com/
This month’s free book from Arc Manor is Halfway Human by Carolyn Ives Gilman. The link to the Arc Manor/Publisher’s Pick website in the OP is still good and if you aren’t already signed up for their free book of the month, you’ll have to sign up/give them your email. And the “extra” sale books this month are two of Gilman’s award-nominated novellas at $1.99 for both (fixed price): Arkfall and The Ice Owl.
August’s free book from Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick is Beyond the Doors of Death, by Robert Silverberg and Damien Broderick. Be careful before you adjust the price on this one to anything but zero – it has been free before. So check carefully to make sure you don’t already have it!
The “discounted” bundle is seven additional books, mostly by Silverberg, for $5. Again, though, use caution – some of these have been free/discounted in the past, so check for what you may have before you buy. And they are a bit disingenuous, because Beyond the Doors of Death is part of the bundle, so although they say you’re getting eight books, you’re really getting seven if you claim Beyond for free via the individual offer. But $5 is still probably a pretty good deal, even if you already have a couple of these.
Just FYI the rest of these are: The Last Song of Orpheus, Starborne, When the Blue Shift Comes (with a sequel novella by Alvaro Zinos-Amaro), The Masks of Time, and Thebes of the Hundred Gates, all by Silverberg, and also The Mutant Season(by Silverberg and Karen Haber), and Threshold of Eternity by John Brunner and Broderick.
The link in the OP is still good, and as usual, if you haven’t already given them your email address, you’ll have to do so to get either the freebie or the bundle…
September’s free book is The Cyborg from Earth, by Charles Sheffield. As mentioned up top, there will be a suggested non-zero price in the checkout, but you are free to edit the price down to whatever you think is fair, including $0.00. So it is a free book, but if you really like what you are getting, you can pay them a little bit – or a lot!
There are also six other Sheffield books on sale for $1.99 each (firm) or $9.99 for a bundle of all seven (including the freebie). Use caution – several of these have been Phoenix Pick/Arc Manor freebies or sale titles in the past, so check carefully, especially before you buy the bundle. The additional six titles are: Georgia on My Mind and Other Places, Godspeed, The Billion Dollar Boy, Putting Up Roots, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, and Dancing with Myself.
The link in the OP is still good, or here it is again: https://www.publisherspick.com/
October’s free pick of the month is Daughter of Elysium by John Slonczewski. (You can bet I cut-and-pasted that name…) There’s also a bundle of the three books in the series available. The additional two titles in the bundle are The Children Star and Brain Plague. If you just want the free book, add it to your cart, and then change the price to $0.00 and check-out. If you want the bundle, add the bundle to your cart, and you can then change the price to as little as $3.99, but not all the way to zero. And, of course, you can change the prices to something in-between too, if you want to!
And the link is still: https://www.publisherspick.com
November’s free book is Fortress on the Sun by Paul Cook. As usual, there is a suggested price ($1.99), which you can reduce to zero if you wish, to get the book for free. There is also a bundle of eight Paul Cook books (including Fortress) for a suggested price of $6.99, which you can reduce to $4.99 (or something in between) if you wish. The link is still the same as in the OP.
January’s book is a collection of short stories by L Sprague de Camp, who was a contemporary of giants like Robert A Heinlein and Isaac Asimov. The collection is titled The Best of L Sprague de Camp, and it’s available via the link in the OP. (Also read the OP for directions on how to actually get the book for free, or for a price you choose…) And, as always, there are other books by the same author available for sale too. There are nine additional books for prices between $1.99 and $3.99 each, or if you need/want all nine (ten including the freebie), there’s a bundle price of $19.99, which works out to $1.99 each for all of them. I’m not going to type ten titles in this comment 😀, so just go take a look!
March’s free book (apologies that I missed February’s) is Robert A Heinlein’s Podkayne of Mars. As always for the free book of the month, you can change the price to “free” once it’s in the cart, or put in any other price you choose. This version has “the author’s original preferred ending”, rather than the ending his publisher requested oh-so-many years ago, and also apparently contains a letter from Heinlein to his agent, complaining about the changes. And, also as always, there are sale prices on nine additional Heinlein books, and/or a bundle price of $24.99 for all ten, including the freebie. Many of these have been on sale before at various times, though, so check carefully before you buy the bundle!
