Fantastic Fantasy Freebies!

November 20 and 21 only: 

You can download four fantastic Guild of Dreams fantasy books for FREE!

THE BONES OF THE EARTH

By Scott Bury

The Dark Age, eastern Europe: the earth has decided to rid itself of humanity with earthquakes, volcanoes and new plagues. Civilizations, even the mighty Roman Empire, crumble under the pressure of barbarian waves that are fleeing worse terrors.

Rejected by his own people, pursued by a dragon, young Javor heads for Constantinople, the centre of civilization, looking for answers to the puzzle of his great-grandfather's dagger and the murder of his family.

On the ancient, crumbling Roman highway across haunted, deserted Dacia, Javor rescues the beautiful Danisa from a human sacrifice. He cannot help falling in love with her. But Danisa has her own plans, and when she is kidnapped again, Javor has to wonder: what is the connection between his dagger, his lover and his enemies?

Download FREE from Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Bones-Earth-Dark-ebook/dp/B006PI0NRG/

  ALL WHO WANDER ARE LOST:

 An Icarus Fell Novel

 By Bruce A. Blake

Icarus Fell's life sucked. Then he died and things got really bad.

After muggers killed him, Icarus became a harvester, his job to help souls on their way to Heaven, and it turned out he possessed as little talent for this as he did for every other job he lost. People are dead. The deposed Angel of Death nearly took his teenage son. The Archangel Michael is angry with him and the police think he is a serial killer.

The only one left on his side is his guardian angel, but when he asks her to help him get to Hell to rescue the souls wrongly condemned because of him, she refuses to go against Michael's wishes.

Then another guardian shows up. Piper is beautiful, mysterious, and willing to help. Having her around turns Icarus' afterlife upside down. But knowing how to get to Hell is only half of the problem.

Getting back with your soul is the real challenge.

Get All Who Wander Are Lost for free from Amazon.

BLOOD SKIES (Book 1)

by Steven Montano

Free on Smashwords through November 25th!

In the time after The Black, human survivors of the Southern Claw Alliance clash with vampire legions of the Ebon Cities in a constant war for survival. Earth as we know it has been forever damaged by an arcane storm that fused our world with distant realms of madness and terror. Things that once existed only in our nightmares stalk the earth.

Now, humanity is threatened by one of its own.

Eric Cross, an enlisted warlock in the Southern Claw military, is part of an elite team of soldiers and mages in pursuit of a woman known as Red — a witch whose stolen knowledge threatens the future of the human race. The members of Viper Squad will traverse haunted forests and blighted tundra in their search for the traitor, a journey that ultimately leads them to the necropolis of Koth.

There, in that haven of renegade undead, Cross will discover the dark origins of magic, and the true meaning of sacrifice...

Experience a dark and deadly new world in the debut novel of the "Blood Skies" series from author Steven Montano.

Get Blood Skies for free at Smashwords http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/64748

Enter Coupon Code: EL47N in the Shopping Cart.

 

 BORN OF WATER

By Autumn M. Birt

In the buried archives of the Temple of Dust may lie the secret to defeating the Curse, a creature which seeks to destroy 16 year old Ria for the forbidden gifts she possesses. But it is from among the ranks of those who control the Curse where Ria will find her best chance of success. Only the Priestess Niri can save Ria from the forces that hunt her, if Niri doesn’t betray the girl first. Along with Ria comes Ty and his sister, Lavinia, both bound to defend Ria from the Church of Four Orders and Niri, if they must. However, Ty has been living a life less than honest and keeping it from his sister. To survive a journey that takes them across the breadth of their world, the four must learn to trust each other before pursuit from the Church and Ty’s troubled past find them.

Download Born of Water for free from Smashwords at http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/220915

Enter Coupon Code SQ46H in the Shopping Cart.

Or from Amazon.

ON NOW! The first Independent Authors International Labor Day Free Reads Giveaway!

September 1 – 3:
3 days
7 free authors
7 great books

ALL FREE!

