Maria Savva's Blog - Posts Tagged "amazon"

Following on from my last blog post, Pinnacle: Author and Book Promotion's website has now posted a wonderful review of Second Chances. The book will also be spotlighted on the site for 1 month as will the book trailer.

You can read the review here:
Review of Second Chances on Pinnacle

There are also some lovely reviews on Amazon. I have 5 stars from a top 100 Amazon reviewer! And 4 stars from a top 50 reviewer who is also a 'vine voice' on Amazon! Both of these reviewers have written fabulous reviews on Amazon.co.uk
You can read the reviews here:
Reviews on Amazon.co.uk

The book is now available to purchase on Amazon UK and US, Lulu.com, and booksamillon.com
You can order it at any bookshop or from your local library.

If you read the book and enjoy it, please don't forget to tell your friends about it and to post a review on Amazon.

For all you ebook lovers out there I have some great news, I am in the process of publishing my books on Amazon Kindle. I am also intending to make them available for other types of digital ereaders soon.
The first of my books available for digital download is
Pieces of a Rainbow

In the next few weeks, Love and Loyalty and A Time To Tell will also be available on Kindle.

A reminder: The 'Green Group' here on Goodreads are currently reading 'Pieces of a Rainbow'. Now that it is available on Kindle, I hope more of you will be able to read it and take part in the discussions. I look forward to chatting to you all about it.
Here's the link for the Green Group discussions:
Green Group

To buy Pieces of a Rainbow on Amazon.com for $2.99, go here: Amazon.com

To buy from Amazon.co.uk for £2.23, go here: Amazon.co.uk

I am pleased to announce that my novel 'A Time to Tell' is now available at Amazon as an ebook download for Kindle.

For those of you who don't know, even if you don't have a Kindle ereader, you can install a free app on your iphone, ipad, Mac or for Android via Amazon, so you can read all Kindle books on other mobile device

Here are the links you need for A Time to Tell on Kindle:

Amazon US: A Time to Tell

Amazon UK: A Time to Tell

To celebrate getting all my books on kindle (well, most of them -- I still have to figure out a way of getting 'Coincidences' on kindle as I don't have a copy of the manuscript on my computer...), I'm offering my two short story collections at a special promotional price for a short time. At Amazon.com you can download 'Pieces of a Rainbow', and 'Love and Loyalty (and Other Tales)', for just $0.99! and at Amazon.co.uk for just £0.71!

Here are the links!

Amazon US: Pieces of a Rainbow
Love and Loyalty


Amazon UK: Love and Loyalty
Pieces of a Rainbow

Remember, you don't need to own a kindle ereader to read kindle ebooks. You can read them on your pc or mac, iphone, ipad, Android or Blackberry... just download the free kindle app from Amazon.

Enjoy!

Also, a reminder that 'Pieces of a Rainbow' is still the current book group read over in the Green Group here on Goodreads, so when you've downloaded your copy, why not head over to that group and join in the discussions.

Green Group

I just wanted to let everyone know that there is a button on the physical book page for Amazon kindle books which you can click to read the first chapter of a book for free!

Go to the physical book page and you'll see a green button about a third of the way down the right hand side of the page. Click on that and read the first chapter of the book. This is available for all books that are also in kindle format.

Authors, you can embed the code for these chapters in your website or other blog. There is an embed button which you can click at the top right hand side of the page when you have clicked the 'Read First Chapter free' button.

Amazon have now made it possible for customers to buy kindle books as gifts. The books can be sent to your loved one by email. Perfect timing for Christmas.

Gift a kindle

If you have friends who love to read, you can now purchase bargain books on kindle. In these tough economic times it's great that there is now a cheaper alternative for book buying. Many books on kindle are as low as $0.99/£0.72, and you can always find free books listed there as well. All the popular and bestselling books are now available as kindle books, as are many wonderful books by independent authors.

You don't have to worry about your friend or family member not owning a kindle ereader either. They will be able to read the kindle gift book on their pc or mac, ipod, iphone, blackberry or android by downloading a free app from Amazon.

So, when you're looking for gift ideas this Christmas, have a look at all the books available on Amazon kindle. There's something for everyone.

Here are some suggestions (including links to my own books on kindle):

My books Amazon US:

A Time to Tell

Second Chances

Pieces of a Rainbow

Love and Loyalty (and Other Tales)


My books Amazon UK:

Pieces of a Rainbow

Love and Loyalty (and Other Tales)

Second Chances

A Time to Tell


Here are some kindle books I recommend, written by my author friends:

Chickens, Mules and Two Old Fools by Victoria Twead

Crooked Moon by Lisette Brodey

The Day The Flowers Died by Ami Blackwelder

Enemies and Playmates by Darcia Helle

Cry for the Moon by William Woodall

Musical Chairs by Jen Knox

My Schizophrenic Life by Sandra Yuen MacKay

Twenty Five Years Ago Today by Stacy Juba

The Safety Factor by Jerry Travis and Josephines Mayes

I have reduced the price of my kindle books on Amazon to just £0.72 (UK) $0.99 (US) for the Christmas period.

Hopefully this will ensure that anyone who wants to read my books can get them at an affordable price (I know how tight money is these days for most of us).

Also, kindle books can now be given as gifts. So because it's an expensive time of year, I'm offering my books at a lower price to help out if you want to buy them as gifts.

