Already in withdrawal

I have been a daily user of Google Reader for the past few years. It's been great! I have a whole list of 20 or so blogs I follow, and I can easily skim over their new posts and read the ones I want to read. But now Google has announced that they will kill Reader on July 1, and I can feel myself shaking with dread.

The general consensus is that Google couldn't find a way to make money from Reader, and so they're killing it to free up those developers to move on to something more profitable (more than zero is not hard to beat).  I'm looking for silver linings, and hoping this will mean opportunity for a smaller company to step up and fill the huge void in so many lives. A friend recommended Feedly, and I have been checking it out, but I'm not sure yet.

Feedly does let you import all our Reader subscriptions, which is nice, and they sent me an email with some useful info on using their product, so I have hopes.

But I'm still a little afraid.

Go ahead, make my day!

Have I mentioned how much I loved reading my own reviews? Naturally, I prefer the positive ones, but  even a bad review has some payback, in that the reader cared enough about the book to post an opinion. Lately my first (and still free) book The Sixth Discipline got some very positive,  brief, but sincere-sounding reviews, mostly on Amazon, which is where most of my sales are. Here are excerpts from the most recent:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic Scifi, March 15, 2013

By 

lou - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Sixth Discipline (Haven) (Kindle Edition)

I loved this book, a thriller with kidnapping, murder and greed ...  I started the next book in the series the day I finished this as I had not had enough.

 I enjoyed this book from the first page to the last., March 2, 2013

By 

Vicki - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Sixth Discipline (Haven) (Kindle Edition)

The story is captivating and the writing suburb.... It was hard to put down. I hope Carmen has more for us avid readers.

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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A keeper!, January 28, 2013

By 

Achristina - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)

This review is from: The Sixth Discipline (Haven) (Kindle Edition)

First off, I have read many books, and this book is one of my favorites . . .  The main character, Ran-del, was awesome! The second book is just as wonderful, and I would like to read another.

Beyond the Kindle!

I get fewer sales (and thus fewer reviews) on other platforms, but I did recently get an excellent (and longer) review for  The Sixth Discipline on Smashwords. Here's an excerpt:

Review by: Dave Higgins on March 15, 2013 :     
Unlike some stories that culture clash as a motif, this novel both features action by characters from each culture in both cultures and portrays neither culture as ultimately lesser to the other.

The book tells the story of Ran-Del Jahanpur, a warrior from a forest tribe that focus on mental discipline and aim to live in tune with nature. ... With a plot that moves back and forth between the forest and the city, the novel skilfully balances the benefits and disadvantages of psychic and technological solutions and the cultures that have grown up around them.

I found Ran-Del to be a well-developed character. His social and moral choices are sometimes better and sometimes worse than others, making him neither the noble savage or the uncultured rural. ...

Now that you know. . . 

Now that you know how much authors love reviews, doesn't it make you want to write one? You could make my day! 

Is the future inventing more than we need or not enough?

I''m trying to decide if this new invention is incredibly clever or incredibly useless. Check out this trashcan that catches your trash. It uses Kinnect, part of the X-Box game system, to recognize that you're throwing something in its direction and then it moves to help you "make a basket" with the trash!

You could make a case for this being a good thing: people will be more likely to throw trash away properly. Or you could see it as a bad thing: people in the modern world already don't get enough exercise and this could make it worse!

I say, if they can invent this, they should just get going on a robot that picks up the trash by itself.

One thing that Amazon got right!

After my last post complaining about Amazon's policy change on affiliates and free Kindle books, I thought I would post on something Amazon got right.

One of the features that almost all ebook vendors offer is the free sample. You can download the first chunk of most books (the size varies, but it's usually at least the first chapter) and read it for free, to see if you want to buy the book. If you ask me (or even if you don't!), I think this is the main reason self-published authors have any chance at all.  It's also a benefit ebooks have over print books; in a bookstore, you can browse and begin reading, but you have to stay in the bookstore to make your decision.

