You know you want the best in new fiction

Get it now:

• Authors defying commercial publishers and literary convention
• leaping genre boundaries
• and breaking rules.

Now get these hot new works — free.

BestSelling Reads brings together the best in new fiction — and gives you the chance to win a big honkin’ bunch FREE on a brand new iPad Mini!

Enter BSR’s great February Giveaway for a chance at a brand-new iPad Mini pre-loaded with an e-book from every BestSelling Reads member.

DON’T DELAY – THIS OFFER ENDS ON FEBRUARY 28, 2014.

ENTER NOW!

Take a look at a few of the cutting-edge books you could win:

VIGILANTE by Claude Bouchard: Because sometimes, criminals have to pay...

JAGUAR SUN (Jaguar Sun Book 1) by Martha Bourke: A teenage shape-shifter discovers she is meant to ease the world's transition to a New Age as the Mayan calendar ends and a new world begins.

DOING MAX VINYL by Fred Brooke: Recycling fraud Max Vinyl suffers the worst week of his life when his environmentalist girlfriend, Tris, and returned Iraq War vet Annie Ogden team up to take him down.

THE BONES OF THE EARTH by Scott Bury: It’s the Dark Age, the earth has determined to erase human civilization with earthquakes, floods and plagues — and a young disabled must solve the riddle of the bones of the earth to save the woman he loves.

LICENCED TO THRILL, VOLUME 4 by Diane Capri: Four smart thrillers where justice rules!

  

SHADOW CAY by Leona DeRosa Bodie: Someone wants to make sure the Nesbitts never make it out of paradise alive.

THE NINTH DISTRICT by Doug Dorow: the Federal Reserve has never been robbed and FBI Special Agent Jack Miller means to keep it that way.

GONE AT ZERO HUNDRED by CR Hiatt: Two 18-year-old sleuths take on the perilous underworld in a club called The Devil's Door.

RED MOJO MAMA by Kathy Lynn Hall: Lydia "Red" Talbot has lost her mojo and getting it back means having to change a few things in her life.

3 LIES by Helen Hanson: Can a corporate dropout rescue his girlfriend before her kidneys fail or a CIA mission spins out of control? 

SHADES OF GRAY by Andy Holloman: Combine Breaking Bad with a dark remake of The Love Boat and you have all the colors in Shades of Gray.

LEAH'S WAKE by Terri Giuliano Long: This award-winning novel explores the struggle of teenagers coming of age, and coming to terms with the overwhelming feelings that rule them and the demanding world that challenges them.

PRICELESS by Shannon Mayer: A missing child, a werewolf for a pet, and the FBI on her tail — what could go wrong?

BLOOD ORCHIDS by Toby Neal: A fast-paced crime novel with a twist of romance, set on Hawaii.

SECOND CHANCE GRILL by Christine Nolfi: When Dr. Mary Chance inherits a restaurant in Liberty, Ohio, she can't resist falling for precocious Blossom Perini — or the girl's father. The bond they forge will transform all their lives and set in motion an outpouring of love that spreads across America.



 

THE SOCIETY OF SINNERS by Charity Parkerson: Evil lives in the dark.

MOONLIGHT ON THE NANTAHALA by Micheal Rivers: A story of dedicated friendship and undying love that will haunt your soul.

ARCADIA'S GIFT by Jesi Lea Ryan: Most people only experience death once. Arcadia Day is not most people.



CASSIDY JONES AND THE SECRET FORMULA by Elise Stokes: Discover how Cassidy Jones gains superpowers in her first action-adventure — an positive esteem-builder for teens, boys and girls. 

BROKEN PIECES by Rachel Thompson: It is rare when a writer puts so much of him or herself on the paper that you can see them bleed, but Rachel Thompson boldly steps out of the shadows and puts herself in the light that shows her wounds, her flaws, her heart and you can't help but be moved.

AMELIA'S STORY by D.G. Torrens: A life of pain and rejection — the powerful true story of one young girl’s struggle to survive the state care system in the 70s and 80s.

SAY MY NAME by Rebecca Tsaros-Dickson: A tale of two lovers in their 40s coming to terms with their true feelings after decades of unrequited passion. Anyone who has ever loved, lost and held out hope in spite of it all will see a piece of themselves in this novella — and it may not be easy to face.

POST-APOCALYPTIC NOMADIC WARRIORS by Ben Wallace: A fast-paced action and adventure novel set in a horrific future that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

NOTHING STAYS IN VEGAS by Elena Welch-Aitken: When Lexi is confronted with the past, she can no longer deny the truth to anyone because as she now knows, what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas — except when it doesn't.

  

MILL PEOPLE by Alle Wells: Jesse Finney's story captures the life of a Southern mill town from the late 1800s to the mid-twentieth century.

LAST ONE CHOSEN by Stephen Woodfin: How do you neutralize the most dangerous man on the planet?

 

 

 

 

 

Plus more action-adventure, thriller, romance, humour, science-fiction and non-fiction from

Natasha Brown

David C. Cassidy

John-Paul Davis

David Leadbeater

Kirkus MacGowan

Alan McDermott

Caleb Pirtle

Mohanalakshmi Rajakumar

Raine Thomas

And David Vinjamuri 

CONTEST CLOSES FEBRUARY 28.