The link to the sale page remains the same as in the OP: https://www.publisherspick.com
This month Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick are offering a free novelette, O2 Arena by Oghenechovwe Donald Ekpeki. It has been nominated for a number of awards, and Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick ask that, if you read it and like it, and can vote for any of the awards, that you consider voting for it.
It’s available at this link, which will take you to a check-out screen with $0.00 price. Hit the “Free Checkout” button, and you’re good to go. (You do have to give them your name and email address, but I haven’t found Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick to be a spammer…)
And in addition to the novelette, Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick are also offering their traditional free book-of-the-month, which can be had for free, just by changing the price in the checkout screen to $0.00, or to any other price you might choose. This month’s book is Alternities, by Michael P Kube-McDowell. And, also as usual, there are a number of books by the same author on sale, as well as a bundle of all the books for an even better price. The additional books are: The Quiet Pools, Exile, Emprise (Trigon Disunity #1), Enigma (Trigon Disunity #2), and Empery (Trigon Disunity #3). I’m not going to list all the additional sale prices, but the bundle price is $10, which works out to $2.00 per book, if you need them all, and if you consider that the freebie is one of the six books in the bundle. The link in the OP is still good.
Their Majesties Bucketeers by L. Neil Smith is the Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick for May, 2022, even if it is a little bit late. The link in the OP is still good.
Also as usual there are a bunch of other L Neil Smith books on sale, and a bundle. The bonus sale books are: Pallas, Ceres, Tom Paine Maru, The Venus Belt, Brightsuit MacBear, Taflak Lysandra, Blade of P’Na, The Crystal Empire, Sweeter than Wine, and (for something completely different) Down with Power: Libertarian Policy in a Time of Crises. The price for all eleven in a bundle, which includes the freebie, is $19.00, and the books are also available individually for sale if you don’t want or need them all.
June’s free book is Farewell to Yesterday’s Tomorrow by Alexei Panshin.
In addition, as usual, there is also a bundle with some other books by the same author for a much reduced price. In this case, the bundle is $6.99 and includes, in addition to the freebie, a book about science fiction, The World Beyond the Hill, that he wrote with his wife, Cory Panshin, and which won a Hugo award; Earth Magic, also written with his wife; and an omnibus of three books set in the Anthony Villiers universe (Starwell, The Thurb Revolution, and Masque World).
The link in the OP is still good, and takes you to the page with both the freebie and the bundle.
This month’s free book is The Infinite Man by Daniel F Galouye. And this month there isn’t a bundle offered, but instead three other Galouye books, all for $1.99 each. Those books are: Dark Universe, Simulacron-3, and Project Barrier. As usual, the https://www.publisherspick.com/ is still good – same as in the OP. And also as usual, the “free book” will show up in your cart with a price ($0.99 in this case), and you can then change it to any price, including $0.00.
The Warlock in Spite of Himself is the first book in Christopher Stasheff’s Warlock of Gramarye series, and it’s this month’s free book from Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick. Note that the book will show up in your cart with a nominal price of $0.99, which you can then change to $0.00 (or anything in between) if you wish. The link is in the OP, and/or also in the comment just above.
And, as usual, there’s an additional bundle that includes the second and third books (King Kobold Revived and The Warlock Unlocked) for the nominal price of $6.99, but as low as $3.99 if you want to change the price in the cart before you purchase.
Another note: These appear to have been the book-of-the-month before, since I already have all three. So check carefully before you buy…
And yet one more note: the publisher mentioned in a later email that there appear to be some issues downloading for some folks, but that if you do buy and have problems, they will fix within a couple of weeks, so please be a little patient. (They are short-staffed due to some medical issues.)
