The Embodied trilogy is complete!

If you’ve been waiting to find out what happens to Kari Marriner and the people she loves, wait no more! Diamond Splinters, book 3 of the Embodied trilogy, is out today. Available in paperback next month, you can buy the ebook right now for Kindle here, for Apple iOS devices here, for the Barnes & Noble Nook ereader here, and for Kobo here.

Please take a couple of minutes to leave a short review (I really want to hear readers’ thoughts!) on whichever site you purchased Diamond Splinters. Thanks!

Diamond Splinters for Nook, Kobo and iPad (or iPhone, obvi…)

For most indie authors, all the focus is on Amazon. Kindle sales account for somewhere around 85% of all ebooks. Of course  by no stretch of the imagination can Apple possibly be considered “the little guy”, but people don’t only buy apps and songs from iTunes, they buy books too. In Canada, where I live, the Kobo ereader is a surprisingly popular device for the consumption of digital literature, and it’s pretty much the equivalent of Barnes & Noble’s Nook in the US.

So… with only three days to go until the release of Diamond Splinters, it’s time to give a shout-out to the other platforms.

Here’s a link to the book for iOS devices:

Fancy a Nook book full of Diamond Splinters? Here you go:

And last but by no means least, here’s where you can find the final book in the Embodied trilogy for Kobo:

If you like science fiction with a big dash of urban fantasy, or are a fan of Doctor Who’s blend of soft sci-fi, extra-terrestrial feels and savvy female characters, then I think there’s a good chance you’ll love all the books in the Embodied trilogy.

 

Starley’s Rust is out and here’s the first review!

Starley’s Rust, book 2 of the Embodied trilogy, is in online stores today and has received a glowing review from author Nikki Bennett:

To mark the launch, book 1 of the trilogy, Silent Symmetry, is now priced under a dollar/pound for the ebook edition.

One month to Rust day!

Quick post to show off the one-month-to-publication ad for Starley’s Rust. Pre-order from Amazon by clicking on the ad or from Apple by clicking here.

Starley’s Rust now available for pre-order from Apple

Just a quick Sunday post to say that book 2 of the Embodied trilogy, Starley’s Rust, is now available for pre-order from Apple’s iBookstore. Just click on this pic to get the iBook!

 

 

The iBookstore is now Symmetry-cal

Yes, that was the best headline I could come up with on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. It took a week, but someone at Apple has finally run over to the iBookstore and breathlessly handed the shiny new Silent Symmetry EPUB file I uploaded last Sunday to the iBookstorekeeper, who then lovingly placed it in a prime spot on their shelves while wearing white kid gloves.

This is an Apple-esque screenshot. I must now go outside and enjoy the sun with my kids.

Smashwords on Publishers Weekly

Further evidence of independent publishing being treated as a legitimate segment of the industry arrived earlier this month as the first monthly Smashwords indie bestseller list appeared on the Publishers Weekly website and in the PW print magazine. 

Publishers Weekly has been the North American industry bible for almost 150 years, so its recognition of indie published books is hugely significant. Here’s a link to the announcement on the Smashwords blog.

The only downside to this news for a self-published author like me is that Smashwords sales figures are only a portion of book sales. For example, any sales of Silent Symmetry through Amazon, Apple or the Kobo store aren’t reflected by Smashwords since I chose to distribute my book to those retailers by myself. So it remains to be seen whether the mainstream media can figure out a way to truly capture across-the-board sales figures for independently published ebooks. Until then, this is a huge step in the right direction.

Publishers Weekly logo is protected by copyright and reproduced here under a fair use provision under Canadian copyright law.

Koboed Symmetry

Is “to Kobo” even a verb? Well, it is now because I’m a writer and I just wrote it. (It’s one of the perks of the job, you know!)

