All Hands Conference at 2nd Battalion

Frigatefire, a New Novel by John Wilkes

Dear Friends,

For those of you who might be interested, I would like you to know that my second novel, Frigatefire, is now available along with the reprinted Raventross. Frigatefire is a sequel to Raventross, so if you have not read Raventross and want to do so, I strongly recommend you read it before reading Frigatefire. Writing these novels has been a source of great enjoyment for me. While they will soon be available through distribution sources like Amazon, if you want to order any books, I would appreciate it very much if you would do it through my publisher’s web site,www.cdespublishing.com or my web site www.johnburwellwilkes.com. The cost would be the same to you, but Amazon, like all book distributors takes a huge chunk of the proceeds on the books they sell. If you should decide you really like either of them, I would also be much obliged if you send a testimonial to the publishing company for posting on their web site and also tell everyone you know about it.

The reason for this is that in today’s environment it is virtually impossible to make much money selling books, and I have no expectation of getting large royalty checks. The distributors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble take so much of the purchase price; there is nothing left after publication and printing expenses. The publishing company and I can make a modest profit with books sold by the publishing company. With the new “print on demand” logic, we hope the profit we make from in house sales will finance the large scale printing of books to go to the big distributors who can sell worldwide.

Instead of making money, my real dream is that we can sell enough books and generate enough interest that it will excite some movie maker into taking up the project. I have been able to retain all movie rights to my books. I know my dream is a real long shot, but I also remember that the most common early reaction I received from readers of Raventross is the opinion it would make an outstanding movie. I can’t think of anything that would be more fun than being an author/advisor on a movie set.

It is my understanding that the printed versions are $12.95 plus postage and the kindle versions are $9.95. There is a planned Audible.com release of the audio book version of Raventross; it will also be available via Amazon, and iTunes. If things go according to plan, that should be available within the next week or two, but we haven’t been given a price yet. 

You can listen to the first audio chapter on the www.raventross.com web site. Eventually there will be an audio version ofFrigatefire, but that is still a few months down the road. By the way, you might also get a laugh out of listening to me sing a couple of old Irish tunes on my web site,www.johnburwellwilkes.com.

In any case, if you have a desire to read my books, I hope you will enjoy them, and I will be anxious to know what you think about them.

Very best regards,

JOHN WILKES