Last year Smashwords, my ebook distributor, had their annual July Summer/Winter Sale and I put my non-free books on sale at half off. It’s that time of year again, and once again my non-free ebooks are half off. more “It’s time for another Smashwords Summer/Winter Sale”
I haven’t forgotten to post ebooks I’ve found during Read an Ebook Week, I just didn’t have a chance to find any. I was going to post and say I’ll try to find some on Thursday but I lost a lens from my glasses Wednesday night, turning me from a 4-eyes to a 3-eyes, and had to scramble to least make arrangements to get a new set of eyes. My exam appointment is Tuesday morning and it turns out I’ll have to wait 4-6 weeks to get my new ones. (Tanj it Mass Health!) more “Tanj this week…”
Last week I was thinking it should be getting time for the 2015 Smashwords Read an Ebook Week and sure enough, when I checked my email this morning I see that it started yesterday. Read an Ebook Week is a promotion my distributor, Smashwords, runs every year to encourage people to read ebooks. Many Smashwords authors put deep discounts on their ebooks with some making their ebooks completely free. As I did last year you can get my two non-free ebooks at a 50% discount. more “It’s Read an Ebook Week!”
Monday Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, the company I use to distribute my ebooks to stores, posted an article on the downside to making ebooks available to Amazon’s Kindle Unlimited service. When I decided to publish my fiction writing as ebooks I turned to Smashwords to help get my ebooks to readers. Smashwords has a long list of online stores that they distribute to they have a caveat with Amazon: Due to the way Amazon has set up their Kindle Direct Publishing service they can’t do bulk uploads to Amazon like the other stores do. Fortunately, I can upload my ebooks to Kindle Direct Publishing myself so Kindle users can find my ebooks. But when it came to Amazon’s Kindle Select and Kindle Unlimited I channeled Charles Emerson Winchester III and said, “Thank you, no.” more “Smashwords: Is Kindle Unlimited Devaluing Books? The Dark Side of Exclusivity”
I wasn’t online much on Monday thanks to an afternoon doctor’s appointment but when I looked at my download numbers for He’s With the Band on Amazon I was floored. when I saw Monday’s final numbers I tanj near fell out of my chair. more “Finagle’s eyes! I can’t believe the downloads I’m getting on Amazon this week!”
From the “I Couldn’t Do that Again If I Tried Department”, I was checking my weekend download numbers and sales stats this morning when I checked the overall rank for Somewhere… and More on Amazon and had to stop and grin.
I’m not grinning because of where it falls on the chart, mainly because it’s been a lot higher, but because of the last two sets of numbers. In the fourteen months that I’ve been a published author I’ve never seen a number where the digits on one side of a comma match the number on the other side of the comma.
I just had to share this. I’m still working on the rewrite of He’s With the Band but since I only have access to a laptop when I’m at the library every day I end up with a lot more to do every day than I have time to do and I have a new scene for the story to type up and I’d swear I hear the notebook the new scene was written in yell at me every time I look at it. Hopefully Santa Claws will leave a laptop and some catnip under the tree if I still don’t have a laptop by Chrismukkuh.
I just got an email update from my congressman, Michael E. Capuano (D-MA 7th) about a bill coming up for a vote tomorrow. There’s no federal budget passed yet for the new fiscal year that will begin on 1 October and they want to pass a continuing resolution (CR) to keep the government open. My readers may recall that I’ve suggested that if our elected officials in Washington DC can’t pass a budget by the start of a fiscal year they should get their pay docked. Is it time to let our elected officials find out that their paychecks will get a little lighter? more “It’s time for another CR on Capital Hill. Is it time to dock our lawmakers’ paychecks?”
Back in March Smashwords, my ebook distributor, ran their annual Read an Ebook Week promotion and I made two of my ebooks half price for the occasion. I didn’t see the notice about it yesterday it this morning I learned that they have a Summer/Winter Sale every July to help people find ebooks they didn’t know they’d love, and as with Read an Ebook Week many of the ebooks on Smashwords are discounted if not completely free. Once again you can get my ebooks at a 50% discount but instead of just being for a week it’s for the entire month of July! more “Are you ready for another Smashwords sale?”
As I was doing my daily numbers check I saw I got a download of He’s With the Band in Amazon’s Aussie store and I realized I had never checked the Amazon worldwide stores to see what my rankings look like. It’s a good thing I wasn’t getting a drink of water when the page loaded. I might have owed the BPL a laptop. more “Holy crap! Thank you Aussies!!! And a big question.”
Yesterday when I checked my download numbers I saw I was really close to hitting a new milestone in downloads and had a feeling by the time I logged off at the end of the day I would probably have hit it. And I did. more “We have a new download milestone!”