Tag: Castalia House

Garden, lest ye die

We are happy to announce that David the Good has followed up his #1 bestselling gardening book, Compost Everything, with the second book in the Good Guide series from Castalia House.

Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening is different than most books for preppers and other survivalists, because it’s not concerned with surviving the first few months of a post-apocalypse, but the next few years. It contains a wealth of data on what sort of things you will need to provide food for your family, instructions on how to use them, and a small encyclopedia of vegetables with instructions on how to grow them as well as a summary of their characteristics… although if you’re a fan of zucchini, it appears you will be out of luck should the world go the way of Fallout 4. There will be no zucchini in the post-apocalypse.

The good news is that between this book and the aforementioned game, you will surely be able to put yourself in the “survival mindset” that our military experts informed us is so vital at the Brainstorm event this weekend. The book is written in the same easy, amusing style as its predecessor, and even those who have no interest in gardening and believe Paul Krugman’s assertion that the federal government will be able to avert all ills by further inflating the currency will find it both informative and enjoyable.

The book has apparently struck a nerve of some sort, as even prior to this announcement, it had already hit #1 bestseller in Gardening, marking Castalia House’s third straight #1 category bestseller.

 Grow or Die: The Good Guide to Survival Gardening is 142 pages, DRM-free, and retails for $2.99 at Amazon and at Castalia House.

So, congratulations to David the Good for his second category bestseller; with three of the top 30 books, he practically owns the Gardening & Horticulture Vegetables category. I’d also like to thank Brian Niemeier, who graciously offered his science fiction novel, Nethereal (Soul Cycle Book 1), as a bonus offer to the Castalia New Release subscribers who bought Grow or Die. Have a look at it, particularly if you’re a John C. Wright fan.

As always, we are absolutely fine with whatever retail option you happen to prefer. Whether you buy Castalia books from Amazon, from the CH store, or get them “free” via Kindle Unlimited, we are just happy that you have decided to support Castalia House and we hope you find our books to be good values.

The third collaboration

Yesterday Mike Cernovich announced that he would be publishing his next book, Last Man Standing, with Castalia House. He also announced that he had accepted a position as Editor-at-Large with Castalia House. What he did not mention, at my request, is that he is also working with Castalia House on a third project. I asked him not to mention it because I wanted to tell you myself.

As dark lords go, I am, as most of you know, unusually civil. Having asked one of my GGinParis co-hosts to write a foreword for one of my books, I thought it would be a grievous breach of etiquette to fail to request the same of the other. So, I am pleased to announce that the aforementioned Editor-at-Large has already written the foreword for my next book, which I have written with a fellow American Indian (albeit one from a different tribe). It is expected to be released before the end of year. It is a hard-hitting book in the vein of SJWAL, but addresses an even more important and controversial subject: the politics of American immigration.

The Preamble to the Constitution of the United States of America contains an extremely important phrase that is almost always ignored by those who appeal to it, or to the men who wrote it, in defense of immigration. It states:

We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

The key phrase is this: “to ourselves and our posterity.” The blessings of liberty are not to be secured to all the nations of the world, to the tired and huddled masses, or to the wretched refuse of the teeming shores of other lands. They are to be secured to our children, and their children, and their children’s children.

To sacrifice their interests to the interests of children in other lands is to betray both past and future America. It is to permit an alien posterity, like the newly hatched cuckoo in another bird’s nest, to eliminate our own, and in doing so, defeat the purpose of the Constitution. It is, like the cuckolded husband, to raise the children of another man instead of one’s sons and daughters. It is, in a word, cuckservative.

Cuckservative: How “Conservatives” Betrayed America will be published in December by Castalia House.

Joining forces

Mr. Cernovich has an announcement:

Although Gorilla Mindset was the most successful non-fiction independent book launch of 2015, I always look for ways to move the needle. Those who have read my books know the drill:

  • Be grateful for what you have while focusing your vision of higher peaks.
  • Keep moving forward.
  • Appreciate who you are today.
  • Visualize who you can become tomorrow.

The only way to become better than you are is to work with the best.

