Where Magic Rules has launched in print!

My fantasy novella Where Magic Rules is now available as a paperback as well as an ebook. The paperback is $5.99 but if you buy it, the Kindle version is free. If you buy the Kindle version alone, it's 99¢.

Note that the paperback is also available on Barnes & Noble for the same price, but that does store not offer the ebook version for free.

Here's a quote from my celebrity review of WMR by singer/songwriter Janis Ian:

"The story hooked me pretty quickly, which is no great feat in an experienced writer. However, it kept me hooked, which IS difficult when you have an omnivorous reader looking at your work with a jaundiced eye. I've downloaded so many books lately that start off well, but disintegrate a little ways in - it's a real joy to discover a new author who holds her ground throughout."

eBooks Down Under now includes a Kindle store

Amazon just opened a Kindle store for Australia! My books are all there, although, sadly, The Sixth Discipline is $1.03 AUD instead of being free. If you have an Australian account with Amazon, do us all a favor and click the link that says “Tell us about a lower price,” and then report the link for that book in iBooks in Australia, where it's free. You can add a link for it being free in the Kobo store for Australia, too, if you like.

And g'day to you, too!

A wonderful new feature for KDP Select

Amazon might be reviled by some as a disruptive force in publishing, but they are certainly committed to offering opportunities for self-published authors. They just announced a new feature for Kindle Select books called Kindle Countdown Deals, and it looks like a great idea!

Basically, if your book is in KDP Select, and has been in it for 30 days or more without a price change, and the price is between $2.99 and $24.99, you can put the book on sale for up to a week; you can even have it go on deep discount to start and then incrementally go back up during the week.

Of course, any KDP author can change the price of their book any time, but this new feature has some real advantages. The biggest is that Amazon customers see the original price and the sale price and know it's currently discounted and how long that discount will last. The second is that if the “real” price of the book is eligible for the 70% royalty rate (which means it has to be at least $2.99 but not more than $9.99 in the US store), then the author keeps that rate even when the price drops during the promotion. So if your book is on sale for 99¢, you still get 70% of 99¢ instead of 30% (i.e., 69¢ per books instead of 30¢). It looks like right now Countdown Deals might be available only in the US and UK Kindle stores because those are the only stores for which price ranges are listed, but I don't know if that's certain.

There's also a special website for book browsers to see what's on sale, and there's a new Promotions link on the KDP Reports page to show more elaborate reporting of  Countdown sales, letting you see how each price point is doing.

I don't have any KDP Select books at the moment, but once I launch Saronna's Gift, I plan to use this new feature.

The KDP Reports page also added a way to search the current month's reports for specific books, which I don't find terribly useful since it seems to apply only to the selected Kindle store. Now if it searched for a specific book across all the Kindle stores, that would be helpful. There's a View All link but it doesn't seem to look at all the stores, either so I don't see it as helpful at all. 

All in all, this is a positive development. It would be mush more useful if it weren't limited to books in KDP Select, but Amazon's commitment to authors extends only as far as they think it will make money for them. It's important to remember that.

Achtung! The Sixth Discipline is free in the German Kindle store!

Well, Germany has fallen in line!  The Sixth Discipline is not only free in the German Kindle store, it is now #30 in free science fiction books! That was fast!

Of course, I don't think it has a whole lot of competition, but it's still nice to be up there so quickly.  Now only France and Mexico remain to be conquered.  They may be on the way, as I just checked France, and there was no price info at all. It said:

"Les informations sur les prix ne sont pas disponibles."

Google Translate tells me that means that price information is not available, which I think means they are changing it to free.  And I know enough Spanish to know the Mexican Kindle store's

"Información de precios no disponible" means the same thing. Here's hoping the book is free worldwide really soon!

Addendum: I just checked and now it's #13 in free science fiction in the German Kindle store!

Have you got a yen for some free science fiction?

The title is a rather bad pun, in honor of the fact that The Sixth Discipline is now free in Japan!

Someone must have clicked the "tell us about a lower price" link, because it's now as low as it can get.  That just leaves France, Germany, and Mexico.  For some reason, the Mexican Kindle store does not seem to offer a lower price link.  I hope someone is working on that!

Meu livro é grátis! میری کتاب مفت ہے

The title of this post means "my book is free" in Portuguese and in Urdu.  Apparently, there's a worldwide demand for free science fiction novels, because The Sixth Discipline is now free in the Kindle store in Brazil and also, the Kindle store in India!

