Yesterday I was checking my stats at Smashwords and discovered that the Smashwords founder, Mark Coker, had written a manifesto for us independent authors. As a Smashwords author I love it, and as an indie author I gladly and wholeheartedly join Mark in posting this as a commitment from this author to his readers.
Updated 16 April to fix a typo in the infographic. Whoops!
more “The Indie Author Manifesto”
One of the things I love about Smashwords distributing my ebooks is that they give me great statistics, and they even let me get daily download numbers for my ebooks on days when I’m not able to get online thanks to their graphs that show the stats for each day. But Smashwords isn’t my biggest online partner in terms of sales, that’s Amazon and their Kindle Direct Publishing Program (KDP). The only problem is that if I can’t get online on a particular day I have no way of seeing how many downloads I got from day to day on Amazon.
But as of yesterday evening that’s all changed. more “Thank you Amazon for charts!”
I love looking at the stats for my ebooks every day. Even when there’s not much news I make a point to check the download numbers for He’s With the Band and the number of times the previews for Somewhere… and More and No Budget, No Pay got downloaded. It turns out that even eight months after I published WHTB I still see 200-250 downloads every month between Smashwords and their partner sites and Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing program. more “We have a new milestone!”
What do creative people do when they can’t create?*
We read a lot. We drink a lot of coffee (or tea). We smoke quite a bit (if you have that lovely personality trait (no monkey)). We surf the web a lot. We get together with friends. We listen to some great music. We check out what wonderfully creative things our friends are doing and support them. And we wish we could take some of the things that come into our head down to be creative with them.
What don’t creative people do when they can’t create? more “Creative people”
Sorry about not writing yesterday. I had some tech issues including multiple Blue Screens of Death while dealing with tags for some MP3s I had gotten. But I did find some ebooks you’ll want to check out and you have to act FAST since today’s the last day of Smashwords’ 2014 Read an Ebook Week promotion. If you missed my earlier lists you should peruse Monday’s, Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s lists.
I also updated the page for No Budget, No Pay with the official link for it on iBooks and to add the ebook on Diesel. Only Kobo and Flipkart don’t have it at this point and it’s just a matter of time before they do.
more “Books I’m checking out for Read an Ebook Week – Saturday’s List”
Back in December Smashwords announced that they had signed a distribution agreement with Scribd and today I see that my three ebooks are now available on that site. I’ve updated the pages for each book to include the new link (and a new link for No Budget, No Pay on Barnes & Noble) but I wanted to give you the links to each of my ebooks on Scribd on one page for those that want to check it out there.
And don’t forget, both Somewhere… and More and No Budget, No Pay are available for just $1.50 at Smashwords this week for Read an Ebook Week. That’s half off the regular price and Scribd doesn’t have that price so get your copy soon. The price will go back up to the regular price when the sale ends so don’t miss out.
Can we still call it Hump Day (NO camels, please!) when we’re at the midway point of Smashwords’ 2014 Read an Ebook Week promotion? It doesn’t feel right to mark the midway point of something so good.
I realized that I should have included links for the author’s websites and blogs when they’ve posted that information on Smashwords so this morning I went through and added that information to both Monday’s and Tuesday’s pages.
more “Books I’m checking out for Read an Ebook Week – Wednesday’s List”
Have you guys been finding any new ebooks to read during Smashwords’ 2014 Read an Ebook Week promotion? I love some of the ebooks I found yesterday. I’ve already found some today that I bet will become favorites of mine.
I know the images in these posts are wrapping around each other. For some reason WordPress is stripping out my code to start each image on a new line. Grrr.
Updated 5 March 2014: Added link to the author’s websites or blogs, or if the don’t have one of those I added a link to their Smashwords author page. more “Books I’m checking out for Read an Ebook Week – Tuesday’s List”
I thought that I’d publish a list of the ebooks I’m checking out during the 2014 Smashwords Read an Ebook Week promotion this week. Rather than make one list that could get rather Jabba-sized as the week goes by I’ll do a new list each day as I find new ebooks I think you guys (and gals) may want to read. With every book I’ll post the cover, title, author, genre and the short description. Unless otherwise indicated all of these ebooks are free during Read an Ebook Week. I hope something (or several somethings) catches your eye.
Updated 5 March 2014: Added link to Lashell Collins’ Pierced (A Boxed Set) since I discovered I hadn’t put in a link on Monday. I also added links to the author’s websites or blogs, or if the don’t have one of those I added a link to their Smashwords author page. more “Books I’m checking out for Read an Ebook Week – Monday’s List”
On Friday I wrote that Smashwords, my ebook distributor, is running their annual 2014 Smashwords Read an Ebook Week promotion this week and I’m making my two non-free ebooks available at a 50% discount during the promotion. What I didn’t say is that to get the discount you will need to enter the code REW50 at checkout. It’s that easy.
Just be aware that with so many people looking at the great free and discounted ebooks this week the site may be slower than usual but please be patient. You’ll be very glad you were.