Remember that kindle books can still be read without a kindle ereader. There are free apps on Amazon which anyone can download so that they can read kindle books on other devices: ipad, iphone, android, blackberry, mac or pc.

Here are the links to my Amazon author pages:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Many of you will know that I recently co-wrote a book Cutting The Fat with author Jason McIntyre

Jason is currently trying to raise money to help support a local charity for abused women and children. His book On The Gathering Storm deals with the subject of domestic violence.

As someone who used to work as a family lawyer, helping women to obtain injunctions against violent partners, I know how real and serious this subject is. Those of you who have read my book A Time To Tell will know that it is a subject that left an impression on me.
As writers, we often write fiction inspired from events in our daily lives, sometimes almost as a way of dealing with things which are hard to comprehend.

Jason's book is currently $0.99 on Amazon kindle (ebook) until 1st March 2011. Prfits from all sales until that date will go to his local charity, helping women and children flee violent homes and get their lives back on track.

If you are able, please visit Amazon and download the book. I haven't read it yet, but I do know that Jason is a very talented author, so there is little chance that you will be disappointed with the book. If it's not your type of book, you can buy it as a gift. Kindle books can be purchased as a gift for anyone as long as you know their email address.

Remember, you do not have to own a kindle ereader to buy kindle books. Amazon provide free apps for mac, pc, iphone, ipad, blackberry and android.

Here's the link to the page at Amazon where you can read the reviews and purchase the book:
On the Gathering Storm -- kindle

Read more about Jason's campaign on his blog, by clicking here:
The Farthest Reaches - Jason McIntyre's blog

If you are on Facebook or Twitter, or any other social networking sites please spread the word about this.

Thank you for helping.

I have lots of news for you, but I'll start with the most exciting! I am so happy to tell you that the BestsellerBound Short Story Anthology, which includes my short story 'Flames', shot to #1 in the Amazon kindle bestseller lists for 'short stories' and 'anthologies' yesterday when Amazon.com decided to make it available free for kindle. As many of you already know, this anthology is already free to download on Smashwords and we wanted to offer it free on Amazon as well, but Amazon has a policy whereby the author must charge at least $0.99 for any kindle book. Yesterday, however, our luck was in and Amazon listed it free for a day. In that short time we had over 5000 downloads and it entered the top 10 in the free kindle downloads chart on Amazon.com!
At BestsellerBound.com, we are very proud of this achievement. Darcia Helle, Stacy Juba, and I, created BestsellerBound.com last year as a way to raise the profile of indie authors, and this Amazon success has really shown us that with a lot of hard work and determined effort it is possible to get some recognition in the publishing world whether you are published by a large publishing company, or whether you publish in your own home using just your computer.
It's all very exciting.
We are intending to publish more volumes of the BestsellerBound Short Story Anthologies as we have attracted so many talented authors at BestsellerBound, we need a way to showcase that talent. If you're an indie/small press author and would like to contribute a story for an upcoming collection, please visit BestsellerBound.com for details on how to submit.



Now to news about my soon to be published novel, 'The Dream'.




Firstly, sorry for the delay in getting the book published, this has been due to a combination of very boring reasons, such as I now finally have a full time day job so less time to spend on editing. I have now reached the final proof stage and believe the book is ready (subject to a final read-over by me).

Some of you may be aware that my good friend and fellow author Darcia Helle has a new novel coming out in July, Into The Light'. We have decided to launch our two books together as they both have a ghostly/paranormal theme. Stay tuned for news about the launch and an exciting contest where you will be able to enter to win a copy of both books!



Finally, I have news of an award "honouring brilliance and 'reach' in the world of book marketing, sales and readership" The 2011 Farthest Reach Award.

This award is the brainchild of author Jason McIntyre (my co-author for Cutting The Fat).

I would encourage you all to vote in the award. Nominations are now open, so if you know of an author, publisher, marketing professional, who has excelled in the field of book promotion, fill in the form on Jason's website and tell the world about them. I like the idea of this award because as authors (especially indie authors) we rely on word of mouth for book sales, and are eternally grateful to people who go out of their way to promote and help with marketing.

Hi, this is a silly blog post but I'm in a silly mood, so please bear with me.

If you are buying any Kindle ebooks by self-published authors from Amazon, please make sure you buy them on the 1st of the month.

I shall explain the reasons below:

1. As independent/self-published authors we often get obsessed with checking our sales figures
2. Sometimes we actually sell a couple of books and this makes us even more obsessed with our sales figures
3. For the obsessed-with-sales-figures type of authors it is horribly disturbing to check our Amazon Kindle accounts on the first day of a new month because Amazon wipes clean the figures from the month before and places a plain beige bar across the account stating 'There are no sales to report'
4. On reading the words in the beige bar, indie authors are likely to feel upset, disillusioned, and rejected. Often (and I can only speak for myself here) we begin to believe that we will never be able to get rid of the dreaded beige bar and will always have to stare at that 'no sales to report' because we worry that we will never sell another book.

For the sake of the future sanity of your favourite indie writers, please try to purchase their Kindle books on the 1st day of the month.

When we see that there are sales to report -- even 1 sale -- we smile. I promise you, this is the easiest way to make an independent author smile.

Told you it was a silly post. But even though it's silly, it contains an element of truth in it.