happy July

A little July present from Small Beer Press:

Award-winning short story writer Kelly Link's new collection MAGIC FOR BEGINNERS (July 1, 2005, Fiction/Short Stories, $24, ISBN: 1-931520-15-1,illus. by Shelley Jackson), is being celebrated in a peculiar way by publisher Small Beer Press.

Small Beer, based out of Northampton, MA, is quite happily giving away copies of Link's debut collection STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN as a Free Download using a Creative Commons License.

Link, 35, recently found out she her story, "Stone Animals" from Conjunctions 43, has been selected for the next volume of the Best American Short Stories. Her new collection has received a starred review from Publishers Weekly -- and praise from writers such as Michael Chabon and Alice Sebold. Her stories are published in everything from literary journals (Fence), genre anthologies (The Faery Reel), zines (One Story, Say) to McSweeney's Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales and have been awarded the Tiptree, World Fantasy, and Nebula Awards.

Publisher Gavin Grant, 34, says they he and Link were inspired by author and copyright activist Cory Doctorow who had put each of his books online under a Creative Commons license.

"We're a tiny independent press," said Grant. "Of course we want to explore different methods of getting our books out to readers -- and in spreading the word about Creative Commons."

He continued, "We don't expect this to kill sales. If anything (fingers crossed), it may help. After all, the book is already available in hundreds of libraries, on print.google.com, Amazon.com's Search Inside program, and even on BookCrossing. None of these programs have stopped the book from finding readers."

Readers have the choice of STRANGER THINGS HAPPEN as a Plain text, HTML, RTF, & PDF files.

Go here to download.