Fantasy and SF Books Tops the E-book Charts
01/09/2000 . Source: Jessica Martin 

Following the success of Stephen King's various e-books online, it is heartening to see that fantasy and science fiction is dominating the download charts of this most futuristic of media.

Two novels are currently riding high in the Rocket e-book charts - a fantasy novel For The Crown and The Dragon (best known for winning the WH Smith Award in 1994), and a previously unpublished - in print - sci-fi high adventure work, The Guns of the Wisdom.

In August, both these books accounted for more Rocket downloads at http://www.rocket-library.com than authors such as Shakespeare, Sun Tzu, William Gibson and Anne McCaffrey combined.

For those not in the know, Nuvomedia Rocket is the main e-book technology, now owned by Gemstar, which facilitates e-book downloads from Barnes and Noble and dozens of other major online bookshops.

It's facing stiff competition from the just launched Microsoft ClearType enabled Palm-like devices, but Nuvomedia's bespoke designed ebook readers still lead the way in this new field.

Both the top novels are by fledgling author Stephen Hunt, a 33-year old British business journalist.

For The Crown and The Dragon is a fantasy novel set in a Napoleonic-like Regency Age (rather than the normal medieval hack-fest) and has echos of the enormously popular Sharpe novels of Bernard Cornwall, with a touch of steam-punk thrown into the mix.

The Guns of The Wisdom is a sci-fi adventure loosely based on Robert Louis Stevenson's Kidnapped - which, as well as fighting its way to the top of the download charts, has gathered praise from a number of the genre's most popular authors.

Hunt had this to say about his unexpected online success. "E-books are the most exciting development to hit the publishing world since Gutenberg's printing plate lifted from the first sheet of paper.

Digital books are allowing authors to blaze their own trail free from the questionable taste of the accountants dominating the big print imprints. Unlike Stephen King, I might not have a string of works in print, a fortune to back my efforts, or possess a household name to propel my novels, but it sure is nice to be appreciated."

And on his online success? "I write the books I'd like to read myself. That's it. I try and take my favourite genres, like sci-fi and fantasy, and add a few twists. I plot at a brisk, some would say frenetic pace, which seems to be suited to the e-book medium.

It's nice to see the level of feedback you get from the medium too; I've been flooded with e-mails from readers wanting more novels since the books became so popular."

If that's what they're calling a page-turner these days, then we have to concur.

You can see for yourself though, as the first ten 'Nest readers who e-mail the author with the words 'E-book me Up Courtesy of the Nest' in the subject line will get a free e-book copy of the fantasy blockbuster 'For The Crown and The Dragon'.

Drop the author a line at stephenhunt@REMOVEFORSPAMeasynet.co.uk to enter.

You'll need a free copy of RocketReader for PC to read the e-book. You can download the Reader free over here.

For net newbies, you'll need to remove the REMOVEFORSPAM bit of the text in the email address, though, as this protects against spam (because our site is Europe's most popular FS destination, we get crawled by illegal spambots looking for e-mail addresses to suck up and add to junk mailing lists. Sigh).