Vox Day is a man I admired long before he knew of me. I was linking to his insightful, if controversial, blog as far back as 2009. And while he and I do not agree on everything, that is what free men say of one another. Clones are for cults.

Vox himself had a highly successful non-fiction book launch this year. SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police debuted at #1 in Political Philosophy and stayed there for 12 straight weeks, making it the successful political philosophy book launch of 2015. It may have even been more successful than Gorilla Mindset, but who cares? When you join a championship team, the rest is just details.

He followed up that success with a book he edited, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook, going straight to #1 in the Strategy category. Castalia House currently publishes five of the top 40 books in a category usually dominated by classic names like Clausewitz, Musasshi, and Sun freaking Tzu!

Read the rest of it at Danger & Play.

Readersource request

So, we’ve got something big to announce on Monday. And by big, I mean something that is going to enable Castalia House to take the next serious step forward as a publishing house.

While we have had a number of successes, from blowing up the Hugo Awards to Amazon bestsellers, the one area where we have been absolutely abysmal is in informing the media of anything we’re doing; despite being covered in every media publication from the Wall Street Journal to the New Zealand Herald, we have not sent out a single press release to anyone. So, while others are talking about us, we haven’t been publicizing our side of the story.

That’s going to change. But here’s where I need your help. I have a great list of media contacts in the game industry that dates back to 1988 and consists of literally hundreds of names and email addresses. My list in the publishing industry presently consists of 17 names and email addresses. That is genuinely pathetic.

So, if you’re interested in helping Castalia, what I would appreciate is if each of you would find ONE name of a journalist or blogger who regularly covers books or writes book reviews, and then email the following information to me:

NAME
PUBLICATION/SITE
EMAIL ADDRESS

Once you’ve done that, post the name and publication here so that others can see they’re checked off the list. And yes, it would be very funny indeed to send me John Scalzi’s email, but I’ve already got it, so you needn’t bother with that.

One useful trick, if you’re looking for the more esoteric publications such as military journals, is to see who has written about an author, or a similar author, before. For example, that list of 17 consists solely of journalists who have written about Martin van Creveld. If you happen to find a journalist that way, please mention the reference author and/or work as well. Thanks very much. I do appreciate it.

Also, Brainstorm Annual members, don’t forget that tonight’s event will feature Mike Cernovich talking about his latest book, Danger and Play: Essays on Embracing Masculinity. The event will begin at 5 PM Eastern.

Danger & Play Brainstorm

There was a little confusion as to time zones since Mike has been traveling. Just to be clear, the closed Brainstorm event for Mike’s new Embracing Masculinity book is on Saturday from 5:00 PM – 6:30 PM Eastern.

And in Castalia House news, I wanted to thank everyone who made the following possible. We’re doing our best to bring you the best books we can find and publish, but you’re the core support required to make them successful. And while the categories may be a little on the esoteric side, in the long term, don’t count us out for one day doing the same in the larger categories as well. But for now, two simultaneous #1 bestsellers isn’t bad, especially when you only publish one book each month.

UPDATE: It’s also worth noting that in the Military Strategy category, Castalia House currently publishes five of the top 40 bestsellers.

4th Generation Warfare Handbook

Written by the author of the landmark Maneuver Warfare Handbook and an
active-duty USMC officer with experience in Iraq, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook is the doctrine for a new generation of war. Over the last 40
years, the world has gradually entered into a post-Clausewitzian state
where the wars are undeclared, the battlefields can be anywhere, the
uniforms are optional, and the combatants as well as the targets are
often “civilian”. Conventional militaries have repeatedly attempted to
utilize technology to meet the new challenges posed, but even the most
advanced technology has provided little more than meaningless short-term
victories rendered futile in months, if not weeks.

This inability of Western governments and militaries to come to
terms with the changing nature of modern warfare has led to failed
interventions, failed occupations, and now even failed states everywhere
from Eastern Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And with the
recent mass movement of peoples around the world, 4th Generation Warfare
can be safely expected to appear in Western Europe and the United
States before long.

Drawing on their decades of experience with military history and
military action, the authors have distilled 4GW theory into a short,
concise, easily accessible handbook that provides the soldier, the
military analyst, and the civilian observer with a guide to
understanding and responding to the changing realities of this
challenging new form of war.

