Tasha's Thinkings

Free Books on Amazon - the Update, Month 2

2012-03-01T09:29:00.002Z

Well I promised to keep everyone updated on how having a free book on Amazon continues to affect my Amazon sales. So here goes.

My free book on Amazon (Forgotten Soul) was downloaded 7272 times in February compared to 3758 times in January.

I've just analysed the number of sales rather than free downloads comparing January 2012 to February 2012 and it's official; it works. My sales are up by 107% overall against last months sales which were already up over 100% on December's sales.

Here's a breakdown by country for the increases this month:

UK - up 378%
US - up 88%
DE - up 100%
FR - down 100% but that was only one book in Jan.

Once again, however, it seems to be the series that makes this work. In Jan my other book sales went up, but they have stayed at a similar level for Feb rather than increasing again. It is the second book (Forbidden Soul) in the series for which the first book is free (Forgotten Soul) that is selling so well.

The free book (Forgotten Soul) has almost consistently been in the top #20 Free books for it's category on Amazon UK (#9 being the highest) and the top #100 for the US (ranging from #36 to #100 depending on time of day etc). Which has upped the profile of the sequel which is 99c.

So, on current evidence I would say having a free book permanently on Amazon does two things:

It lifts sales of unconnected books, but does not encourage them to continue increasing beyond a certain level.
If the books is part of a series, it continually helps increase sales of others in the series.

The Woman in Black - Dan Radcliffe

2012-02-15T11:21:00.001Z

First of all, let me say, wow, this was a scary film. It is full of the psychological horror, camera tricks and fantastic set up that I love in a horror movie. It is a ghost story of the best kind. No need for gore or over done CGI every five seconds, just good, honest scares, perfectly timed with just the right amount of special effects. This is the kind of movie where you go home, close all the curtains and then huddle under the duvet refusing to look at that dark corner of the bedroom, that before now has never been overly threatening.

The general story is about Arthur Kipps, a young lawyer who is sent from London to a remote village in the north of England to collect and collate the papers of an old lady, Alice Drablow, who has just died. The villagers are hostile and try to send him away, but no one actually tells him that it's because there is a vengeful ghost at the old lady's house and going anywhere near it is a very bad idea. It would be a very short film if they had.

Let's start with Dan Radcliffe as Arthur Kipps, a widower with a young son of four years old whose wife died in child birth. When Dan first appeared on the screen I had the problem lots of people probably had, all I could see was Harry Potter and the stream train really didn't help. However, as soon as the setting reached the small village where most of the film takes place, that all changed. He became Arthur Kipps and all thoughts of Harry vanished from my mind. His performance is moving, showing us a young man who is slightly broken from the death of his wife, but who cares for his son very deeply.

He carries the entire film with much of it just him and shadows. Dan is a superb actor and, okay, now for the shallow moment, he's also very attractive in the period costume, especially when he's somewhat mussed.

Now to the setting, what could be more desolate than an island, a la St Michael's Mount, linked to the mainland by a causeway that is underwater for a large amount of the day and surrounded by deadly marsh? In this Hammer production they also manage to make the village where some of the action takes place just as desolate. It is a cut off, lost place with people so scared they hide their children. The whole film is beautifully shot with desolate landscapes and sea mist and the half falling down house with its overgrown and wild grounds. The scenery sets the mood and the rest of the film does not disappoint.

The atmosphere is only increased by the clever direction and cinematography that make up the film. It is not done with in your face confrontations or blood splatter or gruesome monsters, it's done with clever camera shots and momentary glimpses that had me scanning the background of every shot as well as looking at the foreground action. These little moments made the times when the woman in black was finally right there even more shocking and scary.

At first glance the two shots to the right look perfectly innocent, but then you look closer and the icy fingers of fear touch your spine. This is how the entire film is put together.

The cinema was not full of screams, it was full of genuine out cries of shock and then that nervous laughter that follows when people realise they're terrified, but still breathing. At one point I believe the entire cinema jumped out of their seats at the same time.

This film is brilliant and it is going on my wishlist for the moment it comes out on blu-ray. If Hammer can produce more films like this in the future I will once again become a devotee.