After you download a free sample to your Kindle and then read it, when you get to the end of the sample, there are links to buy the book or to see it in the Kindle store.  Previously, when you bought a book that way, the book downloaded to your Kindle, but when you opened it, you were at the beginning of the book. To get back to where you were, you had to note the location number at the end of the sample, and then use the "Go to" menu to get to that point in the full book. It was very cumbersome, especially if you goofed and deleted the sample before you got back to reading the book, because then you didn't have a marker of where to go.

Now, when I use the buy link at the end of the buy sample, it not only downloads the book, it deletes the sample for me, and sets my "place" in the book at right where the sample ended.  When I open the book for the first time, I'm right where I stopped reading in the sample.  Exactly the behavior I would have asked for if they has asked me!  My only complaint would be, why didn't it do this to begin with?

Just to highlight how fast technology is changing, here's a photo of a panel on ereaders that I was on at the Baltimore Book Festival in 2011. Back then the way samples were handled after you bough the book would have been one of my peeves about the Kindle, but now it works great!

I don't know when they added having a button that says "See this book in the Kindle store" at the end of the free sample (as well as a buy button), but I like that, too, because I don't always remember how much the books costs. I'd be interested in knowing if all Kindles have these new features, or if the programming is unique to the Paperwhite. If anyone knows, please post a comment!

Has Amazon shot itself in its metaphorical foot?

Okay, so today, only one book is free, The Sixth Discipline.  It's free because of price matching, not because of a Kindle Select promotion, which is why it's free almost everywhere it's for sale.

This latest promotion was only moderately successful. In spite of King of Trees reaching #33 in free Kindle science fiction books, I still gave away only a few hundred copies, over the two days, with almost twice as many on the 28th of February as on March 1st. In addition, the numbers of free downloads for The Sixth Discipline have dropped by a little more than half since March 1.

Interestingly enough, March 1 was when Amazon started a new policy for their affiliates. Amazon affiliates are websites that have a formal arrangement with Amazon; they put links to Amazon products on their pages, and they get paid when people use them. The new policy says that if those websites have too high a percentage of customers clicking free ebook links, they will be penalized finacially. The Digital Reader blog post explains the specifics of it better than I can, but what it means at a very basic level is that links to free Kindle books are now poison for blogs that are Amazon affiliates.

My numbers for the past three days suggest that Amazon's new policy means that it will be much harder for authors to use free promotions successfully.  I don't think I'm the only author to notice this, either, because although The Sixth Discipline's numbers have dropped, its ranking is still about the same, which must mean other free Kindle books are suffering the same kind of lack of attention. One of the main benefits of the KDP Select program (which requires that you not sell any ebook versions for that title, except through Kindle) is the ability to do occasional promotions. Since it's now a lot harder to promote those giveaways, what Amazon has given with one hand, they have taken away (at least part of) with the other hand.

Get your free ebooks here!

On March 1, two of these are still free!

I had three books free in the Kindle store on February 28, and two on March 1; the first is free only on Kindle but free in all Kindle stores. The last one is free everywhere except non-US Kindle stores. Here are the links:

King of Trees: alternate history/time travel/science fiction with hints of fantasy. Druids converse with time travelers in an England that never was [Free on March 1]

US Kindle store
UK Kindle store
German
French
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
Canadian
Brazilian
Note: only free on Thursday, February 28, 2013

The Nostalgia Gambit: far future science fiction about a young man who struggles to find himself in an almost literal sense [NO LONGER FREE]

US Kindle store
UK Kindle store
German
French
Spanish
Italian
Japanese
Canadian
Brazilian
Note: will also be free on Friday, March 1

The Sixth Discipline: far future science fiction in which a hunter becomes the prey and finds himself caught in a trap he never imagined [Still FREE!]

US Kindle store
iBooks
Nook (Barnes & Noble)
Diesel
Smashwords
Kobo
Blio
Sony
Note: this is free all the time, because of price-matching. Also, Smashwords can provide a DRM-free Kindle-formatted book regardless of what country you are in.

