Hey everyone, and hope you all had a great Halloween. I tried to do my bit by getting Bite Me up in October, and it’s selling well although it has yet to be reviewed by anyone into vampire stories. Been busy since on three projects; one, of course, is Young Sentinels, which I hope to release in January. For those who like teasers, the opening sentence is:
We were lucky I was flying morning patrol instead of sitting in class when Potowatomi Woods decided to destroy the Chicago Executive Airport.
First rule of writing superhero tales: always start with a bang.
The second project was a complete re-edit of both Wearing the Cape and Villains Inc. Lacking both agent and editor, I missed things in both books–mostly grammatical and spelling errors, but also some very embarrassing mistakes; for example, I gave Detective Fisher three first names (for the record, it’s Max). So I spent much of October going back over both books and “fixing” things and then uploading the changes on Amazon. The good news is, everyone who purchased the Kindle edition of either can get the updated releases by deleting their current copies from their Kindles, sending an email to customer service asking for the updated copy for their archives, and then downloading the new copy from their archives once the change is made (it usually takes no more than a day).
The third project was a simple one: I cut out the first third of Wearing the Cape (everything up till the end of Astra’s first big fight and her argument with Atlas), and put it up for sale for $.99 on Amazon as Wearing the Cape: The Beginning. Why? Because while I want to keep my books priced as professional-publisher prices, I also want to put Astra out there in the world of impulse-buy $.99 downloads.
Naturally WtC:TB is starting with zero reviews, so anyone who has previously reviewed Wearing the Cape and wants to copy non-spoilery parts of their review to WtC:TB will have my endless gratitude. And if you have any Kindle-using friends who you think would appreciate the story, gifting a $.99 book is an easy way to spread the love.
And on a last note; the October drawing for two copies of Bite Me: Big Easy Nights is finished. Since Richard Smith is the only one who posted a review and replied to the drawing announcement post to let me know (and still didn’t provide an email), he is the lucky winner. Since I set aside a two copies for this, if anyone else has posted a review or wants to post a review, the extra copy will go to whomever first alerts me to their review here.
Send me your email address Richard. And everyone enjoy the season!
Marion G. Harmon, A Writer in Vegas. 
Hi this is Richard Smith my email is rsid1@netzero.net contact me for snail mail address.
I posted I believe the first review on Amazon, but shamefully forgot to mention it!
Yup! Should have recognized the name. I’ve ordered the books from Createspace, and will let you know when they arrive here.
I just deleted both Wearing the Cape and Villains Inc from the my Kindle for PC like suggested and re-downloaded it from the ‘Manage Your Kindle’ section, and it seems to have updated. I’m not sure if the same will work for the hand held device, since I don’t have one, but I believe the process should be the same… :3
It worked just fine on my Kindle as well. Thanks for verifying!
I was just trying to say I don’t think you need to go and contact customer services and wait a day, as was also suggested. ^^;
I find that very surprising; the Amazon archives are private accounts, which means they are only supposed to be altered at the client’s request. One reason for this is that books you save to your archives may include pager-marks and highlights from your reading–updating an ebook in your archives wipes these out.
I was just wondering, what impact has raising the price of your novels had on sales rank and income?
I’m still tweaking the prices and trying other things, so it’s really hard to say. I’ll let you know when I find the golden mean.