Book Winners Beta Launch

Congratulations to Redeemed Althalus and CPAD! They each won a copy of John Brown's debut novel Servant of a Dark God. You two need to email schlockmercenary@gmail.com with a current mailing address (not a P.O. box, please!) and Tor will get your books into the mail right quick. Schlock Mercenary iPhone App load screenSpeaking of email, if any of you iPhone owners would like to participate in the Schlock Mercenary iPhone beta, we'll need the following:

  • Device type and generation (e.g. "iPhone 3GS" or " iPod Touch 1st Gen" etc).
  • Device UDID (which you can find by following the instructions here )
  • A short explanation of  why you would be a good beta-tester. If we get inundated with requests, this is where the winnowing of applicants will take place.
(UPDATE: Belay that request, friends. The beta is full now.) While there's no charge to participate in the beta, the production app is going to require a paid subscription of $0.99 per month or $4.99 for six months.  In support of that we're doing everything we can to make the iPhone Schlock experience hugely superior to using your iPhone to read the comic free on the web, and better even than reading from your computer at home, school, or work. We started by letting you read three days ahead of what appears on the web. Then we boosted the strip resolution by 28%, and provided panel-by-panel navigation (we're about 1/3 of the way done on that.) Panning and zooming manually is supported too. We're also providing a bookmarking feature, and the application will pre-load the strip that follows the one you're currently reading. But enough with the sales pitch. Have a look at the iphone.schlockmercenary.com page, and email us if you want to participate in the beta.