Enter now: BestSelling Reads’ February Deal

Writing Tips: Smashwords allows direct uploading of EPUB files

This is big news for indie authors: Smashwords is now supporting the direct uploading of EPUB-formatted books for sale through its e-retail network.

According to the Smashwords Official Blog, the new Smashwords Direct “allows our authors and publishers to upload their own professionally formatted EPUB files for sale at the Smashwords store, and for distribution to the Smashwords retail distribution network.”

Until now, listing your book on the Smashwords e-catalog meant starting with a .doc file, formatted exactly according to Smashwords’ specifications, and uploading it into their proprietary Meatgrinder software. If you do everything just right (which isn’t that hard), Smashwords will give you back an e-book in whatever format you wanted, and list it on their e-bookstore.
If you follow all of Smashwords’ recommendations, it will also list your book in other e-bookstores: Barnes & Noble, Apple’s iBookstore, Diesel, Kobo and all the others — except for Amazon. And that’s because of Amazon, not because of Smashwords.

The Meatgrinder system is fully automatic. If you feel proficient with a word processor that can save a .doc format, you don’t have to learn another software application. Meatgrinder takes care of the formatting, program codes and everything else.

However, it is a little limiting. As someone who learned desktop publishing way back when, I like the ability to choose my typeface and format my pages the way I want them to look. Learning to use an EPUB creation program like Caliber is no sweat to someone who learned, successively, PageMaker, QuarkXPress, InDesign and then HTML.

To quote Smashwords itself:

EPUB files uploaded through this new Smashwords Direction option must still adhere to the formatting best practices listed in the Smashwords Style Guide. Books will still be reviewed by our vetting team before shipping out to our retailers.

The company points out some limitations to the new option. First, Meatgrinder converts a .doc file into nine different formats for just about every e-reader there is, including PDF and .MOBI for the Kindle. If you upload an EPUB file, that won’t happen. “Nor will you get the downloadable samples,” Smashwords says, although it promises to improve sampling and add the ability to upload PDF and .MOBI files directly, as well.

You can upload your book as a Word .doc file first, formatted to the Style Guide, and then replace our EPUB with your own (assuming your EPUB is higher quality). This way, you'll have the major formats covered.

The author’s best friend

While Amazon is by far the biggest e-bookstore (although I have not found any reliable market statistics), I think that Smashwords is the indie author’s best friend. Amazon’s Kindle Publishing System works in much the same way as Smashwords’, but the output is restricted to Amazon’s e-retailing system. What’s more, Amazon takes 30% of the selling price of the book, while Smashwords takes only 15%. (That commission rises, of course, for books sold through other bookstores like B&N, as each player gets a cut.)

Smashwords head honcho Mark Coker’s Secrets to EBook Publishing Success is the clearest and most useful explanation of how to create e-books that I have ever read, and the Style Guide is an indispensible tool. Amazon just doesn’t have anything like it.

Smashwords also has an easy-t0-use coupon system, which allows the author or publisher to offer discounts, even free books, to individuals.

You can also set your price to zero. Amazon only allows you to do that for five days out of ninety, and only if your book is exclusive to Amazon. I have tried it with some success, but overall, I prefer having my books on more than one retailer.

In short, Smashwords, the little guy, gives authors a whole lot more.

Check out the documentation for Smashwords Direct at https://www.smashwords.com/swdirect. And tell Written Words if you’ll try it.

Get it for nothin’

Image courtesy Sodahead

Except your time.

I’m giving away FREE electronic copies of my novel, The Bones of the Earth, for the rest of this month. But there’s a catch: first, as with all contests and games of chance in Canada (and maybe elsewhere, too, but I only know the rules in the former Lady of the Snows), to win, you have to answer a skill-testing question. Or in this case, a knowledge-testing question.


The question follows the previous blog post: name two of the rules, conventions or tropes of fantasy writing that I broke in The Bones of the Earth. I promise you, you’ll find more that two. How much easier could I make this contest?


“Easy? How can I tell you what those rules are, if I haven’t read The Bones of the Earth?” you ask. “And if I buy the whole book, why would I be interested in a free one?”


That’s an excellent question. Very astute of you.

Hints

All you really need to answer this is to read two excerpts. You can get to Chapter 1 by clicking the tab at the top of this page, the one labelled “Sample: The Bones of the Earth.”


You can find Chapter 2 excerpted on the Featured Books Excerpts page on Wodke Hawkinson’s excellent blog, Find a Good Book to Read, here.


And if you still need more hints, check out my previous post as well as this guest post on genres and boundaries at Find a Good Book to Read.

Want one more hint? Find out about the personality of my main character, Javor, in this deep character interview on Laurie J.'s Paranormal Thoughts and Reviews blog.

How to answer

"Okay, smart guy, I've figured it out. How do I enter this contest and get my free book?" you ask.

Another excellent question! It just goes to show how smart the readers of this blog are.Click on the Comments list, describe the two rules (or more, if you like), and leave your contact information (email address, Twitter handle or other link). Also, tell me which electronic format you prefer: e-pub or mobi.


That’s it! I told you this would be easy!