The Case for Free ... or for 99 cents

As some of you may know, since WereWoof came out I've been giving it away to anyone who asked for it. Free PDF's.

Why give a book away? Well, to sell more of them. In a weird, perverse, goofy kind of way, it seems to be working. WereWoof is outselling my other books this month, and is currently my highest rated book.

Weird, huh?

The ratings aren't going out of the roof or anything, but the key is if you create buzz, people will come take a look.

But it all comes down to the quality of the work. Lately, I've downloaded a few books into my Kindle to 'check out' some intriguing self-published books, and I've been largely disappointed by the works. Shoddy editing, poorly constructed phrases, awkward scenes. In other words, there's some crap out there.

So in the rush for everyone to dump their books into the e-world, we've lost some of the quality assurance that keeps the pot clean for other dishes. I recently downloaded one that the author claims was edited and re-edited, poured over by his reading book and vetted by just about everyone.

Oh yeah? Well, then all of them missed some very obvious grammatical goofs, and the dialogue was strained at best.

Does this mean ebooks suck? No, not even close, but many of them do.

But here's what I REALLY, REALLY like about ebooks. Samples. You can download a sample of a book and read it before buying it. I love samples. If I want to check on an author's stuff, but am overloaded on reading projects, I just download a sample of his/her book into my Kindle, and later, when I'm not so busy, I read the sample. If I like what I read there, I download the whole book.

So for now, my books are inexpensively priced on Kindle. A buck will buy you The Adventures of Guy, which was originally traditionally published. A buck will buy you The Guy'd Book, which wasn't. And a buck will get you WereWoof, a self-published book whose prequel was traditionally published. You can get four of my ebooks for less than six bucks combined.

I asked anyone who asked for a free copy of WereWoof to put their reviews up on Amazon. So far, three have, and though I didn't ask them for a good rating, the ratings have been four stars or better. And no, I don't know these people, so they didn't give me the hometown discount.

That's because the bottom line is the writing. Write well, entertain your readers, then worry about whether you make money.

Norm

www.normcowie.com

Excuses and stuff

I gotta admit, I'm not doing much writing nowadays. I finished Bonk & Hedz a couple months ago, and then got back to my third Adventures of Guy WIP (70% done).

But I'm easily distracted, and not writing much. I think a lot of it is because I'm distracted because I'm jumping through all of the hoops necessary to get Critter #2 enrolled at UofI. And I injured my knee a couple months ago, and it's distracting.

But I will get back to it. I wrote Bonk & Hedz extremely quickly (for me) ... 71 days, so maybe some detox time is okay.

Plus I'm trying to get a handle on the new ebook world. Borders is basically insolvent, agents are dealing with a shrinking market that can't seem to grab the tail to the explosion that is ebook. Why use an agent? Why sign up with a traditional publisher who will put your book on the shelves in a year or two when you can do it yourself in a week or two?

It's a strange time.  I know I released WereWoof onto Kindle just a couple months ago, and it's already rated higher than my other books. Who'd a thunk?

Anyway, right now I'm sorta playing the field, and letting everything soak in. In the meantime I'm reading a lot, posting some reviews, spending a lot of time with my family, and catching up on ebooks.  June will be an absolute crazy month, with speaking engagements and book events galore. So this little breather is nice.

Norm

(news flash:  three books on Kindle for less than a buck, and one for just three. that means you can buy four of my books for a grand total of six bucks.  what a deal!)

Getting a Kindle

Okay, I'm finally breaking down and getting a Kindle. Hey, what can I say, I'm a paper addict. Bound books are like crack to me ... no, not that kind. I get stuck in them like crumbs in a crack.

But I'm not a convert, and don't really planning full conversion until I have to. But with three, no, four books on Kindle and another I'm going to add soon, I have to know more about ebooks. What they look like, if there are differences in formatting. Books can be added to Kindle on Word, while others say it has to be converted first to html.

To be honest, I don't know how either of my publishers formatted theirs. When I put "The Guy'd Book, why we leave the seat up ... and other stuff" (get it here for just three bucks!) I simply used Word. I improved my technique when I re-released "The Adventures of Guy" (three more bucks!) after the rights reverted to me.

When I released them, Kindle sent me the book which I could review on my laptop; but I haven't yet seen it on Kindle.

So I want to see what I have out there and what it looks like, and how my stuff compares to other authors' books.

Now I don't expect to become a Kindle convert right away, and I also don't expect my readers to be heavy into ebook usage. Yeah, I know, publishers at Digital Book World recently forecast that by 2014 half of the released books will be digital. Maybe by then digital publishers will have worked out some way for libraries to purchase and lend ebooks.

But according to a recent Publishers Weekly blog, the YA market is lagging behind. Teens are technologically savvy, but they just aren't into ebooks yet. They still prefer their books in paper...

... as do I.

So Kindle-World, I'm coming.

Norm

www.normcowie.com