Independent Authors International’s Labor Day Free Reads giveaway is on NOW.

Don't miss your chance to end your summer with spectacular reading!

From September 1 to 3, anyone can download up to seven great titles from seven great, free-thinking independent authors — all for free!

I’m proud to be included in this group. Take a look at what will be available for you this coming weekend:

The Five Fortunes of Fulano — one of the Sketches from the Spanish Mustang, by Benjamin X. Wretlind. From a reviewer: “Mr. Wretlind has penned a tale of such emotional and literary depth that it will haunt the reader long after the last page is turned.”

Cassidy Jones and Vulcan’s Gift — described by a reviewer as “both the Superman 2 and Wrath of Khan to the first book,” Cassidy Jones and the Secret Formula. Both are great, esteem-building reads for the middle-grade and young adult set.

At Road’s End — the first in Zoe Saadia’s literary adventure series set in pre-Columbian America, this book has been reviewed as “a book to have on your MUST READ list.”

American Goddesses — Gary Henry’s paranormal/science-fiction yarn that makes you think, and think again.

Gray Justice — the first in Alan McDermott’s series about ex-commando Tom Gray, a man who doesn’t so much take justice into his own hands and thrust it into all of ours.

Lost — the second installment in Rob Guthrie’s thriller-horror crossover featuring one of the most interesting cops of all, Bobby Mac, and the book that established Guthrie as a truly talented and visionary writer.

And of course, my own offering: The Bones of the Earth — a tale that combines epic fantasy and historical research with a story about a young man who is trying to find his own place in a confusing and often chaotic world.

Don’t miss out. If you’re looking for some great reading material for your e-reader this fall, you could not do better than this mix from thought-provoking, truly independent authors.

To download them for free, simply type the titles into the search field in Amazon. Or watch this space and my Twitter feed for the link to the iAi Labor Day Free Reads landing page.

As if you needed another reason to celebrate a long weekend:
3 days
7 free-thinking writers
7 free books.

 



Plunging The Bones of the Earth into Kindle Select

I’ve decided to take the plunge.

Creative Commons. No, this is not me.
Thanks for asking, though.

I’ve enrolled my novel, The Bones of the Earth, into Amazon’s Kindle Digital Publishing (KDP) Select program.

I’ve resisted this for some time. In fact, the first time I heard of Kindle Select, I objected to it. At the same time, though, I understood why Amazon structured it the way it did.

KDP Select is a marketing program, as well as a method for Amazon to reinforce its dominance of the digital book market. An author or a publisher who has published a book on Amazon’s Kindle store can choose to enroll it in the KDP Select program, which gets the book included in Amazon’s Kindle Lending Library. This allows member of Amazon Prime to borrow the book, free of charge. The author/publisher gets a share of the fund that Amazon sets aside to reimburse them for these free book loans. Lately, that fund has been around $600,000 per month, divided among all authors in the program according to how many times their books get borrowed.

Authors can also set five days out of every 90 during which their books can be downloaded for free. Otherwise, you cannot set your book for a free download on Amazon, unless you go through some tricks by setting your book for free on other sites (like Smashwords, Apple’s iBookstore,Kobo, Barnes & Noble’s Nook Book Store, the Sony e-bookstore or Diesel, to name the few that I know of) and hoping that Amazon matches their price. This has not always worked for me.

The catch

The downside to KDP Select is that Amazon demands exclusivity. If you enroll your e-book in Select and the Lending Library, you cannot distribute it through any other retailer, paid or not. If you do, and Amazon finds out, they’ll not only refuse to pay you any royalties on that book, they may withhold your royalties on all your other title sold through Amazon. They may even bar you from the Kindle digital publishing system entirely.


Creative Commons


This exclusivity applies only the digital books. Authors and publishers that have joined Select can still sell printed books any way they wish — or can.

I can understand why Amazon did this. It dominates the e-book market, and it’s not a charity. It’s a business. I’m not a lawyer, but I doubt this qualifies as an anticompetitive tactic. No one has to join the Select program. You can still sell books through the KDP system as well as every other digital channel you can find, and Amazon will still sell your e-books for you. And Amazon still provides lots of free tools for making e-books in the first place.

