If you have a to-read list of independent and small press authors, or if you’re browsing for reading material to tide you over the last few weeks of the year, there are great opportunities for deals and quick gifts on the ebook website Smashwords.
Tens of thousands of books in all genres are discounted between 25% and 100%, or even entirely free!
The sale runs until January 1, so don’t let the time slip by.
(In fact, on the authors’ side of things, we recently learned Smashwords is lowering its royalty rates in 2026, especially on ebooks sold for under $2.99. Smashwords’ rates remain higher than Amazon’s, but they’ll be dropping for the first time in over a decade. These lower royalty rates may affect some authors’ willingness or ability to participate in future sitewide sales like this one. In any event, your book-buying now will be especially appreciated by every author using Smashwords!)
My books on Smashwords
I have 3 ebooks collecting reprints of my short fiction, published through Draft2Digital and available for sale on Smashwords.
The Halcyon In Flight [FREE until January 1]
To Hethan A’Manth, it seems like a routine enough mission: one more message to deliver. Certainly, this time it goes to a rebel queen, but he knows to keep his head down as he passes through the affairs of monarchs, armies, and sorcerers.
Yet he becomes beguiled, entangled in the last stand of Felinda against the most puissant Empress of Xeocib—and in the friendship he forms with Asmadene the Halcyon, which might yet change the shape of history.
Get it or gift it for free at Smashwords
John Kosichev and Other Heroes: Stories of Resistance
Four stories of courage, compassion, and endurance celebrate:
The young man chosen to die in the place of a hero who can never lose, fighting for not only his life, but his very identity in a world beyond truth.
The secret at the core of a marriage society approves.
The woman who built a forbidden flying machine, and the woman who loved her.
Undying resilience under terrible odds.
These are the things no regime can entirely repress—and they can make anyone a hero.
Get it or gift it at Smashwords
(There’s also a paperback version of John Kosichev and Other Heroes available on Bookshop.org)
The Astrologer’s Telling: Stories of Worlds Ending and the Cost of Survival
Six stories explore the means and the price of survival when everything seems lost:
An astrologer loses her stars but not her faith in them. A woman watches as her lover and her planet transform with new life—or die with it. A young man seeks revenge for unwelcome mercy granted in a world where every breath is agony. A group of artists discovers the strange loveliness which is all that remains of all the other worlds.
At the end of things, people display selfishness, exhaustion, but also connection. Friendships are betrayed and nurtured. If hope is gone, there is still determination, curiosity, and beauty.
About Therese
Therese Arkenberg's first short story was accepted for publication on January 2, 2008, and her second acceptance came a few hours later. Since then they haven't always been in such a rush, yet her work appears in places like Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Analog, Daily Science Fiction, and the anthology Sword & Sorceress XXIV. Aqua Vitae, her science fiction novella, was released by WolfSinger Publications in December 2011.
She works as a freelance editor and writer in Wisconsin, where she returned after a brief but unforgettable time in Washington, D.C. When she isn't reading, writing, or editing (it's true!) she serves on the board of the Plowshare Center of Waukesha, which works for social, economic, and environmental justice.