Western eGreats

In celebration of the forthcoming eBook of my novel, Arkansas Smith I plan to,from time to time  point you towards some great western writers who have made the transition from print to the new digital format, and first up we have western great, Chap O'Keefe who has now built up an impressive backlist of titles available for the Kindle. The majority of the titles were originally published  in hardcover from Black Horse Westerns and all have received many strong reviews from fans of the genre that is just too tough to die.

Readers can find the complete list of available titles  HERE.

As Keith Chapman, Chap O'Keefe was an editor and contributor to various fiction publications in London in the 1960s before shifting to New Zealand and spending nearly 35 years in newspaper and magazine journalism. He returned to fiction writing in earnest in 1992 with the O'Keefe westerns and edits the Black Horse Extra online magazine. Keith is a special friend to the Archive and is the man responsible for many of those entertaining Sunday Comics we've been running.

Of paramount eImportance

Chap O'Keefe

"The fact that nothing ever needs to be out of print is, as far as I’m concerned, a big plus to digital publishing. It means that in theory everything ever written can be easily available. I also think that genres such as the western can reach a bigger audience as ebooks. I don’t really think there is a downside to ebooks themselves, since traditional books should be able to co-exist with this new technology. The ease of self-publishing means that at the moment there is a lot of swill about, and that could be seen as a downside, but quality will out and in time the bad writing will simply vanish. So long live the ebook." Jack Martin/Gary Dobbs


eBooks V traditional books - the debate has been raging for some time now, but why should the two mediums be in competition with each other? For many years we've had hardbacks,paperbacks, audio books and now eBooks are just another option for writers to reach an audience.

David Whitehead

"Ebooks are not demons, or replacements for books. They’re another outlet for creative writing. As before, the reader needs to be aware that not all books will live up to their promise in the blurb." Nik Morton


The latest Black Horse Extra eMagazine there's a great round table discussion, featuring three big names in western fiction today,  which really does look at both the pros and cons of eBooks and its relation to genre fiction. I urge anyone and everyone to read this interesting and illuminating article.

Nik Morton

"If we are to encourage this market to grow, and in the process see a resurgence of interest in the western and earn something extra from our labours, we must all always endeavour to make paramount the quality of our writing, and the presentation and affordability of our books." David Whitehead.

Direct link to ARTICLE
Link to entire MAGAZINE

Reading the free range

The advent of eBooks has made it easier and cheaper than ever to pick up public domain (out of copyright) books. There are some great titles available  as free downloads and many of these are westerns and classic westerns at that.

One of my favourite websites for public domain titles is Feedbooks which has an archive of 115 public domain westerns from authors such as Zane Grey, Max Brand and Edgar Rice Burroughs.

Titles are available to download in all formats - Kindle, Epub, PDF - Western fans will be delighted and find some truly genre defining works among the titles on offer - Riders of the Purple Sage for instance should be read by anyone who has even a passing interest in the genre.

"Riders of the Purple Sage is Zane Grey's best-known novel originally published in 1912. Most critics agree that it played a significant role in shaping the formula of the popular Western genre."


Another essential title is The Log of a Cowboy which offers a first hand look at what it was really like to be a working cowboy - The Log of a Cowboy is an account of a five-month drive of 3,000 cattle from Brownsville, Texas, to Montana in 1882 along the Great Western Cattle Trail. Although the book is fiction, it is firmly based on Adams's own experiences on the trail, and it is considered by many to be the best account of cowboy life in literature. Adams was disgusted by the unrealistic cowboy fiction being published in his day; The Log of a Cowboy was his response. It is still in print, and even modern reviewers consider it a compelling classic. The Chicago Herald said: "As a narrative of cowboy life, Andy Adams' book is clearly the real thing. It carries its own certificate of authentic first-hand experience on every page."

Check out Feedbooks western section HERE 
and whilst there check out the titles in other categories, particularly the mystery/thriller section which contains some great classic pulp material.

Riding the eRange

Both western writers and readers have long been bemoaning the fact that westerns are not that visible in the book shops, but now that buying patterns are changing and more and more readers are switching to eBook rather than the physical dead-tree kind, the western is back with a bang. A quick look around all the various major eBook stores and the genre is pretty much covered - Amazon, of course have trillions of westerns in eBook format, but all of the major sellers - Borders, Waterstones, W H Smith, Smashwords all have scores of western eBooks in the electronic stores.

Most of Louis L'amour's westerns are now available in eBook but, unlike most book shops who do the western lip service, it is not only the long recognised master that are on display- This last week I've bought westerns from Johnny D Boggs, Joey Sherman and Alan LeMay - now even in the old days I never saw any of these guys in the UK book shops.

Recently I was involved in bringing the classic Edge series to eBook, and now I'm heading up the new western line from Solstice Publishing. This is very exciting because I've built a team of editors that all love the genre passionately. In fact there are no better guys to build a western list that will be known for its diversity and quality. Each and every western published under the Solstice brand will be a thrilling read from start to finish. And, it is my hope, that one day western fans will hold the Solstice name with the same regard pulp fans have for Hard Case Crime or Black Mask.

So the western's back - remember the Wild West Monday initiatives. Well, whilst we still need to promote the genre the core reason for the initiative was to see more westerns in the bookshops but that doesn't really apply these days. The technology of the eBook has seen the western once again rubbing electronic spines with all other genre fiction.

Howdy, is Tarnished Star available on eBook?

And as eBooks make more and more inroads and become accepted as a part of the mainstream book trade then maybe we'll see eVersions of those popular Robert Hale Black Horse Westerns,. It's only a matter of time, I believe, before all books on sale are offered in multiple formats.

So let's quit our moaning - there's never been a better or cheaper time to check out western fiction.. Just go to any of the major booksellers websites and browse amongst the western eBooks. Find something you fancy, click buy and it's there on your eReader or computer in an instant. It takes seconds for all that electronic code to travel through cyberspace - ain't, technology grand!