Free Books on Amazon

2012-02-02T14:47:00.001Z

I've seen several people talking about whether putting a book free on Amazon is a good idea or not. I'm not going to go into the whole KDP Select thing because I very much don't like the exclusivity clause that is involved in it. However, I have had one title price matched to free, which for me has been brilliant.

I've analysed my numbers from December to January and having a free book (Forgotten Soul ) on Amazon has doubled my sales.

I'm definitely still at the don't quit your day job stage, even though this is my day job and I can only do it because I have a wonderfully talented husband and a low mortgage :). However, it's an upturn when, ever since Amazon played with their system back in the middle of last year, my numbers have been pitiful.

However, for those considering putting titles free on Amazon, I think I should point out a couple of factors.

Most of my new sales were for Forbidden Soul, the direct sequel to the free book.
The few extra sales I saw on other books were for books of the same genre. It didn't touch my YA novel figures.

Hence I think it's probably a good idea to plan exactly how you make your titles free if you are going to do so. I suppose it makes sense that if someone has read a book of yours in a genre and liked it, they are more likely to go for the same genre again. It is also likely that fans of a certain genre go for that genre and not an alternative one.

It's actually given me a lot to think about, which is why I thought I'd share what I've seen. Of course this is only one month, I have no idea if I will see the same again this month, but I have already seen more sales in two days than sometimes in a whole week in Dec, so here's hoping.

I'm seriously considering writing a YA short story/novella just so I can put it up there for free and have a free book in my other market segment. (Only once I've published "Cat's Creation" the sequel to Cat's Call, though, promise :)).

I would be very happy to hear if anyone else has had similar or completely different results. I know that KDP select only lets you put your book up free for five days, where as mine are intended to be free for as long as the system will let me do it, so experiences may differ.

Smashwords, how I love thee.

2012-02-01T10:55:00.000Z

Okay, so I've talked about Amazon and the fact it is not the only option for eBooks and now I'm going to talk about one of the other brilliant alternatives: Smashwords. All Wittegen Press books are available from Smashwords.

Smashwords is superb, not only for readers of eBooks, but for authors/publishers as well. It is a mine of Indie publishers and self-pub authors that all should check out.

You have to have bought a book to review it, which is also useful from an author and a reader persepctive. For the author, no spam reviews, for the reader, you know if someone reviewed it they bought it first.

For Readers

Smashwords provide every format you can think of when you buy a book. As long as the person publishing the book has not unchecked the option it will appear. For example, you're unlikely to find a picture book published in plain text format, it would be silly, but a novel will likely be in all formats. These are all the formats on offer with indications of what devices they are good for.

Online Reading (HTML, good for sampling in web browser)
Online Reading (JavaScript, experimental, buggy)
Kindle (.mobi for Kindle devices and Kindle apps)
Epub (Apple iPad/iBooks, Nook, Sony Reader, Kobo, and most e-reading apps including Stanza, Aldiko, Adobe Digital Editions, others)
PDF (good for reading on PC, or for home printing)
RTF (readable on most word processors)
LRF (Use only for older model Sony Readers that don't support .epub)
Palm Doc (PDB) (for Palm reading devices)
Plain Text (download) (flexible, but lacks much formatting)
Plain Text (view) (viewable as web page)

So, once you've bought a book you can even read it online if you want to, just as if you were visiting a fiction archive.

Unlike Amazon, Smashwords also has a beta of a gifting eBook system up, so that you can buy and eBook for someone else if you wish to.

For Authors

First of all, let's look at the numbers. Smashwords offer authors 85% royalty rate of net sales for all titles sold on their site and 60% royalty rate from their distributors (more about them later). This is a superb rate and does not rely on pricing like Amazon does (with them an author get 70% for books price $2.99 and higher but only 35% for books under that). When you publish a book on Smashwords they show you a pie chart for each book of how much you will earn per sale and where the other percentages are going. Very pretty and very useful. If you select the option they also email you for every sale you make on their site and tell you how much you made on it.

Smashwords allow you to upload free titles as well, which are distributed to their retailers as free titles too.

They also have a coupon system where you can create a coupon for money off your book, set a time limit on the code and use it as part of a special offer. Coupons can be any value, even up to 100%, so you can use coupons for giveaways, or to allow reviewers to download your book.

