Expanding Distribution

As of a few days ago, my books were available exclusively at Amazon. That’s going to be changing over the next few days and weeks.

I’ve been using Amazon’s “Select” program. What this means to readers is that you can “borrow” a book – maximum of one per month – if you are part of Amazon Prime. (Amazon has a fund set aside and pays authors for each borrow.) Authors get the benefit of being able to set a book’s price to free for up to five days for each 90 day period in select; normally, Amazon requires a minimum price of $0.99. The catch? For each 90 day term, each book enrolled in the Select program cannot be available for sale or download anywhere but Amazon.

If you’re getting a lot of borrows on your books, Select makes a lot of sense. Amazon has a huge market share, of course. Author who are getting dozens (or hundreds or thousands) of borrows each month are likely making enough from the borrows to more than offset potential lost revenue at other sites, such as Barnes and Noble, Kobo, Sony, and Apple iTunes (iBookstore). If you aren’t getting a lot of borrows, it probably doesn’t. My book in Select (A Question of Will) has gotten some borrows, but not enough to justify the exclusivity aspect of Amazon Select. So, when my “term” ends with Select, I won’t be renewing and will try my hand at a number of other sites. The prequel is going out to various sites now; I’ll start uploading A Question of Will and Preserving Hope once Will is officially out of Select.

Hunting Will, the prequel, is now available on Barnes and Noble and Smashwords. It is actually free at Smashwords and will, over time, be free at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, and other sites. I’ll be updating the sidebar to include links to the various sites as the books come online.

As I’m doing that, I’ll also be working on the print editions for all three books. Print will be done through Amazon’s CreateSpace “print on demand” service. I’m looking forward to seeing – and more importantly, holding – the books in print.

Check back here, or on my Facebook page, for information as each new format becomes available, and thank you as always for your support!