This is really cool. I’ve just sold my first e-book through the British Amazon.co.uk website.
Cover for mystery writing primer, Youdunit Whodunit!
My little mystery writing primer, Youdunit Whodunit!, grabs these English kudos so bloody well done!
You may check out Youdunit and my other work at Amazon across the pond.
Cheerio!
Good news.
Prices for popular e-readers Nook and Kindle are coming down below $200.
Getting better all the time. Full NYT article here.
Gotta buy one soon…
Things are hotting up in the ebook price point war between online booksellers and publishers.
My niece, Anica, carrying 2010 Olympic Torch
Before Apple came along with it’s iconic iPad and soon to be open iBookstore, online booksellers, like Amazon, set the prices of most new ebook releases at $9.99US, regardless of the publishers’ wishes.
This is going to change as Apple has agreed to set its prices higher, between $12.99US & $14.99US.
Now, other retailers, like Barnes & Noble and Amazon, are “yelling Uncle!” and complying. If they don’t, they’ll lose market share tout suite.
Good news for authors and publishers; less so for readers. I like the idea of giving more price weight to newly-released ebooks.
Every dollar counts and the effort, art & craft are worth it.
Smashwords, the “people’s ebook publisher and distributor”, have announced another coup: a deal to distribute their titles through Amazon.com’s Kindle Store.
Smashwords logo
This is really freakin’ amazing given what is required by an author/publisher to get titles into the Kindle Store. See my earlier post for more info.
I worked for weeks, spending hours lurking on Kindle forums, figuring out Amazon’s Digital Text Platform, uploading dummy test titles, reviewing and testing uploaded versions until finally hitting the publishing button for my three titles.
Amazon Kindle E-Reader
The Amazon Kindle, the grandaddy of all e-readers, is now available in Canada, though with a few missing bits.
It’ll cost $259 USD plus a $31 USD import fee surcharge. Though it will be able to wirelessly download ebooks, the details about the cellular connectors (Rogers and Telus) in Canada have yet to be revealed.
Amazon Kindle E-Reader
Kindle’s VP said:
“We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we’re excited to make Kindle available to our customers there,” said Ian Freed, vice-president of Kindle, in a statement. “Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds.”
Read more about this announcement here.
It’s still a pretty pricey gadget but also very tempting.
(And thanks to the Kindle Blog for the pic.)
I can’t wait to try this: a free download which allows you to use your PC computer as a Kindle!
Here’s Amazon’s annoucement from their Kindle blog:
KindleforPC.
Stay tuned; I’ll blog about my experiences with it soon.
Several months ago, I succeeded in loading four titles (two mysteries, one non-fiction and one short story) onto the Smashwords.com database (here’s how). Step 1 to my ultimate goal of having my ebooks available on Amazon.com.
Mobipocket.com Logo
Step 2 was to use Mobipocket.com (owned by Amazon.com) as my way through the back door into the huge online bookseller. After some internet research, I had learned that you could upload ebooks onto Mobipocket and by extension, eventually into Amazon, and you didn’t need Amazon’s trifecta of account information. You only needed two bits of key information: a bank account in the United States and a United States tax number. You didn’t need a US mailing address.
So I went for it. After some searching, I discovered that one Canadian major bank has a US version, based in Florida. A few phone calls, two meetings at my local branch and three weeks of impatient waiting later, one key bit was accomplished.
I must admit I was intimidated about applying for a US tax number. That meant calling the Internal Revenue Service. Yikes! But I pushed through, figuring I would only run into trouble if I made money. And if I made money, it’d be worth it.
Amazon requires one of two types of tax numbers: a Tax ID number or an Employer ID number. The former is really hard to get; the latter a relative breeze, which I learned with the assistance of a kind and helpful IRS employee.
Just discovered a terrific new review on Amazon.com for Youdunit Whodunit!, my little how-to write a mystery primer.
Lou Allin, a fellow Canadian crime writer said the following:
The Little How-To Book That Could:
Of the dozen “how to” books on mystery writing I’ve read, most wasted too many trees, and on Vancouver Island, that’s important. One big-name author provided only a single worthwhile nugget of advice in four hundred pages: don’t write about boring people. But Canadians are very innovative, especially about saving time. Didn’t we invent Velcro? Pablum? The Bloody Caesar?