Non-US authors, please be aware you require an ITIN (individual taxpayer identification number) to be paid by Smashwords . They have useful info about ITINs at this link. I'm applying for mine now, once I am successful I will do a post to tell UK people how I did it, because I believe it can be tricky.

Smashwords is also what is known as an agregator. This means they distribute to other eBook sites, many of which are hard to get your books onto otherwise. There are opt in and opt out options for all distributors so it is not compulsory. These are who they distribute to at the moment:

Apple (iBookstore in 32 countries)
Barnes & Noble
Sony
Kobo
WH Smith (UK via Kobo)
FNAC (Fr via Kobo)
Diesel eBook store
eBook Eros (Diesel's erotic eBook partner)

Smashwords have two catalogues.

The Standard Catalogue

The standard catalogue is all the titles published on their site, which is all titles that meet their terms and conditions (i.e. no publishing other people's work etc). All books go into the standard catalogue as soon as they are publised and appear on Smashwords' site.

The Premium Catalogue

This is the catalogue which is distributed to Smashwords' partner retailers. Your book has to meet certain standards to be published in this catalogue which include the Smashwords Style Guide. This is a free eBook that takes you step by step how to create you initial .doc file for uploading to the Smashwords engine which converts it into eBooks for you. You also have to have an ISBN for the book, but there are three ways of getting one:

You have your own which you have purchased from elsewhere
Smashwords will give you a free ISBN and all sites will list them as the publisher
You buy an ISBN from Smashwords (US only) for a premium rate and it will list you as the publisher.

Getting into the premium catalogue takes a while becaue Smashwords do check all the books, but it is worth the wait.

Publisher Accounts

They also have publisher accounts, so if you publish under several names and want seperate identities for each you can still deal with all the money centrally. Soph and I have a publisher account for Wittegen Press and we publish all out book under our personal accounts (which have biographies etc) and then assign the rights to the publisher account. That way all the royalties are dealt with in one place. Publisher accounts can also have what are called ghost authors, these have profiles, but can be used by the publisher account to publish the book directly without having to reassign rights though another account.

There is also very clear reporting and author friendly services to help you track how your books are doing. Much easier to see everything than on Amazon.

Smashwords is a superb site and the staff are incredibly helpful if there are any problems. For example, when we first started publishing on there, Soph and I thought we should keep Penny Dreadfuls 21 and Wittegen seperate, so we set up those books under a different publisher account. Then we decided that we actually wanted to have them all under Wittegen after all. Most of the books we just transfered back to the author accounts and then used our author accounts to assign them to Wittegen. However, a couple of the books were under a ghost account. For some reason when we tried to reassign to another author it didn't work. Smashwords looked into it straight away and found a bug and fixed it. That simple and then everything worked fine. No red tape, no black hole of no response, just a very helpful support staff.

Forgotten Soul is now free on Amazon UK

2012-01-31T10:35:00.001Z

"Forgotten Soul" has been price matched to free on Amazon UK and so it is now in line with Amazon US. It may be downloaded for nothing.

Hopefully this will help with sales as much as it did when it went free on Amazon US.

John knows that at best he can be described as a male escort and at worst as a whore, but it's what he does and he's good at it. He sells his body and his clients come with fangs so it's more about blood than sex. Hiding behind a false smile and his acting skills is the only way he survives, but when he meets one of his latest clients, Michael, his professional detachment is severely threatened, leading him into very dangerous territory.

Amazon is not the only Option

2012-01-28T11:26:00.000Z

I think that some of us who have been in the world of eBooks for a while forget how confusing it can be to newcomers. After some of the response I received to yesterday's post about buying and reading books from Amazon: The Ease and Pitfalls of Buying eBooks from Amazon, I thought of another useful post for newbies to eBooks.

Hence

Amazon Is Not the Only Option even if you have a Kindle

Depending on what eBook reader you have chosen there are other eBook sites out there where you may purchase to your heart's desire. Most eReaders are not geared to one site only, for example, if a site says it has .mobi format, this means you can read it on a Kindle.

