The Final Time Free on Amazon (maybe :))

As readers of Tag will know, the date 15 March 2110 has a fair significance in the plot; no secret (it’s on the front cover) that’s when 6.3 billion people are going to die, so I thought it fitting that on the 15 March 2013 we’ll release Tag for its final free run on Amazon.

The free run will last for five days and automatic renewal on KDP Select has been turned off. So if you’ve dipped your toe into the Bangkok Series and didn’t get too scalded, feel free to download Tag and tell your friends – just in case you don’t know, Tag is a techno-thriller set a hundred years in the future.

I have enjoyed great success with the Amazon KDP Select program, getting to know many of you through it, that said, the last, and first of my books, will be released from exclusivity with Amazon on the 19th March 2013.

Can’t say that I won’t put everything back in Selec,t but for now I thought I’d give wider distribution a chance; run at it for about eighteen months and see what happens – a fair shake I reckon. Since I dropped the Bangkok Series out of Select, people are still buying, each month more than the last (with the exception of December which at a couple of thousand sales for the month was a stand-out). I can also report that readers have been picking up the Bangkok Series at Kobo, B&N, and iTunes.

Just say NO to DRM

I was (am) very annoyed that W.H. Smith put DRM in my books on their store. I am not in favor of DRM (all of my books have been pirated) and I don’t like that they did that without my permission. I get into WH Smith via some deal they have with Kobo. I am not direct with either of them – going through Draft2Digital. Sucky stuff, but it comes with the territory; short of pulling my books from Kobo (which is an option I’d rather not take) there’s not a lot I can do about it; other than to say if you’re buying at WH Smith you might as well buy them direct off me; and/or if you’ve bought at WH Smith a DRM version and don’t know how to crack that – let me know and I’ll send you a non-DRM version.

Being Indie

I’ve got a boatload of publishing stuff I have to wade through; formatting print versions of Bangkok Wet and Tag. Yes, paper books do still exist, and I’m happy to say people are buying the paperback version of Bangkok Burn; here’s the proof:

You see that ranking? Yeah baby, heck, the kids might even get fish sauce with the rice this month. Seriously, it’s a cool world when people can print their own copy of a book and have it mailed to them. Not everyone likes the digital world we’re in, or they simply prefer reading paper books. Nick, my son, he’s ten and a half and he prefers paper books to the Kindle (“Dad can I get a real book…”, gotta love it).

Then I’ll be releasing Tag through all channels as above – probably going to redo the cover, again :). Why not – I’ll post it here…,  maybe I’ll post all the covers and let you guys vote for which one should be – The One.

One reason for doing all of this stuff now is that the day job is intense (-ly exciting and I’m loving it too – not enough hours in a day), and occupies a lot of my thinking time. That leaves little room for getting into character writing mode; sometimes that isn’t a problem because you might be well along with a story, and all the characters are yakking their heads off; all you’ve got to do is write a speech mark and you’re set – but other times, when you’re building people, especially those that you’re going to be around for a while, it takes time to get into character.

I could easily hive a load of this off onto others and pay them to do it, but for the reasons explained in the paragraph above, this isn’t a good time to write; which makes it a great time to do simple things like formatting (cut, paste, highlight, apply style, rinse and repeat) – while I’m formatting my mind is away and running on a zillion other things. If the formatting wasn’t filling my hands something else would be (on second thoughts let’s not go there).