I know you’re all going to rush out and buy all my books for the holiday season. But here – just in time for Black Friday or Cyber Monday, are some others that I think are a great idea, available for Kindle and in paperback, in case you want to buy ten books, and not just five. Or maybe twelve …
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And of course, you can check out my books.
I wanted to clarify some things about ebooks and Amazon. And hopefully that’s what this post will do. If things get confusing, blame Amazon for using the same words to mean completely different things …
You can share ebooks
Share my books — please!
If you buy an ebook, or get it free, you can often share it. Just like a regular book. Authors get nothing when you do this, but go ahead and share it anyway. Why? If an author is still trying to build an audience, like me, you’re helping our chances in the long run when you share a book. If an author already has an audience, and by that I mean they’re selling a lot of books, they won’t miss a little revenue. In fact, most authors are not in this for the money (which is a very good thing). They’re in this for the reader. So share away. More information from Amazon.
Some authors and publishers do not opt into this system. That’s fine. I think it’s their loss – and I think it demonstrates what they think of readers – but that’s their right.
By the way, Amazon calls this “Lending for Kindle.” Clearly, they were trying to avoid any confusion whatsoever when they allowed Amazon Prime users to borrow books, and named that the “Kindle Owners Lending Library,” right?
Oh, and the recent enhancement? Now you can share books with another person (and up to four “child accounts”) as part of the Kindle Family Library. (Not to be confused with the Kindle Owners Lending Library, because that’s something completely different, or Lending for Kindle, which, despite the completely different name, is similar. Ugh.) This is better than sharing a book by lending it; under Lending for Kindle you lend a book for 14 days, and during that time you can’t read it. But the Family Library is unlimited. Find out more.
Want an ebook? Get a massive discount
Get the ebook for less
Look for the Kindle Matchbook note next the book cover, near the pricing information at the top of an Amazon listing. (I should note here that Kindle Matchbook is a clever name, but it seems odd that Amazon did not use the word “lending” or “library” when they named this feature.)
Authors get paid when you “borrow,” too
Borrow away!
Remember, authors get nothing when you are loaned a book through Lending for Kindle or Kindle Family Library.
But Kindle owners using Amazon Prime get one “free” borrow every month. (That’s called the Kindle Owners Lending Library. And that’s completely different from the Kindle Family Library, and from Lending for Kindle. Gosh, somebody buy Amazon a thesaurus, please.) If you use KOLL for one of my books, I get paid when you download it.
And if you’re using Kindle Unlimited, you get unlimited downloads. Since people could, in theory, download thousands of books, Amazon doesn’t pay authors on download. It pays when people have read 10 percent of the book. So under Kindle Unlimited, authors get paid when you actually start reading the book. (Why they didn’t name it the Kindle Unlimited Library, I don’t know.)
What my “sort of” does not mean is that authors get “sort of” paid. If a Kindle book price is reasonable, the amount authors get from each sale is not far off what they receive for each “borrow.” When Kindle Unlimited resulted in a massive increase in “borrows,” Amazon put more – and then more – money into the pot that authors split for borrows.
You can follow authors
Get notified about what comes next!
With The White-Silver House and The Man with Two Eyes on the way, you may want to do that at my Amazon Author page.
Book 2: Only five reviews, and none marked “helpful” … You can help …
If you’ve found an author whose books you like, you probably want to read more books by them. And if you want to read more books by them, you may need to help them succeed. But how? It’s actually quite easy to help, and not that hard to do a little extra …
1. Show your friends. It’s great to tell your friends about an author you’ve found or a book you’ve read. Please keep doing that! But if you really want an author to succeed, you might want to take it a step farther, and show your friends why you like the books or author. You can do that by sharing your books with them. You know how to do that with a paperback. But did you know you can also share most independently published ebooks? That’s because authors like me want you to be able to share our work. We’re hoping to build a bigger audience. So go ahead. Of course, you can also buy the books for your friends. That’s great, and greatly appreciated. Just don’t feel like you have to.
2. Like the author’s Facebook page and/or follow their Twitter feed, and share/like/comment/retweet. Many authors – including me – have a blog and a presence on Facebook, and perhaps a Twitter feed or other social media. You can help us by liking posts, sharing them, commenting, retweeting, etc. Those actions all make the posts more visible. Want to really help by taking it a step farther? Go to their Facebook page or blog, and seek out posts you would want to share. Do it regularly. Probably not every hour. Perhaps not even daily. But once a week or so would help. Here’s the Facebook page for my series, The Day Magic Died.