What this means is that my Young Adult novel Silent Symmetry is now available in the Kobo online store here: bit.ly/SilentSymmetryKB. Kobo is a very popular eReader in Canada and other countries, so I’m looking forward to seeing where sales originate. Speaking of which, I received this cutesy email from Kobo yesterday afternoon:

Of course it wasn’t my first book sale, but it was my first on Kobo, so I probably will remember it until I get super senile. And thanks to their beautiful, user-friendly dashboard I can even see that the sale came from… Canada! This isn’t exactly NSA Prism levels of tracking, but it’s a step beyond Amazon’s rather dry KDP reports.

So self-publishing on the Kobo platform has gone about as smoothly as it did on Amazon. I wish I could say the same for Apple. The only positive I took from yesterday’s teeth-grinding experience uploading my book to the iBookstore was the speedy email response to a support question I had. But… why, oh why does Apple insist that writers download Mac-only software to upload a book, while Amazon and Kobo (and I think Barnes & Noble) use a simple, intuitive browser interface? Not only did I have to co-opt my cover designer’s sleek and lovely Macbook Air for several hours, but the process itself was fraught with issues that didn’t seem to come up when I published for Kindle and Kobo. (Example 1: Instead of simply writing my own genres or keywords, I had to go through a series of incredibly long drop-down menus of pre-approved labels. Example 2: Specifying that the book is for sale worldwide was clunky at best. Example 3: Several other steps.)

The upside of my struggle to get Silent Symmetry into the iBookstore was that I started drinking wine at 5 pm. The downside was pretty much the entire experience, including the fact that I don’t really know whether my efforts were successful. Steve Jobs used to say when presenting a new iDevice: “It just works.” Honestly, that’s what I would say about self-publishing on Amazon and Kobo. As for Apple, “It just about worked. I think.”

Yesterday FREE, today free!

It’s a subtle, but important distinction. Yesterday was Silent Symmetry’s last FREE day on Amazon, and today the book is free to be downloaded in other formats on Smashwords here: http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/334979. So just to recap: it’s free, but you have to pay for it.

I’m putting the finishing touches to publishing for Kobo, and it will hopefully be available shortly through Apple and Nook (Barnes and Noble). I say “hopefully” because Apple makes content creators jump through several Apple-shaped hoops that the other vendors don’t, while B&N seems to not want me to enter my bank information because it’s in Canada. Worst case scenario, I use Smashwords to distribute there too.

Here’s what part of the Smashwords Silent Symmetry page looks like. The only drawback to buying through this site is that you have to register, which some people are wary of because Smashwords isn’t a humongous corporate behemoth like Amazon, Apple and B&N that they “trust”. But you have to register on those sites too to be able to download books, and the kicker is that I get a higher commission per book sold through Smashwords. So go ahead: Rage against the capitalist machine! Buy through an indie site! Make me rich!*

Seriously, it doesn’t really matter to me where you buy Silent Symmetry as long as you open the book and start reading it. I’ll keep you posted on the Apple and B&N shenanigans.

*I probably make about 25 cents more per book through Smashwords, but that could buy a starving author like me extra foam on his latte or something.

Silent Symmetry’s final Amazon KDP Select free promo

Tomorrow marks the 180th day since Silent Symmetry was published on Amazon. In that time I’ve used eight of the ten KDP Select free days allowed by Amazon to get the book into the hands of about 6,000 targeted readers. As I wrote somewhere else, for an unknown novel by an unknown author, this is the equivalent of major radio airplay. Is it translating into sales? Slowly but surely. And as the first book in the Embodied trilogy, I’m looking at the long-term picture in terms of building an audience.

Summer sounds of Silent Symmetry

I’m using the last two free days today and tomorrow, so we’ll see how many new readers will come on board. I’ve also taken the first steps towards publishing Silent Symmetry for Apple iPads and iPhones, and for the Nook, Sony and Kobo ereaders (I have to wait till at least Thursday to publish according to the KDP Select agreement) so I’m excited to be able to get the book into the hands of a bunch of people who might have been missed so far.

It’s all about the readers. And the ereaders…

Photo credit: Brandon Christopher Warren / Foter / CC BY-NC