That's a total of seven Kindle stores, plus iBooks, Nook, Smashwords, Kobo, Sony and some other retailers.  Check the Free eBook tab for all the info.

Portuguese is enough like Spanish I am sure that part of the post title is correct, but I only hope Google Translate didn't let me down on the Urdu.

Hola, España! Mi libro es gratuito!

The Sixth Discipline is now free in the Spanish Kindle store! I'm not sure why, but I suspect someone clicked the link to tell Amazon about a lower price— or in this case, un precio más bajo. So, there you go, España! Start clicking that “buy” link!

I was right! There is now a Kindle store for Mexico!

I knew it might be there, because a line for it showed up on my KDP report page again, and when I went to Amazon.com.mx, instead of getting redirected to plain old Amazon.com, I ended up at the page above.

Is Kindle going "South of the Border, Down Mexico Way"?

I am so showing my age by knowing the title of that song!  On the KDP platform, when you check your sales reports they are separated geographically, for the Kindle stores in the US, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Japan, India, Canada, and Brazil. When I checked it yesterday, I swear I saw an entry for "amazon.com.mx" which could only be Mexico. Right now there is no Kindle store in Mexico; if you type "amazon.com.mx" into a browser, it redirects you to the regular US-based amazon.com.

This morning the amazon.com.mx line is gone! Missing! I think someone goofed and released something early (or maybe they were testing, and it was deliberate) and this means Amazon will open a Kindle store in Mexico.  I wish I had thought to take a screen shot!

The good thing about self-publishing is you own worldwide rights to your own work, so you can publish worldwide from any platform that supports global sales. Olé!

Amazon goes to India!

Amazon is now reporting sales from India in a separate sales report, which told me there is now a Kindle store in India.  Here is the sales report list, which illustrates how many Kindle stores there are at the moment:

My books look so much more expensive in rupees! And The Sixth Discipline isn't free there, at least not yet. See what I mean:

In my royalty reports, I have seen some sales of books that should have had a royalty rate of 70% but they were in fact only paid at 35%, which Amazon tells me means they were not sold in the US. I wondered if they were from India (which until very recently was folded into the US Kindle store) and now I'll know.

Countdown to New Kindles?

Amazon has announced they will hold a press conference on September 6. They have not said they will announce new Kindle and Kindle Fire models, but speculation is rife throughout the web! For one thing, both the Kindle Touch and the Kindle Fire are sold out. Everyone assumes this must mean that new models will be coming out to replace those entries in the Kindle lineup. It's also interesting that the bare bones (non-touch screen) Kindle is still in stock, as are the Kindle Keyboard wifi and 3G version, and the Kindle DX.

This suggests Amazon is planning one or more replacement Kindle Fires. What could be different in the new Fire? Perhaps a larger screen, but I think a 3G or 4G connection is more likely.  For the Touch, I would expect Amazon would have to come up with a front-lit model to compete with the Nook with Glowlight.  The question is, would there still be a non-front-lit option? Another possibility is a dual screen, e-ink and LCD tablet, sort of a Kindle Touch/Fire hybrid. That would be totally cool!

We'll all know come September 6. The event will get a lot of coverage, including live blogging by The Digital Reader blog. Unfortunately, the press conference is in California, so us East Coast types have to cool our jets on Thursday, until California wakes up and gets on with it!

My books as world travelers

I've blogged before about international sales. Of course, language is an issue. To some extent, iBooks has an edge over Kindle in terms of international presence. I see iBooks sales from Australia, Canada, and the UK, as well as in the US-- the larger English-speaking countries, in other words. Amazon has a Kindle store for the UK, but that's the only one in an English-speaking nation besides the US. There are Kindle stores in Germany, Spain, Italy, and France, but those folks are mostly not looking for books in English, so that doesn't help me a lot. I really wish there was a Kindle store in Canada! I do not know what the hold-up is.

iBooks also sells in non-English-speaking countries, but I only know which countries if I get a sale. I know they sell in the Netherlands, because I did get a sale from there (my first sale listed in euros). I think the giveaway of Shades of Empire must have helped make it more visible, because I also now have a few sales from the Kindle stores in Germany and Italy as well as the UK. More euros!

Shades of Empire goes Continental

On this latest round of giveaways of Shades of Empire, I had the usual amount of takers in the UK, and another small handful in Germany, but I also gave away a copy to someone in Spain and someone in Italy. Still zero in France, though. Oh, well! C'est la vie!