If you want to know what format your eReader can take then check out this Wikipedia post which has a lovely table at the bottom showing you what can read what. Comparison of e-book formats

If you're reading on PC, Mac or Smartphone you also have various software options. Some eBook stores offer their own readers, but there are also:

Calibre - does just about every format and as long as the book is DRM free it can read it. Also has convert and organise options.
Adobe Digital Editions - supports various formats and can do DRM books
eReader.com - not actually quite sure about this one

In fact there are so many that check out this page for more info: E-book software from Mobileread

Once you have your device or software there is the question of where to buy your books.

Here are a list of all the major eBook stores Wittegen Press books are uploaded to (I'm talking about these because these are the ones I know about, it is not an exhaustive list):

Amazon: UK | US | DE | FR | ES | IT
Smashwords - books here come in just about every format available. They are DRM free.
Barnes & Noble - Nook book fromat (and I believe only available in the US - please correct me if I am wrong)
Kobo - ePub and have a Kobo reading ap for many devices if you want to download and use it.
Diesel - ePub
iTunes (Apple) - iBook (iBook FAQ at Apple)
Goodreads - some people offer their books via Goodreads as well as using it as a review site. ePub again

Then there are other more specialist sites:

All Romance - you get one guess what they specialise in and they offer various formats depending on what the publisher has uploaded. Each book entry will tell you what formats are available for that book. The only drawback I have seen is that you can only download one format of the book, so if you pick the wrong one you're stuffed.
OmniLit - this is All Romance's sister site that does all genres.
Ebook-Eros - Erotic books linked to Diesel.

Then some publishers have their own sites, big names and Indie.

Mills & Boon UK they mention Apple, Kindle, Kobo, Samsung and Sony
Total.E.Bound Publishing MS Lit, Adobe (ePub), Mobi
Phaze.com (HTML, PDF, ePub, Mobi, Kindle)
Liquid Silver Books (PDF, HTML, .Lit, .Mobi, Rocket)

And that's just half of the first page of Google when I search for Romance eBooks. Everyone is at it, from all genres, and all you have to do is check to see what formats the sites are offering.

What you have to watch out for with the big providers like Amazon and Apple is DRM. Some books purchased through their sites may only be read on their devices/applications. Other than that, the world is your oyster.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask, I'll do my best to answer them. I'm not an expert, but I'm happy to try and help.

The Ease and Pitfalls of Buying eBooks from Amazon

2012-01-27T15:12:00.000Z

I've been meaning to do this post for a while and something that happened jogged my memory :). There seems to be much confusion around Amazon eBooks, so I thought I'd make a post about it to clear things up.

Firstly let me say this: YOU DO NOT NEED TO OWN A KINDLE to buy and read eBooks from Amazon.

Having a Kindle just makes it ridiculously easy.

There are many other ways to read Kindle books because there are reading aps for the following devices:

iPhone/iPod Touch
Windows PC
Mac
Blackberry (US only, god knows why)
iPad
Android
Windows Phone 7

You can download all of them here: Amazon UK | Amazon US

Pitfalls

There is only one problem with some Amazon books and that is DRM. This stands for Digital Rights Management and means that some books bought from Amazon can only be read on a Kindle or a Kindle ap. There are ways round this (which is what makes it so ridiculous in the first place), but they are technical and involve scripts and things, so if you really want to know I suggest you Google it.

Of course Amazon aren't going to stick it up there in neon that a book has DRM because they know it annoys people.

How to tell if an Amazon book is infested DRM or not.
Go to the "Product details" section. If you find this line:
Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
it means the book is DRM FREE. If it doesn't have this line, the book has DRM.

Of course that is the major advantage of buying indie, most of us indie publishers want nothing to do with DRM because it just pisses off our customers. For the record all of my books and the other books from http://www.wittegenpress.com are DRM free (and if you find one that isn't please tell me because it means someone cocked up somewhere along the way).

If the book is DRM free, you are then free to convert the book to any device you like. Calibre is a fabulous free piece of software that allows you to manage your eBooks and convert them to whatever format you wish for whatever device you wish.

Rec: Fun. "We Are Young" ft Janelle Monáe

2012-01-26T10:52:00.000Z

I was pointed to this song by someone in my circles on G+ and I am so glad I saw the link. It's a truly superb song and the band Fun. have an album coming out in Feb. The song is called "We Are Young" and it's brilliant. Nate (the singer) has an amazing voice and the way the chorus soars is amazing.

