I use Smashwords to distribute my ebooks, but there’s always been one store that’s been missing: Google’s Play Store. After several requests to Smashwords about the problem with no response, I went ahead and put my ebooks on the Play Store myself. more “My books are now in the Google Play Store”
Unless you’ve been off spending a very cold and snowy winter and avoiding all news about what’s going on where we’re cold and sick of snow you’ve probably heard that unless something happens very soon a very important part of the U.S. Government, the Department of Homeland Security could be forced to close at the end of the day Friday. This comes because while most of the government got a budget for the current fiscal year, The Powers That Be up on Capital Hill have decided to fight one of the president’s actions on undocumented immigrants. While I won’t pick sides (there’s enough mud to go around) I find myself wondering if perhaps we need a way to penalize our elected officials for wanting to force federal employees to work while the rest of DHS has to turn off their lights and lock their doors. more “Should Congress be penalized for possibly closing a part of our government?”
Last October I wrote a book called A Common Sense Proposal for the Lack of US Federal Budgets, a mouthful of a title that I shortened in December to No Budget, No Pay. Unfortunately the name change ended up causing confusion for many of the stores that carry my ebook so today I republished No Budget, No Pay as a brand new ebook with an ISBN of 9781310742804. The price is still $2.99 and you can preview 25% of the ebook before you have to buy it. more ““No Budget, No Pay” is being republished”
Thanks to those who let me know their opinion on the new title and cover. I’m currently uploading the new book and cover to Smashwords and Amazon and once it makes its way through their uploading process it will be available for purchase at the new price of $2.99. My apologies to those who haven’t bought it yet but if you’ve already bought it you should be able to get the updated version at no additional charge. more “It’s official. My federal budget ebook is now called “No Budget, No Pay.””
One of the things I get to do when I publish a new ebook or an update to an existing ebook is to watch for when Smashwords sends the new version to their retail partners. When I see that a retailer has been sent the ebook or update I start checking each retailer’s website to find it so I can post a link on each book’s page. It can go very quickly and with some retailers it can go slowly due to how they handle each new ebook or update. more “Sony finally has all three of my ebooks”
As I was taking care of some things today I noticed that Smashwords has a page set up just for authors to manage the prices they charge for their ebooks. One of the things I noticed on that page is a way to adjust the prices libraries have to pay for ebooks distributed by Smashwords. I also noticed that many authors make their ebooks free to libraries, partly to simply help get our ebooks in front of readers via their local public library. As someone who uses a public library every day I love that idea, both as an author and as a reader. more “My ebooks are now FREE to libraries”
The last week has been a busy week for me. Not only have I put Somewhere… and More up for preorders I’ve also gotten my nonfiction political book published.
Once again the US Government was shutdown because our elected officials didn’t do their job, and we could go through it all over again a few months from now. If we pulled a stunt like that on our jobs we’d get our paychecks cut, if we didn’t just get fired. Perhaps we need to cut our elected officials’ checks when they don’t do their job. more “My political nonfiction book is now available”