What he said

Well, this is turning into a bad habit! Just like my last post, this post is all about someone else's recent blog post. In this case, it's one by Nathan Bransford, formerly a literary agent, now a children's book author. The post is titled “Will Books Lose Out in a Tablet World?” and the reason I'm posting about it is because it points out succinctly that ebooks are not the enemy of books or publishers. Whether a book is physical or digital, someone has to write it, and lots of people can read it. People who buy and read ebooks are every bit as much readers and book lovers as people who buy and read print books.

But, as Nathan says, people who read on tablets (as opposed to e-ink ereaders like the Kindle, Nook, or Kobo) do have other entertainment options quite literally in their hands. They can browse the web, check email, play games, and watch movies. This multipurpose functionality is the primary reason tablets are growing in popularity.  It remains to be seen whether this danger will in fact hurt books and authors, but it's definitely as issue.

Nathan points a finger at high ebook prices as part of the problem, and I think he's right. Publishers need to look long term and stop worrying about protecting hardcover sales by pricing ebooks so high that no one will buy them; they could win the battle and lose the war, which would be a sad thing for readers.

What she said

I don't often write posts that just refer to other posts, but over on the Teleread blog, they are running an excellent series by Juli Monroe on how to use Calibre.  Teleread is a great site to follow for info on what's happening in the world of digital publishing and e-reading. It's focused more on the technology of readers and tablets than on what's being published. Unlike the MobileReads site, which is a very useful forum for users of all types of ereaders to ask questions, Teleread is generally more news-based, and posts stories and opinion pieces about new developments and new technology.

Sometimes, though, Teleread will run how-to sorts of posts, and this series about Calibre is an excellent example of that.  I use Calibre to convert my own and other writers' manuscripts to Kindle format, so I can read and proof them on my Kindle (note: I don't currently rely on Calibre for the version I send to Amazon, because it doesn't offer the kind of stylistic options I'm looking for, but I might do that one day).  However, a lot of folks use Calibre in other ways, to manage their ebook collection. It has a lot of features I don't use, which is one reason I'm recommending this series on Teleread.

The first post in the series covers getting started with the software. Calibre is available for free, but remember the creator of it relies on donations, so do give some money if you use it and like it. Upgrades are frequent and also free. The second post is about using Calibre to create or edit metadata (author, title, ISBN, genre, etc) for an ebook, and the third is on using Calibre to load ebooks onto your ereader. If you have a lot of Project Gutenberg books on your PC, for example, Calibre offers a fast and easy way to put them onto your Kindle or other ereader in a bulk load sort of way. This relies on using the USB cable, not the email delivery I described in an earlier post.

From the links at the top of the first post, it looks like the plan is for a total of 10 posts, but as of today, there were only three.  I'll be watching for the next one!

Addendum: the next one just arrived! The fourth post is on using Calibre as a content server for ebook management.

The glass will be (almost) half free

I now have seven books (4 novels and one novella) for sale in the Kindle store. The newest one, King of Trees, just got its first review!  The reviewer said she loved it (5 stars!), and she finishes with this comment:

"The story offers likable, if sometimes exasperating, characters and a novel world." 

A novel world is pretty much what I was going for, so that's great.

In honor of that, and just because I am an optimistic "glass half full" kind of person, I have decided to make as many of my books free as I can for one day. Because The Sixth Discipline is free because of price matching, and my two most recent novels are both in the KDP Select program, I have decided that on Wednesday, February 28, The Nostalgia Gambit and King of Trees will also be free.  That makes 3/7 of all my books being free, which is pretty durn close to half!

Amazon controls how many days I can make a book free, so for TNG, that day will be the last hurrah. KoT will also be free on Thursday, March 1, and possibly a few other days in future.

Mark your calendars!

More on putting non-Amazon books on your Kindle

I belong to a critique group, also known as a writers' group. Basically, when one of us needs feedback, we submit a story or novel chunk or even a whole novel to the group. We have more or less monthly meetings and present our critiques orally and in writing. If you read the dedication to King of Trees, you will see that I dedicated that book to my writers' group, because it was one time when their critiques radically changed the book I had given them to read.

One reason I have stayed with the group for over a decade is that they are very flexible. Some writers prefer to have their novels critiqued as they write, and others (me included) prefer to submit an entire finished work. The group is amenable either way, so long as they get two full months to read any novel-length work.

