The Kindle Experiment

Image: Windell Oskay

Greener is the Grass
I’ve not given up on BACCARA BURNING yesterday morning while working on the final polishing up of GREENER IS THE GRASS, the world felt normal again. I felt like I was a writer for the first time since I began working on BACCARA, and everything felt great.

Back to normal! (Is it ever?)

GREENER is almost complete. I need to strengthen the ending and then satisfy myself with one more read through just to ensure I’m fully happy with it, then it will be done. I came to realise that after all the problems I’ve had with BACCARA, the title of the book has become a metaphor for what I’ve been through: the grass is indeed better on the other side – but I miss the other side, too.

Kindle and my Chapbooks
My mate Stevie send me a link to a nifty little piece of free software that can be used to format manuscripts into Kindle format (.mobi). It’s called Calibre Ebook Management and is much easier and faster. Thanks mate for that, because it was proving to be huge job to manually reformat my chapbooks for the platform. Not technically challenging but slow, slow, slow.

The software saved me a bundle of time. Where I’d wasted several evenings working through the files for upload to get the formatting correct, with just a few tweaks I was able to get all three of my chapbooks up into Kindle and displaying properly in a single evening. Result!

I’ll give them one more proofing before I publish them and accompany the platform launch with a press release or two and some internet marketing. FRINGE FANTASTIC has always sold well but I’ve always felt POOLSIDE POETRY was a stronger book. The aim is to try and push sales up for both but as a paired entity.

Kindle and my Hunting Jack
Stevie also convinced me recently that as an avid reader, he has also been following the career of a certain JA Konrath. Mr. Konrath will be well known to many of you, but his model for self-publication was persuaded to me by Stevie as at least an experiment worth trying.

To that end, despite the fact I always said I would never self-publish my own fiction, I am going to republish HUNTING JACK on Kindle and offer it up for 99p a copy. I will accompany this re-launch with as big a marketing campaign as I can muster and then see what happens over the course of, say, six months.

Some of you will know what HUNTING JACK means to me, having read it as it was published as a serial back in 2004, so hopefully I can make a success of it. It will probably be Jackie McCann’s last run out if it fails, but I‘ve been convinced I should at least dip my toe and see what transpires. HUNTING JACK is perfect because it’s a book I love and is publishable again.

Free Ebooks Giveaway on Twitter
I’m running a special giveaway over on Twitter. The 1000th person to follow me on Twitter will receive all my published ebooks for free, and for everyone that helps get me there – everyone who follows me between Friday 1st April right up to the 1000 mark – will also be in with a chance of winning the same prize. Click here for full details of the great Twitter Ebook Giveaway.

SPECIAL OFFERS
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