I like the normal version of this, but the acoustic is simply superb! I have been singing it since the first time I watched it and I may have had the vid on repeat for a while. When Fun.'s album comes out I am so buying it.

Direct link: On Youtube
This is the non-acousic version as well. Odd vid, but cool :)

Direct link: On Youtube

Their website is here: http://www.ournameisfun.com/home/
They have a couple of their other songs on there too as well as some behind the scene's stuff.

Review: The Ghost Inside Me by Katie Cramer

2012-01-25T16:46:00.003Z

The Ghost Inside Me
by Katie Cramer

Title: The Ghost Inside Me
Author: Katie Cramer
Publisher: Addictive Press
Genre: paranormal romance
Conclusion: Good 4/5

Okay, so I read this yesterday morning while pedalling on my exercise bike and gave myself a day to digest it before I reviewed it. Over on Amazon I gave it four stars, because I like it.

This is a good read, it's just not long enough. Everything there is in the book is great. The prose is well written, the plot holds together, but there's not really enough of it to get the whole story in.

Let me say that the sex is beautifully done and it's sexy, and I love the overall story. It's well thought out and nicely set up. The characters are good and it's very easy to relate to them. So well worth a read.

My only problem is that it feels like there are bits missing. I know it's only a short story, but it was begging for more in depth emotional reactions and there is a point near the end where it jumps from one scene right to the last one and I would have liked to have seen a bit of what happened in between.

So, definitely a great quick read to pick up, just no five stars because, for me, it needed a couple more thousand words.

TGIM on Amazon UK | TGIM on Amazon US

Style and Substance

2012-01-24T12:21:00.000Z

My husband and I watched a film last night called "The Storm Warriors". It's a Chinese epic martial arts movie and it is beautifully made. The sets are stunning, the fight scenes amazing and the special effects are superb, however, it's not a very good film.

Firstly, it's a sequel and totally fails to reintroduce the characters.
Secondly the plot is so thin it's virtually non-existent.
Thirdly, what plot there is doesn't actually make any sense; not even a little bit.

The whole film is a triumph of style over substance and hence falls flat as far as I am concerned. We watched half of the final fight scenes in fast forward because, by then, we were that bored of them. They were beautiful, but we just wanted to know what the hell was going to happen.

A little more talking and less fighting and it might have been a film worth watching a second time.

I think you can sometimes have this problem in books as well. It tends to be more difficult to analyse in a book, but sometimes you find a novel where the characters just go through the motions. There is everything you expect, a beginning, a middle and an end, but no substance. Sometimes it can be lack of plot, or a plot that doesn't make sense, but in a book world sometimes you can still have that and not be engaged. I tend to find this is when the characters lack emotional depth.

I was reading a book the other day (no I'm not going to say which one) and it should have been great. The first chapter was; dragged me right in and made me want to read more, but then the humans arrived in the book and it lost me. Something about the writing meant I made no connection with the characters at all and, hence, I really couldn't be bothered to read the rest. I didn't finish the book.

The book had all of the style. The world building was there, the technical skill was there, but there was nothing to make me connect to it. It was beautifully put together, I'll give it that, but it lacked something.
Of course all of this is very subjective. Someone else might have thought it was a superb book. I think that's what makes writing so hard. It's also what makes reviews not the be all and end all. Some people will like a book or film, some people won't. If it's good some people will think it is the most wonderful thing ever, some people may not be moved by it in the slightest.

There is style and there is substance and I think, when it comes to style, it's easier to tell if something is good. A badly made film or a badly written book is quite obvious when it comes to cinematography or spelling. If you're making a sci-fi movie you don't want to film it in soft focus. If you're writing a romance novel you don't want huge swathes of space opera type prose. Style has much easier rules and as long as you have taken the time to find out what they are, you're pretty much set.

Substance on the other hand, that is much more subjective. I don't like most of the movies that win OSCARs. There are exceptions, but, mostly, I find them long winded and boring. That's me not gelling with the substance even if I can appreciate how beautiful the cinematography might be. I also don't enjoy literary fiction; mostly it bores me senseless. However, I am well aware, that is simply a matter of personal preference.