A sign of the growing digital age is that a significant percentage of my writing group now own an ereader (mostly but not entirely Kindles or Kindle Fires) and actually prefer to get an electronic copy of the manuscript (m.s.) rather than a print copy. This is great for the writer, as it saves both time and  the cost of toner and paper.  It also highlights the features of the Kindle that make it useful for this exercise:

• You can easily send documents to it
• You can highlight and make notes right in the m.s.
• It's actually easier to spot typos when the work looks like a book
• With most Kindles, you can have the m.s. read aloud if you like (not true for the Paperwhite or the Kindle 4, the bare bones Kindle)
• No need to carry around a sheaf of papers; you can read the m.s. anywhere if you have your Kindle handy! 

But as the early adopter in the group, I find that I end up giving advice about the best way to put the m.s. onto everyone's Kindles. I offer two pieces of advice when it's a novel that's being sent. First, save the MS Word file as RTF and then convert it to mobi format (the format the Kindle is based on) with Calibre, rather than relying on Amazon's Word conversion, which will give you readable text, but often crappy formatting, like weirdly indented paragraphs. Second, use the email delivery feature to put the file on your Kindle instead of using a the USB cable, as that way it will go into your Kindle archive (assuming you have enabled that feature).

Emailing documents to the Kindle is dead simple, once you do the initial setup. There are two easy steps you have to do only once. Both can be done from the "Personal Documents Settings" page. Note that Amazon calls everything you put on your Kindle yourself (as opposed to buying from the Kindle store) a Personal Document, whether its's a Project Gutenberg copy of War and Peace or this week's shopping list.  To get to this useful page, you have to drill down through:

1. Your Amazon page (click the link you see when you're logged on and shopping)
2. Manage Your Kindle page (select from the initial account pull down, or from the link you see once you get to your account page) 
3. Personal Documents Settings page (click the link in the left column of the Manage Your Kindle page)

Once you are on the Personal Documents Settings page, you just need to do these two steps:

Find out your Kindle's email address
Every Kindle, Kindle Fire, and some Kindle apps have both a name and an email address. Amazon assigns default ones, but you can edit them, if you like.  On the Personal Documents Settings page, look under the first section Send-to-Kindle E-Mail Settings to see the name (which appears when you buy a Kindle book) and the email (which you need to know to send to the Kindle). To change either, click Edit on the right hand side of that line.  Whether you change it or not, make a note of the Kindle's email address.

White list your own email address
To prevent spam from ever reaching your Kindle, Amazon requires you to explicitly authorize ("white list") any email account that can send documents to your Kindle. You can add in as many addresses as you like, but you have to be using one of them when you send a file, or it won't go to your Kindle.

Also note on this page there is a place to create a limit for how much you want to pay per file for any documents sent. This only an issue if you use a 3G connection to send a document. Using wifi to send documents does not accrue any charges.

Now, to send a document to the Kindle, it just has to be in an approved format (the file extension should be mobi, azw, prc, html, txt, pdf, doc, or docx).  Address the message to your Kindle, attach the file, and send. The only caveats are:

• The file you send will only show on your home screen if the Kindle is set to show "All" or "Personal Documents." If you select "Books" as the filter, the file you sent will not be listed.
• PDF files will not be converted unless you put the word "convert" (and only that word) in the subject line of the email. Files sent as PDFs will be readable, but you won't be able to change the font size.
• Any notes and highlights you create won't appear in your My Highlights page, which they do do for books you buy from Amazon. (This is something I really wish Amazon would add!) They will be accessible on your Kindle via the View Notes and Marks menu option you see when you have the book open and pull up the menu, but not on the web.
• If the file is a book in azw, prc or mobi, with metadata properly identified, the book will have the proper title and author on your home screen. If it's just a document, it will have the filename as the title and your email address as the author.

That's the skinny on sending books to your Kindle. Be sure to check out Project Gutenberg if you're interested in free classics beyond those offered in the Kindle store.  And of course, I have a book free in the Kindle store if you want an even easier delivery.

Here's my earlier post on this topic. Any questions, use the comments section!