Read my books with Amazon's Kindle Unlimited

There's a new way to buy and read e-books. Last Friday Amazon launched its Kindle Unlimited subscription service in the US (only, for now) where readers can upload as many books as they wish for just $9.99 per month (that would be about £7.50 in the UK). This service seems a good deal for readers like me, who can consume 4-5 books per month (and download at least twice as many). What's more, to launch the service, Amazon are offering it free for the first month.

But what about authors? On the face of it, the Kindle Unlimited service could be good news to writers too. Especially for us indie writers who have published their works exclusive through Amazon. The rights and wrongs of this one channel publishing can be discussed, but for me, it's all about the balance between time I spend writing versus time spent doing publishing and marketing tasks. Listing my novels on KDP Select means that I do not have to format my ebooks for several platforms, or check several channels for sales, or worry about pricing issues across several sites. Plus the majority of ebook sales across the world are made via Amazon (a figure as high as 90% was quoted to me recently). Like it or not, Amazon is the leading ebook seller at the moment.

As I am already a KDP Select author, I am automatically listed on the present lending service which Amazon runs and where readers can download a free book per month. My books will also be automatically listed for this new Kindle Unlimited subscription service. 

In the indie authors' online community the general reaction to this new service has been mixed. Many just do not know what will happen but, being that I am an optimist, I can see several benefits.

For one, a new service will increase reading and ebook purchasing. Merely the launch of a new service, and the positive publicity involved in its launch, will increase book sales on Amazon, which is good news for me. (I know, I know, it goes against the grain to admit that one online bookseller giant is good news, but unfortunately for us KDP Select writers this is the case).

Amazon has said that each 10% read of any book which has been downloaded under the unlimited service will count as a sale, as opposed to the mere download of a title, as happens now.  If this 10% also works in the all important algorithms, this is even better news for mid-list writers like me. (This 10% is also about the same length as is offered as a free sample at the moment, without this sample download showing up on any statistics, as far as I know) For any 10% read of my books, I get a share of the total Amazon global lending fund, which for July stands at $2 million. I've calculated roughly that I could earn even more per book then the 70% I do now. So that's all good too.

Can it be, that both readers and writers will win from this new Kindle Unlimited Subscription Service?

We'll wait and see. In the meantime, if you are in the US and have taken advantage of the Kindle Unlimited service, you can find my books on it. Just click here!

For more on this new Amazon book subscription service, read this excellent blog post by David Gaughran here.

Coffee and Vodka FREE Weekend Offer!

I know it's crazy, but I am offering Coffee and Vodka free this weekend only!

You can download a copy from Amazon today until midnight on 27 October 2013.

This is what people are saying about my Nordic family drama:

‘Coffee and Vodka is a rich story that stays with us….with moments of brilliance.’ - Dr Mimi Thebo, Bath Spa University. 

‘The descriptions of the difficulties of childhood, sisterhood, relationships and parenthood transcend national borders.’ - Pauline Masurel, editor & writer. 

‘Like the television series The Bridge, Coffee and Vodka opens our eyes to facets of a Scandinavian culture that most of us would lump together into one. I loved the way the narrative wove together the viewpoint of Eeva the child and her shock at arriving in a new country, with Eeva the sophisticated adult, returning for the first time to the country of her birth, and finding it both familiar and irretrievably strange.’ Catriona Troth, Triskele Books. 

‘I loved reading this. After picking it up (or opening it on my Kindle I should say) it was hard to put it down; I even missed my stop on the bus to carry on reading.’ Gretel, Goodreads.

Hurry, there's only three days to download your free copy of Coffee and Vodka!

(If you don't have a Kindle, you can downloaded a Kindle App from here)

Final day of FREE ebook!

It's gone very quickly - but TODAY is the final day of the FREE promotion for 

The Englishman!

So, if you want to read How I Came to Be in England in novel form for 

absolutely no money whatsoever 

hurry! 

With 5 star reviews on Amazon, pick of the month at The Alliance of Independent Authors, it's a complete steal in my humble opinion...

The promotion at Amazon ends midnight tonight.

Finally, for all those who've asked me when the next book, Pappa's Girl, is out, I can tell you that the date set is for 19 November 2013!

Guest post at KarenG's

Today I'm over at Karen's, a lovely writer/blogger who kindly let me tell her readers about The Englishman. Go and have a look, I'm talking about my new (old) marketing strategy for the book!

E-books in bookshops - whatever next?

 

There's much consternation in the press this morning following Waterstone's deal with Amazon to sell Kindle and e-books in their stores. Much 'Deal with the devil' kind of comments have been banded about, but I have to say that I don’t understand why there isn't more of this kind of co-operation between physical bookshops and e-book retailers/publishers. 

Obviously Amazon is a major player in the industry and as such has a somewhat tainted history in trying to dominate the market, but considering the business models which have to be forced for the future, this kind of joint venture has to be tried.

During my time at England's Lane Books, I became convinced that physical book retailers are the shop window for both e-books and p-books. Everyone seems to love bookshops. If I'd had a pound every time some-one said they loved the shop, I'd be very rich indeed. Well, wealthy enough to be able to open a bookshop myself...

But I digress. People who read books like to browse, especially in independent little shops where some-one has made an eclectic and informed choice of which books to stock, (which doesn't necessarily include books with the largest marketing budgets behind them). In bookshops readers can discover new titles, new authors, or new genres. It's where you can discuss books to your heart's content and get advice on what to buy that 15-year-old nephew who needs encouragement to read. Or the 45-year-old aunt who reads avidly and has every book ever published on her book shelf. At England's Lane Books we had many variations on these customer requests and we loved recommending books for 'difficult' people. 

Also publishers (and agents) know that book shops are invaluable spaces for what is now being called 'discoverability' of books; and authors know there isn't a better person to recommend their book, and generate a word-of-mouth snowballing effect for their sales, than a bookseller.

Of course Amazon could be aiming to swallow Waterstones up, and this is a risk Mr Daunt of Waterstones seems willing to take. Personally I think he had to do something: falling sales of physical books in contrast to the increase in the sales in e-books makes it hard for any bookseller of p-books. Plus the efforts of the retailer to bring their own e-reader to the market have failed – possibly due to time and cost issues.

In the US, Barnes and Noble (with the help of a cash boost of $300 million from Microsoft) are developing their Nook e-reader so that customers can download book reviews from a code in the shop, and then choose to either buy the hard copy or the e-copy. It remains to be seen if this kind of product will eventually bring enough cash to the retailer to keep the bookshops open.

By the way, the view that by inviting Amazon into Waterstones, the book retailer will introduce more readers to e-books is in my view frankly silly. It smacks of ostrich-like attitude where if you ignore a new development, it won't affect you.

That aside, it’ll be very interesting to see how this new Amazon/Waterstones venture will work out. I for one am hoping it’ll be a success, and that it proves to be a model small independent shops could follow. What’s to stop Apple co-operating  with physical bookshops? Imagine if you could walk into somewhere like England’s Lane Books and using your iPad or iPhone, scan QR codes off the book, read the reviews, discuss the book with staff and ultimately download the e-book (or even better, get a buy one get one free deal) in the shop. 

Many customers already use bookshops to discover new titles, only to leave the shop to download e-book later – or buy it online at a cheaper price at Amazon. Why not give the reader license to do this and get a cut out of the sales you’ve generated at the same time. It's the customer behaviour that's important - the publishing industry will ignore it at its peril.


As a former bookseller and an economist, the Waterstone/Amazon deal makes sense to me.