This does not mean I will enjoy every film or book that does fulfil my type of substance criteria, or that I will dislike every single one outside what I usually watch or read. The substance also has to be done well.
In a movie I can forgive a few plot holes, as long as most of it fits together. In a book I usually can't get over a huge gaping illogical step. This is a double standard, but I expect the writing in a book to be better. I suspect this is because in the book there are only words and the plot is in my head, in a block buster movie there is usually the pretty to distract me. Shallow, I know, but it happens to be the truth.

I think is all comes down to this in both films and books: things have to happen in something like a logical order and I have to care about why they are happening.

I was watching "Hereafter", the Clint Eastwood directed movie with Matt Damon. I watched the whole film and, after it was finished, I think I had enjoyed it, but I will never watch it again. It came over to me as the literary fiction of the film world. It is a beautifully put together plot, beautifully filmed, but it went nowhere and did nothing very much and didn't actually finish properly. We almost switched it off in the middle, which was not a good sign. However, at the end it all did make sense and it kind of left me with a nice feeling, so I didn't hugely dislike it, I'll just never bother to sit through it again. It had style and substance, just not my cup of tea.

A movie and a book both require substance in my opinion, but both are on a sliding scale. The best have both in huge amounts, but, depending on the level of one you can get away with reducing the other. However, if you have too little of one, even if you have epic amounts of the other, like "The Storm Warriors", it's still not going to be enough.

Of course, the reason we have so much diversity out there is that everyone's limits and sliding scales are different and, I believe, this is a very good thing.

New Book: Forbidden Soul (Soul Reader #2)

2012-01-23T15:17:00.001Z

I have a new book out today. It's called Forbidden Soul and it is full of vampires and action and hot gay sex.

John's life used to be on the risky side, but it had been simple. Allowing vampires to suck his blood had never been safe, but now there is Michael and having a vampire who actually cares about him is complicated. It's even more complicated because Michael is urging him to reconnect with the family he hasn't seen in over five years. The fact his recent past also doesn't want to die quietly is making his life less than easy and it's about to become deadly.

This is the second book in The Soul Reader Series which is going to be a series of free short stories interspersed with bargain price novella length books. The first book Forgotten Soul is one of the short stories and may be downloaded free from Amazon and Smashwords (check the link above to see options).

Forbidden Soul picks up where Forgotten Soul finishes and takes the reader on the next stage of John and Michael's confusing journey. It is novella length at 22.5K wds and is available for the bargain price of 99c/77p. There is plenty of plot, romance and sex to satisfy all readers.

Naked men!

2012-01-09T16:29:00.001Z

I'm coming to an inescapable conclusion - naked men on covers sell books. I wonder if I could get away with a naked man on Cat's Call ... I mean they do get naked ... for entirely non-sexual reasons of course ... ;)

I'm joking, but I am going to redo the cover for "Chip Off the Old Block?" so that it has at least semi-naked men on it. It did it in cont. fantasy style, but I think it should definitely be in paranormal romance style instead.

I can do it at the same time I do the cover for the sequel to Forgotten Soul

Ways to help promote a book without, necessarily writing a whole review.

2012-01-02T11:51:00.000Z

Reviews are wonderful things and undoubtedly help a book sell, but the modern world is a very busy one and sometimes readers just don't have time to sit down and put sensible words together to write a full review. Hence here is a list of other things readers can do that will help a up a book's profile that take seconds to do.
Quick promotion options

Agree with all the tags on Amazon.

Just under the Product details section on an Amazon UK page for a book, or just above the Customer Discusions section on Amazon US page, is the tags section. These tags help a book appear in search results and the more people agree with a tag the higher the book should come in the listing. It looks like this:

Most authors will have already tagged their book with the tags they believe it should have and there is a link next to the tags which says Agree with these tags?. Click that and you will up the tag count for each of those tags and hence help the book be found by those searching Amazon.

Apparently "Agree with all these tags" does not actually help the book, you have to click the tick boxes next to the actual tags. Trust Amazon to make it difficult. However, this still only takes a couple of seconds. Thanks.

If you have time, please do this for all Amazon country sites because tags are country dependent (yep, silly I know).
Add your own tags on Amazon.

If you think that the book should have a tag it does not yet have to reach a wider audience, add a new one. Just, please, make sure the tags apply or Amazon gets upset.
Like the book on Amazon.

At the top of each book entry, just under the title and author there is a little like button. Click it to let the world know you liked the book. This is what it looks like when you have clicked the button.