This month’s pick is Power Challenges, by Ben Bova, which is formally priced at $1.99, but the price can be edited in the cart to $0.00 (or anything in between) if you choose. And, as usual, there’s an associated bundle for sale as well: the four Jake Ross/Power books for $9.99, but which can be edited to as low as $6.99. The titles are: Power Play, Power Surge, Power Failure, and Power Challenges. Note that Power Challenges is part of the bundle, so if you buy that, you don’t need to also “buy” it as the freebie…
And there are also some sale prices on a number of other titles, some in e-book, and some paper, for December. There are too many for me to list, but the same link as always (https://www.publisherspick.com/) will take you to the freebie/bundle, as well as the other titles.
The Publisher’s Pick free book of the month this month is Putting Up Roots, by Charles Sheffield. And, as usual, there is a bundle of more Sheffield books available as well – six books (including Putting Up Roots) for $6, which is a pretty nice price. The additional five books in the bundle include: Georgia on My Mind and Other Places, Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Godspeed, The Billion Dollar Boy, and The Cyborg from Earth.
You can read about how to get the free book in the OP, or just go to https://www.publisherspick.com/, which will take you directly to the website, and you can just follow the directions there.
Also, definitely check before you buy – a very slightly different selection of Sheffield’s books were the deal-of-the-month back in September, 2021, and so you may already have some/all of these.
I never got an email for a February Publisher’s Pick book, and now in March’s email, the folks behind Publisher’s Pick mentioned that they had trouble with the February email. So they are extending the February free book through March, AND there is a March free book too. Woo-hoo! The link in the OP is still good, and note that you have to page down a bit to see the February book…
However, on the downside (at least for me), Phoenix Pick have announced that their monthly free book program is going to come to an end in May, in favor of a subscription program called Book Bale. It actually sounds like a pretty good deal if you read a lot of science fiction, but this blog is called Mostly Mysteries – and not Mostly Science Fiction – for a reason 😁. I really suspect that a sci-fi subscription plan isn’t going to work for me, although there is supposed to be a free trial available once the website is up and running, and I will probably at least give that a try. And Book Bale is also supposed to have other content, like author interviews, on-line chat sessions, etc. So clearly YMMV, and here’s the link you can to check it out for yourself: http://www.BookBale.com
And finally here are the free books:
For February: Earth Magic, by Alexei and Cory Panshin (note that this one was free a while back as well)
For March: The Best of Cordwainer Smith, by Cordwainer Smith, edited by JJ Pierce
And the associated sale book for March is Smith’s Norstrilia, which is on sale for $2.99
As always, the free books will have a suggested price in the cart, and you are able to change it to any price you want, including $0.00.
So…I’m not sure if this (April) will be the last month for the free book program, or if there will be one more in May, before the program comes to an end. I’ll keep an eye out, and if there’s a final free book next month, I’ll post for sure!
But in any case, for this month, the free book is Humanity 2.0, which, per its blurb, is a collection of short stories about what will it mean to be human in the future and how humanity will evolve in order to reach the stars. Authors include Robert J. Sawyer, John Varley, Robert Silverberg, Brenda Cooper, Ken Liu, Mike Resnick, Jody Lynn Nye and many more…
As usual, there’s a nominal asking price, $1.99 in this case, but you can change the price in the cart to anything, including zero.
And there’s also one additional collection of short stories as part of the month’s deals. The Reinvented Heart is edited by Cat Rambo and Jennifer Brozek, and is on sale for $3.99 instead of its usual $9.99. And per its blurb, it’s a collection of “stories that complicate sex and gender by showing how shifting technology may affect social attitudes and practices”.
You can find both books at: https://www.publisherspick.com
Arc Manor/Phoenix Pick have their Book Bale service up and running, with a few issues/glitches still going on. I’m in the process of trying an intro offer for a couple of months, and will come back and post how it goes.
In the meantime, they are also offering one more (presumably final) free book – Power Challenges, by Ben Bova is available via this link, and as usual, you can change the price to anything you want, including $0.00, before you check out. Not sure how long this offer will go for.
Note that Power Challenges was their free book of the month back in December, 2022, so you may already have it – check carefully before you buy!