Just one review so far, and I know three whole people have read it!
4. “Vote up” helpful reviews. Amazon displays “the most helpful” reviews first. How does Amazon know which are the most helpful? By the number of people who have voted to designate a review helpful or unhelpful. Please take note that Amazon is not asking you if you like a review or if you agree with it. They’re asking if it’s helpful. So I’m not asking you to mark favorable reviews as helpful or unfavorable reviews as unhelpful. Simply look at the reviews for an author’s books, and if one or more of them provide enough information to help you make a good decision on whether to purchase, mark it or them as helpful. Want to do more? Mark reviews you don’t think are helpful as unhelpful. (I should add … please do not abuse this system to “vote up” good reviews and “vote down” bad ones. Or vice-versa, as another author did to me. Too bad this power is not given just to grown-ups.) You can use the links above to see reviews for my books, and find the buttons to mark them helpful or unhelpful.
5. Contact the author. So maybe you just want to say you liked the book. Or you have questions. Perhaps you spotted a typo that needs to be fixed. Authors love to hear from readers. Most authors hear from readers far less than you might think. And most authors are far more open to constructive criticism than you might think, too. That, by the way, is how you can really help. If you spot what you think is a problem in a book or a series, and you really want to help, speak up. Here’s a way to contact me.
Want to know how to write a good book review?
I don’t mean a favorable review. That’s easy. Just gush.
I mean a useful review. One that will help other readers decide if a book is worth their time and money. Well, here are five tips – tips I hope you’ll put to good use writing reviews for my books …
.Now, if you’ve read any of my books, would you please write a useful review? Thanks!
The Man with Two Eyes is the barely awaited sequel to my immensely unpopular science fiction/Western/paranormal/romance/hard-boiled detective humor book, The sort-of Murder of Fiona Galloway. If the demand for this second book is anything like the first, it’s sure to end up as a doorstop.
I’ve completed the first draft of The Man with Two Eyes. While I await feedback from my critical readers on The White-Silver House, I’m working back through to create the second draft. So here, to whet the appetites of the three people who’ve read the first Nascent Payne mystery, is the first chapter of the second one, The Man with Two Eyes …
Chapter One:
Nascent Payne sat at a little table near the back corner. In the dim light cast by the fireplace and the single candle perched on the bright red gingham tablecloth, his knees glinted from beneath his kilt. His sleeveless “highlander” style shirt was open, revealing a shock of jet-black chest hair and a tantalizing hint of his rippling pectoral muscles.
Fiona sighed when his tattooed biceps bulged as lifted a glass of white wine to his manly, muscular lips.
Payne rolled his eyes.
“Fiona,” he said quietly, “knock it off!” He would have added that pectoral muscles don’t ripple, but didn’t want to say that much just now, just here.
He had to glance down to assure himself he was still wearing khaki pants and olive shirt, as always. Then he tried to refocus on the case. It was supremely distracting when the victim of his last murder case, Fiona Galloway, got into his head.
She was dead, sort of. Through some weird set of circumstances on Hillsdale, her consciousness lived on. Payne thought of her as a ghost, but his mechanic, Robin Flynn, insisted it was science. To prove it, he even rigged up a little device that allowed Fiona to go with them when they left Hillsdale.
And then he’d cobbled together a portable version so she could go anywhere with Payne. This did not sound like a good idea to Payne, but Flynn pointed out that it could be useful to have a companion along that no one else could see. So here he was, on a case, and here she was too. With her romance-novel-inspired thoughts leaking into his head.
He took a sip of his water and set the glass down. He scanned the room again, and tried to look like an ordinary guy waiting for a friend, and not like a private investigator waiting for a murderer while a murder victim’s fantasies played out in his head. Whatever that looked like.
Payne would’ve preferred to do this in a place with a little more light, but he knew this was the kind of place he’d find the man he was looking for. Low-ceilinged, dim and a bit dingy. Frequented by men and women desperate for something, anything, to take them away from their dull, numb, hopeless existence, if only for a short time. And popular with the women and men who serviced them. Cheap liquor, cheap company.
These were the type of women his suspect stalked. Though Payne couldn’t figure out why he killed Helena. It didn’t fit what he’d pieced together about the man, or about Helena. Maybe that was why he was so intent on finding him. It sure wasn’t because the Colonel asked him to.
He settled back to wait. He’d find him. Maybe not tonight, maybe not here. But he’d find the killer.
The man with two eyes.
Want to read the first book? Get it here.
by Ian Fallis 
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