4th Generation Warfare Handbook is now available on Amazon for $6.99. If you preordered, you are eligible for a special Brainstorm event featuring the authors. Please send me an email with PREORDER in the subject if you wish to attend; the event has not yet been scheduled.

In an interesting juxtaposition, last night I finished putting the accepted submissions to There Will Be War Vol X in order. What was interesting was that the other non-fiction submissions tended to underline the importance of this handbook, as they both a) appealed to the use of new technology or a combination of 2nd and 3rd Generation tactics, and, b) indicated the need for the very sort of 4GW counterforce that Lind and LtCol Thiele describe in detail in 4th Generation Warfare Handbook. If you’re interested in reading more about 4GW theory, you’ll definitely want to read On War, which is now available on Kindle Unlimited, in which you can see how Lind gradually refined his thinking on the subject.

It will be interesting to see if this handbook eventually becomes officially adopted in the way its predecessor did in the 1980s. In any event, a belated Happy Birthday, Marines. Hope you like your new doctrine!

A belated collection

I’ve been wanting to get this collection of all the Selenoth short stories along with the first little novel together in ebook form since Marcher Lord published the hardcover, but I never quite managed to get around to it. But things have been going so swimmingly with regards to getting 4GW Handbook out the door – it’s pretty much good to go now, although we’ll spend the weekend going over it to see if we can clean up any more lurking typos – that I was able to spare a few hours over the last two evenings to add the additional six stories to the original Summa Elvetica, “Birth of an Order”, and “Master of Cats”. So if you want all the stories in one place, or if you haven’t read any of them, you can do so now in Summa Elvetica: A Casuistry of the Elvish Controversy & Other Stories. It’s also available via Kindle Unlimited, which makes this the obvious starting point for those thinking about dipping a toe into Selenoth.

Granted, dropping the neophyte reader into Latin pseudo-Aquinas with chapters headings such as IA Q. VII A. I ARG. I is probably not what the marketing experts would recommend, but if that sort of thing doesn’t at least make an epic fantasy reader curious, he should probably stick with Robert Jordan and Terry Brooks anyhow.

One of these days we’ll get it out in hardcover too one of these days. I have to say, of all the books in my library, the hardcover that Marcher Lord put out right before it was bought has the prettiest and most spiking spine of them all. Kirk did a great job of making it match the ARTS OF DARK AND LIGHT covers while also setting it apart.

We also had a little Kindle Select confusion which temporarily resulted in our removing of both QUANTUM MORTIS A Man Disrupted and QUANTUM MORTIS Gravity Kills from Amazon, but the matter was quickly resolved and both books are now up and available conventionally as well as through Kindle Unlimited.

It’s been so long since we bothered making any use of Smashwords that I simply forgot the books were up there. It’s really remarkable how completely Amazon has steamrolled the opposition. You would think that the Big Five publishers would have teamed up with Barnes & Noble to set up an online alternative by now, but they are too frightened to take the hit to their sales that collectively pulling their books from Amazon would entail. That’s why they will glide gracefully into literary history, in total denial all the while.

We’re under no illusions that it couldn’t happen to smaller independent publishers too, but we’re protected by declining marginal utility. Amazon can take all of the business away any time it wants, but why bother when it can simply take one-third the revenue for none of the effort involved beyond providing the infrastructure?

#1 in Strategy

The level of interest in 4TH GENERATION WARFARE HANDBOOK has truly been encouraging. I have to admit, I did not expect this:

Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #904 Paid in Kindle Store
    #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > History > Military > Strategy  

That’s pretty incredible for the first day of preorders. We probably should have figured out this preorder thing sooner, it would appear. Although I like to think there is a certain inept charm to our “well, it’s done, so let’s whang it up there and do a blog post” approach. The least-organized book launch in the entire history of publishing doesn’t seem to have hurt SJWAL much, anyhow. And one of these days, we are going to actually get around to doing our first press release.