If you have time, please do this for all Amazon country sites because likes are also country dependent (yep, silly I know).
If you know a book is being given away on other sites for free (long term - i.e. it is a free title by the author), encourage Amazon to price match. Amazon only allow authors to put up books for a min of 99c, not give them away like other sites, so the only way to have a free title is for Amazon to price match, which they won't do without prompting.

There is a link in the Product Details section which is called "tell us about a lower price". It will cause a window like this to come up:

As you can see you will need the URL of the site where you saw it for free, for example Barnes and Nobel, and the price you saw it for.
If the book has a G+ page, circle it and share it with your friends.
If the book has a Facebook page, like it and share it with your friends.
Tweet about the book with a link to where it can be bought.
Rate it on Goodreads - you can add a star rating without adding a full review and you can always come back later and add the review when you have time.
Just mention the book to your friends. :)

Big name publishers really don't need a lot of help promoting their books, they have huge marketing machines behind each title, but when it comes to Indie Publishers and Indie Authors a minute of your time can mean so much. Upping a book's profile can mean the difference between ten sales and thousands; price matching on Amazon can mean the difference between twenty downloads and two thousand all of which will up the profile of the author and help them sell their other books.
We live in a world of social networking and the independent book producers rely on these networks. The truth is good titles deserve to rise to the top, but the world has to hear about them first. Indies are fighting against the huge corporate machines that promote books like Harry Potter and Twilight, so please, if you have a minute or two to spare, help out the little guys.

New Novel: Advent by Natasha Duncan-Drake

2011-12-26T11:26:00.000Z

My new vampire novel, Advent is out today. No Twilight style vamps in this book, the vampires are all nasty, but there is some romance, a lot of action and plenty of fangs. Buying options are listed below.

Title:

Advent

Author(s):

Natasha Duncan-Drake

Date Pub: 26th December 2011

Length: novel (~80K wds)

Genre: Urban Horror, Vampires, Paranormal Fantasy

Buying Options:

Amazon UK	£1.71 (inc VAT)	Kindle
Amazon US	$2.99
Amazon DE	EUR2.99
Amazon FR	EUR2.99
Amazon IT	EUR2.99
Amazon ES	EUR2.99
Smashwords	$2.99	ePub, PDF, mobi(Kindle), rtf, ltf(Sony), Palm Doc, Plain txt

ISBN 978-1-908333-12-4, ISBN 978-1-908333-13-1

Description:

Every hunter knows a vampire bite means damnation. Every hunter knows killing a victim is an act of mercy. Every hunter knows there is no cure. Every hunter is wrong.
Nate Lavern became a hunter at eighteen and was well aware of the golden rule until he met Lexie. Lexie is a white witch infected with vampirism and when Nate was infected as well she showed him her secret for staying partially human. Together they hunt vampires, protecting the unsuspecting general public, but their magical solution is beginning to fail.

Their only hope is the Avebury ritual, little more than a legend even in hunter circles, and requiring four ancient relics. They are running out of time and must find out what is truth and what is myth; what is real and where it has been hidden.

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Excerpt

Conflict enveloped him in less time that it took for a normal human heart to beat. Part of his mind screamed that Lexie's reaction was a warning and he was close to the edge. Another part enjoyed the fear he could see in her eyes. His rational brain told him that this woman was his friend and sometimes lover; his vampire instincts told him this thing before him was a shell of a human being fit only to be slaughtered.

"Nate," Lexie's voice would have been steady to a normal ear, but to Nate's acute hearing the slight quaver was obvious, "you're scaring me."

"Really? I'm so sorry." But he wasn't, not in the slightest and he smiled at her.

"Oh crap, fangs," Lexie said, the fear was evident in her voice.

She took another step backwards.

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Cowboys & Aliens - Well worth a look.

2011-11-28T15:47:00.001Z

I have finally seen Cowboys and Aliens and I have to say, I loved it. I did spend the whole film wanting to feed Daniel Craig, the dear boy's too thin, but that is likely to be just me.

This is the kind of film I'm a little iffy about, I did not know if I really wanted to see it. I'm not into cowboy movies and the whole idea of cowboys and aliens in the same movie sounded a bit too weird, even for me. I am so, so glad that I did watch it, however. The plot is superb, the characters have depth and it might have lots of clichés, but they are done with such aplomb that they all but feel new.

