Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Fangs in Bed and a Kindle Fire giveaway!

Be sure to plug into eBookSwag for next week's Kindle Fire giveaway, and toss your entry into our "Name the Swag Fairy" contest while you're at it! I will have 12 books free next week, and some of these won't be available for free through Amazon Select's program after that.

We also just released FANGS IN BED, the first novella in the Sabrina Vickers, Vampire Angel series. I collaborated with new writer K.C. Carr on it and it is a sexy paranormal romance that is more in the vein of the collaborations I have done with J.R. Rain (who just released Vampire Moon in his popular Samantha Moon series.)

Saturday, March 10, 2012

Free books, interview links, and a hint

A couple of crazy things cooking up, as usual. (Hint: follow @eBookSwag on Twitter!)

And I am bored with talking about myself. If you want that, here's an interview Meaghan Gray did with me at the awesome ereader/ebook site Ireader Review, which is one of my favorite sites for great analysis of the digital reading era: http://ireaderreview.com/2012/03/10/interview-with-author-scott-nicholson/

My final post for the Writers Guide to Epublishing went up Wednesday. So many others talk about writing and indie books better than I do, so I will be doing much less writer babble in the future. I think I've said more than I know already, and it's time to move on to other things.

Free book schedule for Kindle:
March 9-11: Free #Kindle Box Set: ETHEREAL MESSENGER by @eScottNicholson http://amzn.to/eE42Xw (UK: http://amzn.to/AcxZgJ) #horror

March 12-14: "Your shrink will disapprove": Kindle collection Head Cases by @eScottNicholson http://amzn.to/dWntcC (UK: http://amzn.to/xGwu4i)

March 12-13: YA paranormal fantasy October Girls
http://www.amazon.com/October-fantasy-paranormal-romance-ebook/dp/B00433TD0I
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/October-fantasy-paranormal-romance-ebook/dp/B00433TD0I

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Monday, March 5, 2012

The Digital Day Trader: three free Kindle books

I joke with my writer friends that we are no longer writers, we are digital day traders.

In some ways, it is no joke. Not with 100,000 books vying for the few slots on the Kindle Select roulette wheel, and not with thousands of dollars, and even tens of thousands of dollars, riding on the outcome of each spin. Almost without exception, the Kindle lottery winners of 2012 have been those who were the best--or the luckiest--at giving away books.

Some get picked up by the big freebie sites like Pixel of Ink and Ereader News Today and never even know they got lucky. They just roll out on the other side thinking they must be awesome writers because they ended up getting dumped into the Top 100. But it is hardly something to brag about, and hardly a literary accomplishment. It's a different form of luck, the same different luck that made Harry Potter and The Hunger Games and Twilight wildly successful.


(And if you don't think those books were just a different kind of luck, you don't know much about the publishing business. Because there are plenty of books of equal or even greater quality languishing in bottom drawers around the world.) But I don't want to turn my blog into a "writer blog." This is more about the philosophy of ego, and pushing your luck.

I've been pretty lucky with making books free, and I push my luck. I announce the free books (like I do below, with links) and create digital vehicles like Epic Kindle Giveaway to promote them. I am working on some other projects along those lines, blurring into creative entrepreneurship, but all built around my own creative works. Because that is my interest, not money. I recognize the ego attachment to my own work (after all, my NAME is BIG on the covers!!!) But they are just ideas, not me. I happen to be a writer, but that is not all I am. I am also a gardener, father, husband, and digital day trader.

I see time as my most valuable resource, not money. Time allows me to write. But if I don't make smart bets in my digital day trading, my time goes back to the local newspaper or carpentry or house painting, noble professions all, but not the ones that serve my highest purpose. Those are not the things God created me to do. This is what I do, and what fits, and what I was born and shaped to become. I had plenty of books, books some even consider "good," but it was meaningless until the wheel rolled into the picture. Luck. But without the books, the best timing in the world is worthless. If I were starting now, I would never even make it to the wheel to give it a spin.

Luckily, it is cheap or free to play digital day trader. And it pays better than writing, so we can afford to philosophize. Sure, some losers will have to go back to service jobs at temp wages, but lottery losers are no better or worse than lottery winners. They just had a different kind of luck.

Me, I am pushing my luck. But it's still luck.

FREE MARCH 5 & 6

Suspense/mystery:
The Skull Ring (Bonus Edition with Screenplay)

Supernatural horror:
Burial to Follow

Children’s picture book:
Duncan the Punkin
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