Thursday, March 29
The Red Church
Creative Spirit
The Harvest
As I Die Lying
Crime Beat
Flowers
These Things Happened
Ghost Soldier
Vampire Waltz
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Thursday, March 29, 2012
The Red Church, The Harvest, and other books free at Ebookswag
I have 10 free Kindle books today, so feel free to grab them and tell your friends! (UK Kindlers, simply add "co.uk" in place of "com" to get the links.
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Sunday, March 25, 2012
Six Free Kindle Books March 26!
I am making a number of Kindle books free this week as part of the eBookSwag launch! Be sure to come by EbookSwag to sign up for the weekly newsletter and enter for free Kindle Fires, gift cards, and other swag. Here is Monday's list:
Scott Nicholson Library Vol. 4
Bad Stacks (Story Collection Box Set)
Dark Spells
Speed Dating with the Dead
The Dead Love Longer
The First
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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.)
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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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.
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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Monday, February 27, 2012
Guest post: J. Thorn on being an author
At what point do you earn the title of author? Who bestows it upon you? What is the difference between a writer and an author? What does this all mean?
Decades ago and up through the recent past, things were quite simple. Authors wrote books. Published authors had an agent that sold the books to a publisher. Unrepresented writers took their manuscript to a vanity press and paid for a box of their self-published books that appeared under the Christmas tree of the extended family, and ironically, back into a box in the deep recesses of said family’s attic. Simple.
Now, in 2012, what does it mean to be an author? An idea for a book does not make one an author. A blog does not make one an author. Bloggers can write frequently but some are not really considered writers any more than those that Tweet are writers. Writers compose many different types of readable content, not all of which becomes published. Bloggers are generally writers but not always authors, writers can be authors but not necessarily bloggers, and bloggers can be both writers and authors or neither. Got that? People tell me that they have a great idea for a book and I am always excited to hear that. Unfortunately, ideas alone do not make you a writer or an author. Ideas make you a thinker and thinking is good, but authors make books.
So you have an idea and you write a book, let’s say fiction in this case. Without getting into the level of detail about the writing process as I did in this post, this means you have written a manuscript, revised it, and edited it. If you gave it to someone, they could read this story that had a beginning, middle, and end. Does this mean you are an author?
Right now the industry is lost in the same way the major record labels were ten years ago. Amazon and its KDP program says anyone that can upload a Word document is an author. Legacy publishers say that you are not an author unless they stock your books on a shelf in a “real” bookstore, if you can still find one. Readers do not really know. Many remain fixated on what the industry tells them is a book while others have redefined terms for both the creator and the product.
One thing that is for certain is that books must still be written. They cannot materialize out of the air and the latest robot in Japan cannot create one. If an author writes a story in the forest and nobody reads it, is it a book? If you want to be CALLED an author, keep listening to what agents and publishers say. If you want to BE an author, write the best story you can and let the universe sort out the nametags.
Friday, February 24, 2012
World Kindle domination from my writing desk
World domination is within the grasp of reclusive hillbillies...Amazon is branching onto Brazil: http://publishingperspectives.com/2012/02/amazon-to-offer-cut-price-kindle-in-brazil/
I have one Portuguese title already so it will be competing with 3,800 Kindle titles in a land of 195 million people. I like those odds. And I set my first German title, Tote lieben langer, to free for Saturday and Sunday, a book skillfully translated by Stefan Mommertz. And a Japanese manga artist will be providing illustrations to mirror the work of my fictional character Kendra Wilson (herself a manga-style comics artist) in the Chinese edition of Speed Dating with the Dead.
I say all this not to brag, but in incredible gratitude to and in awe of this era and these circumstances. All this can be accomplished without an agent, without anyone in New York to anoint me, without anyone's permission or approval. I feel like a kid playing in the sandbox, just waiting for the bell to ring and the grown-ups to tell me it is time to get back in line. Because all this is done with relentless will, built on a business model of blind faith and blind panic.
It took no money to play. All it took was heart, passion, and time. It is a spiritual journey for me, and God and her Universe reinforce what I do, which is why I believe it is utterly okay to be me and to do these things. To do anything else would be resistance to the flow. And I also know anyone can do this. All you have to do is believe absolutely, commit fully, and go around, over, or through anyone who says "No."
If a silly old hillbilly can do it, surely you can. And I never have to leave my Appalachian Mountain holler if I don't want to. And I rarely want to. Because the whole world is already right here. And I only want the world so I can give it back. You can play in my sandbox anytime!
My box set Mystery Dance: Three Novels will be free today through Sunday (Feb. 24-26):
US: http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ
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I have one Portuguese title already so it will be competing with 3,800 Kindle titles in a land of 195 million people. I like those odds. And I set my first German title, Tote lieben langer, to free for Saturday and Sunday, a book skillfully translated by Stefan Mommertz. And a Japanese manga artist will be providing illustrations to mirror the work of my fictional character Kendra Wilson (herself a manga-style comics artist) in the Chinese edition of Speed Dating with the Dead.
I say all this not to brag, but in incredible gratitude to and in awe of this era and these circumstances. All this can be accomplished without an agent, without anyone in New York to anoint me, without anyone's permission or approval. I feel like a kid playing in the sandbox, just waiting for the bell to ring and the grown-ups to tell me it is time to get back in line. Because all this is done with relentless will, built on a business model of blind faith and blind panic.
It took no money to play. All it took was heart, passion, and time. It is a spiritual journey for me, and God and her Universe reinforce what I do, which is why I believe it is utterly okay to be me and to do these things. To do anything else would be resistance to the flow. And I also know anyone can do this. All you have to do is believe absolutely, commit fully, and go around, over, or through anyone who says "No."
If a silly old hillbilly can do it, surely you can. And I never have to leave my Appalachian Mountain holler if I don't want to. And I rarely want to. Because the whole world is already right here. And I only want the world so I can give it back. You can play in my sandbox anytime!
US: http://www.amazon.com/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ
UK: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Mystery-Dance-Three-Novels-ebook/dp/B004I8WNEQ
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