The basic premise of the film is aliens have come to the Wild West and are abducting humans. When they abduct the wrong people they end up with a posse on their arses. A woefully outgunned and out matched posse, but the moral of the film should be 'don't mess with humans, they will find a way to kick your arse no matter how many of them die first'.

Daniel Craig is gruff and tough as Jake, or rather I should say the unknown man since at the beginning of the movie he doesn't remember a thing. The who he is, is resolved pretty quickly, although not his memory issues, which make for some nice drama throughout the film. I have to admit I don't like Mr Craig as Bond, but I love him to pieces as Jake. He's rough, he's ready and he's exciting, as well as being rather pretty to look at.

The film starts off as if means to go on with brutal action. Jake wakes up in the desert with no memory, no shoes, hat or coat and a hole in his side. Within five minutes he's kicking the crap out of several people and gaining a dog before heading off to the small town of Absolution; it's very much an action movie.

The rest of the cast also live up to expectations and I'll take about them in order of appearance.

Clancy Brown plays Meacham the preacher (something I had to come to terms with because I always see him as the Kurgan from Highlander even though it's been 25 years) and he is superb. He's tough, while being, probably, the most likeable character at the beginning of the film.

After the preacher we meet Paul Dano as Percy, the no good son of the local cattle man Woodrow Dolarhyle, who's cattle keep the town afloat. Percy is a drunk, a layabout, a bully and an idiot and he's only really there as motivation, but he's still worth a mention.

Then we have Sam Rockwell as Doc, who is basically the Wild West equivalent of a nerd. He runs the saloon, is actually a doctor, but can't shoot a gun to save his life so gets pushed around, apparently usually by Percy. I'm very used to seeing Sam Rockwell play really bad guys like in The Green Mile, but he pulls off Doc as slightly pathetic, but still likeable.

This is the point we also catch a glimpse of Adam Beach as Nat Colorado. He seems to be a yes man for Percy, but keep an eye on him, he's important and gives a superb performance.

Of course no modern film is complete without the strong female character and for this we have Olivia Wilde as Ella. I didn't like her much at the beginning, she looks like she's in her PJs and her character felt a little thin, but once the action really starts she grows and by the end I was rather fond of her.

There is also the required child character because it's a 12A. He is, however, useful and interesting and doesn't whine all the way through like some child characters have been known to do. His name is Emmett and he's played by Noah Ringer.

Meacham has the best line about the suspension of disbelief required for the rounded character segment as the heroes set out on their quest: "Yes, ma'am. We've got a kid, a dog, why not a woman?" It's nice to know the writers at least knew what they were doing when they did it.

Of course the big name I haven't mentioned yet is Harrison Ford. I don't think I've actually ever seen him in a movie where he doesn't at least look like the good guy at the beginning. He is a ruthless cattle baron who expects absolute loyalty and doesn't take shit from anyone. He is anything but likeable, but he is a great character. Our Mr Ford once again shows what a superb actor he is.

It is a great cast and there's a good solid plot to go with them. The use of Jake's memory loss to bring the audience in and discover things as he does is well done and means there doesn't need to be a huge info dump to a third party at any time to bring us up to speed. If you can accept the fact that there are aliens in the old west, the rest of the plot hangs together really rather well. I don't want to give you spoilers so I won't mention too much, but the aliens have a solid reason for being there and the only thing I did think was a little weak was their reason for abducting humans. It works, kind of, but it could have been slightly deeper, because, boy were they slow if they were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

This film is never going to win awards for deep intellectual plotting. The way Jake eventually gets his memory back is a cliché to end all clichés, but it doesn't pretend to be anything else. This is an action adventure scifi movie with cowboys and it isn't attempting to be Alien or 2001, it's just fun. The special effects are good, the plot is good, the characters are great and the acting holds it all together. I would recommend this film to anyone who enjoys a good action movie with a slightly hard edge. Not one for the younger viewers though, given some of the scenes I was surprised it had a 12A rating.

It's coming out on DVD/Bluray in the US on the 6th Dec 2011 and on 26th Dec 2011 in the UK, so add it to your wishlists.