Recently my colleague Nicola Furlong produced a short, compact, and helpful e-book called Youdunit Whodunit. This crash course in mystery writing is as jam packed with gems as Nicola’s signature chocolate-pecan turtles.Cover for mystery writing primer, Youdunit Whodunit!
For those starting out, or for authors who want to keep their writing on track, YW has twenty-two chapters in three basic innings: Structure, Character, and Story. With a wealth of pithy examples taken from selective authors, she cuts to the chase.
Hit the reader early and hit him hard. Why is the protagonist involved, if it’s not a police procedural? What do you do in mid-story, where a book often bogs? What are the pitfalls of various POV’s? Where do you get your ideas? How should you handle flashbacks and make smooth transitions without the speed bumps which mar even the best books?
Nicola will have you off and running in minutes. She’s an editor, agent, and coach all in one.
It comes as no surprise that the book is introduced and endorsed by two of our northern mystery lionesses, Maureen Jennings and Mary Jane Maffini. With multiple series and decades of best-seller success, when they speak, wise authors listen.
Obviously, I’m thrilled with Lou’s positive reaction to my ebook BUT what I find really neat is her review writing style.
Notice how adroitly she draws you in to the concept of a short ebook (crash course on writing mysteries) by referring both to the environment (wasted trees) and to her perspective (a Vancouver Islander) and then she adds a fun tidbit of Canadian trivia (Velcro, Pablum and the Bloody Ceasar!).
Not only is it an excellent lead in to her review, it doubles as an lovely introduction to Lou Allin, mystery author.
So, once you’ve bought and mastered Youdunit Whodunit!, why not check out Lou’s terrific Belle Palmer Mystery Series and see how a pro does it?
Many months ago, it occurred to me that ebooks were a huge hit waiting to happen…and I, as an indie author, could join the party. If Japanese commuters were downloading millions of these electronic reads to their smart phones every year, the platform had to have a rosy future.
I own full copyright on a couple of my previously-published mysteries so I figured, why not turn them into instant cash as ebooks?
That was the original idea; how it played out is another story.
My ultimate goal was to have my work available on Amazon’s Kindle e-reader. Right from the get-go, I was blocked. The Kindle market is open only to those publishers who own the lucky trifecta in electronic publishing: a US address, a US-based bank account and a US tax number.
Temporarily stumped, I decided to publish where I could and work on getting the Amazon info.
To create an ebook, first you need your manuscript in digital form. Makes sense, however, my two mysteries were published a decade ago and both former publishers had gone under…so I had to get my printed books back into digital files.
Thus began hours of scanning (kinda like photocopying forever) and then correcting the scanned pages, for my two books Teed Off! and A Hemorrhaging of Souls.
Boring, time-consuming but essential. Eventually, I had the digital files in Microsoft Word, and was ready to tackle e-booking. After researching online ebook sites, I choose one that seemed straightforward, simple and open to indies like me: Smashwords.com: the ‘people’s ebook site’.
It took some study, a lot of tweaking and a few hair-pulling incidents but amazingly, I was able to upload my work and soon had ebooks for sale online at smashwords-nicola-furlong.
That was pretty cool and I’ll explain how I did it in my next post.
Cover for mystery writing primer, Youdunit Whodunit!
What a terrific coincidence. My little primer on how-to write mysteries, Youdunit Whodunit! became available for Kindle download on Amazon.com while the big online store announced an ‘international’ Kindle capable of wirelessly downloading books in the US as well as 100 other countries.
This is fab news as Amazon’s impressive ebook inventory will now be available to many new customers, some of whom might chip in $2.99 US and download my primer to quickly and easily learn how to craft killer mysteries.
You may read the New York Times article and have a peek at Youdunit Whodunit Kindle Version.
How freakin’ cool is that?
BTW, getting on the Kindle has been a dream of mine. Not easy but possible. Stay tuned for more info in later posts.
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