A large number of authors have signed up for KDP Select, including several that I know through social media and some that have even written guest posts on this blog. Obviously, they’re not that worried about the exclusivity clause — or they feel that the benefits of lending royalties plus increased sales more than offset the downside.

Many have written that the majority of their sales have been through Amazon, anyway, so they weren’t really losing much.

For my part, Amazon accounts for about half my sales; the other half is mostly through Smashwords, with a few other sales from the other e-retailers.

Select results




Rob Guthrie's magnumopus is now out!

 Some authors have found Kindle Select works. Those were RS Guthrie’s words on his blog, Rob on Writing. “Each of the past three or four times I have run one or both of my books free on Amazon, I have seen a nice increase in sales post-freebie,” he wrote in April.
In February, author Russell Blake (who guested here in December) reported on his blog:

Last month, I dipped my toe in the water by making The Geronimo Breach free for three days. During that time, I saw about 12K downloads. Not too shabby. Then, when it went back to paid, a funny thing happened. After languishing for the first day, it shot like a rocket, finally hitting #165 in the paid Kindle store.

So, it does work. Of course, both Guthrie and Blake outsell me by orders of magnitude. But the potential is there.



At time of writing,
number 6,554 Paid in
Kindle Store  — not shabby at all.



Do I really want to give my books away for free?

Of course not. I put a lot of work into them: planning, writing, re-writing, editing, re-writing again, throwing parts out, filling in plot and characterization holes. I engaged editors and designers, and I had to pay them. So no, I don’t want to just give them away.

But we all appreciate that free promos and cut-rate special offers help drive up sales, too. Free is a promotional tool that I’d like to be able to use.

Also, there are some multi-author book giveaway promotions that I’d like to participate in — but again, you have to be a member of Kindle Select.

Mostly, I want to experience that paid sales spike after the free promos. I understand that it’s only a temporary spike. At this point, I’ll take temporary.

As of July 12, ##431,700 Paid in Kindle Store. Let's see if we can boost that to the low hundred thousands, at least.

I promise to blog about my experiences regularly. I’ll keep you all up to date on my progress.

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!

Win free books from top indie authors!

Update—June 7th, 2012

As of today, the contest is over. But check out these great books from these great indie authors, anyway!

One-day BOOK PUSH—June 6th 2012

Four authors determined to bring their books to the world and to see them climb high in Amazon’s Ranks are holding a contest, and they've hijacked I've graciously offered my blog to help.

So don't miss out! There's a Zombie-ish apocalypse with a splash of romance, a romantic suspense with a dash of humour, a thriller with a huge helping of action and a YA-paranormal with a mystery blended in.

Something for everyone!

Sundered, A Zombie-ish Apocalypse

 

 

 

 

Red is an Attitude

—romantic suspense

Allegiance

— thriller/action-adventure

Cassidy Jones and Vulcan’s Gift

—YA/paranormal mystery

And you, dear readers, not only can help, you can WIN BIG while you’re at it.

The run-down

Purchase any ONE (1) of the books, and send your receipt to us and you’ll be entered in for a grand prize of $50.00 in Amazon Gift Cards! PLUS if you purchase all FOUR (4) books, not only will you have four entries, you’ll also be in for an additional SECRET DRAW.

Now, we can’t tell you what the draw is, because that would ruin the whole SECRET thing. But we will give you a hint. IT’S FABULOUS!

Okay, you want another hint? Hmm. How about doubling the gift cards?! Oh, right. Secret’s out.

What are you waiting for?

More stuff?

Well, If you insist.

Four randomly drawn entrants will win back their purchases. FREE BOOKS. Crickey!

Send all purchase receipts to shannonjmayer@yahoo.ca Winners will be drawn randomly, announced on June 8 at http://shannonmayer.blogspot.com

For additional information regarding this contest contact shannonjmayer@yahoo.ca.