Rob Kroese Wants You to Read Based Books
The Rex Nihilo creator has launched a book club brimming with indie and mainstream talent
Robert Kroese, Upstream Reviews co-founder, BasedCon founder and author of the Iron Dragon series, the Mammon trilogy and the Rex Nihilo books among others, has struck out on a new project that’s got a dash of that trademark Kroesian madness to it; a book club. But not just any book club; Rob’s retvrning to the old-school hold-it-in-your-hands, physical-only style book club. Something to build a library with.
Why a book club? To fight the purple-haired weirdos:
“If you had asked me when I published my first novel 15 years ago what business I’d be getting into in the year 2024, I would not have guessed an old-fashioned book club. But thanks to the near-complete takeover of the publishing industry by purple-haired weirdos, I became convinced that it was time to get back to basics—for a lot of reasons.”
One of the most obvious of those reasons is to simultaneously offer readers books from both popular traditionally published authors like Cole & Anspach, Larry Correia, Jim Butcher, Orson Scott Card and John C. Wright, whose books will share virtual shelf space with up and coming independently published authors like Fenton Wood, Karl Gallagher and Travis Corcoran to name a few. If you love classics, they have a growing selection of imitation leather bound hardcovers of titles like Gulliver’s Travels, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and The Time Machine to name a few. Kroese, like many non-woke indie authors, feels there’s an ocean of talent with work that’s not making the impact it can because people are largely on their own, and he wants to see that change.
“The Big Five publishers [are] failing in their role of curating new fiction; offering hardcover and paperback books that can’t be censored after the fact suddenly makes a lot of sense.”
“There is a big group of readers who are being ignored by the big New York publishers—readers who are interested in good old-fashioned science fiction and fantasy stories that aren’t written to satisfy a diversity checklist or to push leftist ideology. There are a lot of great books out there—many independently published—that few people have heard about because there’s no ecosystem to promote them.”
Regarding the decision to go all-print, Kroese points to the recent insidious behaviors by publishing houses to edit works, often without anyone’s knowledge, and cites it as a breakdown of the publisher’s most important role.
“Not only are the Big Five publishers failing in their role of curating new fiction; they are actually revising existing books to remove what they consider “insensitive” or “outdated” language. This is particularly a concern with ebooks, which can be stealth-edited by a publisher after they’ve been purchased. Thanks to all these factors, offering a curated selection of lesser-known, high-quality hardcover and paperback books that can’t be censored after the fact suddenly makes a lot of sense.”
Membership is $24.95 per month, which includes three credits towards a book purchase. Shipping costs one credit regardless of location, and additional credits can be purchased any time. Anyone who joins before January 25 will get an additional 4 credits at sign up. “Our goal is to offer books at competitive prices while treating our authors well. We’ll be adding many more books in the next few months, and we hope to start offering some club-exclusive benefits like limited edition signed hardcovers.”