But since there is so much more interest in 4GW than anticipated, I thought it might be a good idea to make ON WAR: The Collected Columns of William S. Lind 2003-2009 more readily accessible to those who aren’t familiar with William S. Lind or the four generations of post-Westphalian warfare. So, we have made ON WAR available on Kindle Unlimited; if you’re on Prime or KU, you can check it out at no charge to you. And if it piques your interest, well, there is a bestseller-to-be that you may want to preorder.

And for those of you who are curious why we’re so suddenly enamored of KU, well, it works very badly for short, expensive works of the sort that independent scam artists and scam artists who are published by certain SF publishing houses who shall remain nameless were publishing, and that Amazon wished to deter. And it happens to work rather well for long, inexpensive works of the sort we publish. And by “rather well”, I mean that we actually do better with a KU copy that is read than a copy that is sold either on Amazon or Castalia. So if you really want to help us out, read one of our books on KU first, then buy it.

4th Generation Warfare Handbook

Written by the author of Maneuver Warfare Handbook and an
active-duty USMC officer with experience in Iraq, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook is the doctrine for a new generation of war. Over the last 40
years, the world has gradually entered into a post-Clausewitzian state
where the wars are undeclared, the battlefields can be anywhere, the
uniforms are optional, and the combatants as well as the targets are
often “civilian”. Conventional militaries have repeatedly attempted to
utilize technology to meet the new challenges posed, but even the most
advanced technology has provided little more than meaningless short-term
victories rendered futile in months, if not weeks.


 
The inability of Western governments and militaries to come to
terms with the changing nature of modern warfare has led to failed
interventions, failed occupations, and now even failed states everywhere
from Eastern Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And with the
recent mass movement of peoples around the world, 4th Generation Warfare
can be safely expected to appear in Western Europe and the United
States before long.


 
Drawing on their decades of experience of military strategy, military history, and
military action, the authors have distilled 4GW theory into a short,
concise, easily accessible handbook that provides the soldier, the
military analyst, and the civilian observer with a guide to
understanding and responding to the changing realities of this
challenging new form of war.

We’re handling this book launch a little differently than we have in the past. The handbook is now available in preorder for release on 23 November and will only be available from Amazon as a result. Those who preorder should hold onto your digital receipts as those who preorder will be invited to attend a special Brainstorm later this year featuring both Mr. Lind as well as the lieutenant colonel discussing the new handbook. (Registration will be limited to preorders and Annual members.) If you require an epub version, buy it from Amazon, send us the receipt AFTER the book comes out, and we will send you an epub.

This is a handbook intended for soldiers, not a book of new and expanded theory, so don’t be surprised that much of the base doctrine will be familiar to those of you who have read On War, The Four Generations of Modern War, and Victoria. What is new are some of the practical aspects and applications, particularly the focus on developing and utilizing the light infantry required to meet the challenge posed by 4GW. But given the course of recent events, there can be little doubt that 4th Generation Warfare Handbook will prove every bit as influential as Maneuver Warfare Handbook did in the 1980s.

A paperback version will be published in Q1 2016.

Economics and science fiction

But I repeat myself. Speaking first of the latter, all three QUANTUM MORTIS novels are now available for free for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime subscribers. If you were vaguely curious about them, but not enough to actually go out and buy them, here is your chance to test drive them. I’d particularly recommend checking out QUANTUM MORTIS: A MIND PROGRAMMED, which is the literary update and remix of my all-time favorite SF novel, THE PROGRAMMED MAN.

From an Amazon review: “Space Noir. That’s what this is. It’s a classic spy vs spy tale, but this time the stakes are much higher and there are enough twists and turns to make a Finnish rally driver happy.”

QUANTUM MORTIS: A MAN DISRUPTED and QUANTUM MORTIS: GRAVITY KILLS are also available via KU.

And for those who are more interested in economics than in science fiction (to the extent that one accepts the idea that the former is not a subset of the latter), here are the first week’s readings in my draft econ curriculum. Don’t ask me where you can find the texts, if you can’t figure out how to do that, you needn’t bother with the readings.

1. What is Economics    

  • RGD Introduction
  • MURPHY Part 1 Lesson 1
  • HAZLITT Part 1-1

RGD: The Return of the Great Depression, Vox Day
MURPHY:  Lessons for the Young Economist, Robert Murphy
HAZLITT: Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt