Read an E-book Week, and What to do with a Dead Kindle?

girlreadingToday marks the start of Read an Ebook Week, an annual promotion from Smashwords wherein thousands of independent authors and publishers offer ebooks at fantastic discounts. Mythical Press is participating too, and has all my books on sale. Haven’t tried the Saturn Society series yet? It’s a great time to change that–Time’s Enemy, Book 1, is on sale for 75% off. The anthology Love’s a Beach, which includes my newest installment, a short story called “Time’s Tempest” featuring new characters, is also on sale for 50% off, and has some great reads from Stacy McKitrick and four of my other writing friends. Just click the image above to go to Smashwords.

Ironically, just in time for Read an Ebook Week, my Kindle decided to die on me. It had been getting slower and occasionally would display an error message when I opened a book. If I tapped OK, the error message would disappear and it worked fine. Then searches for words I knew were in the book would turn up nothing, and a couple days ago, it started saying books were “no longer available” when I’d just purchased them from Amazon. A quick search revealed that my Kindle probably just needed a reboot, so I tried that. But my Kindle did not reboot–or rather, it tried for several minutes, than eventually just crapped out:

IMG_20140302_153710250

I was not optimistic about contacting Amazon, because you see, I got this Kindle for Christmas–last year.

Which means it’s about two months out of warranty.

But all I found in the searches was either “Duh, contact Amazon, they’ll replace it” (usually in response to someone with a relatively new Kindle) or “It’s bricked” (often in response to someone who tried to root, or hack, their Kindle). Nothing about anything else that could be done if it was out of warranty, even in a case like mine where I’d not so much as dropped it.

So I got on an online chat with them. I didn’t really expect them to offer to repair or replace it except for a fee, but mainly contacted them in the small chance there was something else I might try to resuscitate the Kindle. Sure enough, the customer service rep said it was out of warranty, and would I like him to go over some options for a “deeply discounted replacement or upgrade?”

Not acceptable. Why would I want to pay for another Kindle when this one failed two months after the warranty expired? I told him that and added, “I am very unhappy with this. I haven’t even dropped it, it just quit working,” expecting to get a “sorry, company policy” response. But the rep said, “please wait while I talk to my manager.”

He came back and said they’d make an exception, and replace it for free! I guess it never hurts to let them know what you think (politely, of course) and be persistent. The new one is supposed to arrive tomorrow.

ROW80Logo175Luckily, that didn’t cut into my writing time too much yesterday, and I got my 3,500 words in for the week. Wow, is this novella turning out to be longer than I expected! I thought it was going to be a longish short story at first, maybe 10,000 words, but then it kept going. I’m now over 20,000 words and only a little more than halfway through my outline. That’s okay, it needs to be as long as it needs to be. I suspect I’ll do some cutting on revision, too.

I didn’t do so well with the fitness, though I got a couple of very short workouts in. I am almost done with the website–hope to finish that today–so I still consider it a good week.

Next week, the same: 3500 words, finish the website (this time, for sure!), and get 3 or 4 activity sessions in. I have a print book to format too, so I’ll toss get started on that in as a bonus.

What about you–planning to read any ebooks this week, whether from Smashwords or elsewhere? Have any surprising customer service experiences to share, good or bad? And whether or not you’re participating in ROW80, how did you do on whatever goals you might have? Please share–I’d love to hear from you!

Jennette Marie Powell writes stories about ordinary people in ordinary places, who do extraordinary things and learn that those ordinary places are anything but. In her Saturn Society novels, unwilling time travelers do what they must to make things right... and change more than they expect. You can find her books at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Smashwords, Kobo, iTunes, and more.

How to Load up at the Buffet without Gaining a Pound

Time's Enemy

On sale for $.99 through June 22, 2012

At the Booklovers’ Buffet, that’s how! (I didn’t say food, did I?) You can load up on books without taking a hit to the waistline–or your wallet. OK, maybe that’s cheating, but I’ve had a crazy-busy week what with two freelance web design jobs that both came in last week. Sometimes, there really isn’t enough time to get done what we’d like. Not to mention time to read! But I’ll be going on vacation soon, so you’d better believe I’ll be hitting the buffet. Because it’s over 150 books, each for only $.99! (Or priced based on current exchange rates, for those outside the U.S.)

Most of the books on the Buffet are full-length novels – one of which is my own Time’s Enemy. So if you’ve been thinking about grabbing a copy, now’s a great time, because I don’t foresee pricing it this low again.

The sale goes through the 22nd, and features fiction from a variety of genres, although most of the books feature at least some romance. Most of the books on the buffet are available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords, although a few are Amazon-only.

If you enjoy reading, do you take advantage of sales like this? Or is the plethora of free books enough for you? If you buy (or borrow) ebooks, where’s your favorite place to get them?

You too can be radioactive for just $34.95!

Sometimes, if I am really bored at work, I read Amazon reviews. OK, I also read blogs. But at my primary workplace, blogs are blocked, and I get tired of reading on my smartphone. Luckily, Amazon is not blocked, and a few weeks ago, while waiting for a slow database export, I stumbled across this gem:

Uranium Ore

That’s right, real uranium ore! I found the Product Details very interesting:

Product Features

  • Radioactive Ore Sample
  • License Exempt – low radioactivity
  • Useful for testing geiger counters
  • Shipping compiles to NRC and postal regulations
  • Radioactive minerals are for educational and scientific use only.

 

The product had an average 3.8 stars out of five. Here’s what some users had to say. Surprisingly (or not), none were an “Amazon Verified Purchase.” Hmm….

2,640 of 2,754 people found the following review helpful

I bought this to power a home-made submarine that I use to look for prehistoric-era life forms in land-locked lakes around my home town in Alaska. At first I wasn’t sure if this item would (or could) arrive via mail, but I was glad to see it showed up with no problems. Well, almost no problems.

Unfortuantly my mom opened my mail, because she does not respect people’s privacy. She was pretty upset to see Uranium Ore. After a long argument and me running away from home again, she finaly stopped being such an idiot and I was able to get back to work.

The quality of this Uranium is on par with the stuff I was bying from the Libyans over at the mall parking lot, but at half the price! I just hope the seller does not run out, because I have many projects on my list including a night vision sasquatch radar, an electromagnetic chupakabra cage, a high velocity, aerial, weighted Mothman net and super heated, instant grill cheese sandwhich maker.

Here’s the “most helpful critical review”:

7,800 of 7,937 people found the following review helpful
3.0 out of 5 stars Great Product, Poor Packaging, May 14, 2009
This review is from: Uranium Ore

I purchased this product 4.47 Billion Years ago and when I opened it today, it was half empty.

 It might even be the start of the Zombie Apocalypse:

9 of 12 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars Great for creating a zombie apocalypse =), November 20, 2010
This review is from: Uranium Ore

This item works great when trying to create a zombie apocalypse. I tried some on my friend (smeared a little on his big mac when he went to the bathroom) and boom! Instant zombification! Just be careful not to get any in an open cut or in your eyes, because it will turn you into a zombie really fast. My plan is to start a zombie apocalypse so that everyone will get sick and eat each others brains, leaving me the only healthy person and thus leader of the new free world! I wish amazon would ship this product in larger quantities because it would make my plan go so much faster! But at least I was eligible for free amazon prime super savings shipping!

 

But my favorite review of the product had been removed between the time I read it and now! Luckily, we have Google Cache!

Top Reviewer Ranking: 883,002 (Learn More) – Total Helpful Votes: 5 of 5
Uranium Ore by Images SI Inc.

Uranium Ore by Images SI Inc.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
1.0 out of 5 stars not as advertised, by Osama Bin Laden, April 12, 2012
It’s a trap! I wanted to, uh, liberate the Americans so i bought 800 cans of this and attempted to ship it to my secret fortress in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The delivery guys showed up in a black helicopter and instead of my uranium they brought guns! Please nobody fall for the same trap i did I am stuck in my house now i can hear them shooting downstairs i am hiding here with my wife please don’t kill m-

 

Many reviews mentioned Back to the Future and time travel. Obviously they haven’t read my Saturn Society books! Emmett Brown wrote several reviews. I wonder how?

There actually were a few reviews that said it was good for testing one’s Geiger counter. Although I find it amusing that the shipping “compiles” instead of “complies”… must be the programmer in me. What are some of the most entertaining Amazon product reviews you’ve seen? Would you buy Uranium Ore from Amazon? Oh, and what about some of the products under “Customers who bought this also bought…” LOL!

Dear Barnes and Noble…

For the past couple of days, it seems everyone involved with epublishing has been talking about Microsoft, and their purchase of $300 worth of stock in B&N’s new Nook spin-off company. It will undoubtedly provide Nook with some much-needed leverage to compete against Amazon and Apple, and hopefully provide them with some real competition.

But what does it mean for us readers? All we can do is speculate, but right now, my guess is…

Not. Much.

And it mostly comes down to one area which for me & B&N, has been a big, fat, FAIL: customer service.

First, let’s be clear on one thing – I’m talking online, not the stores. The people I’ve dealt with in the stores have been great – super-supportive of us Nook authors, listening to us, trying to find ways to encourage customers to buy our books in the stores. But I do most of my shopping online, and that’s where the breakdown occurred.

You see, last fall, someone tried to buy a bunch of stuff at HHGregg with my Discover card number. Discover Card knew it wasn’t me, denied the charge, and called me. I confirmed that it wasn’t me, and the Discover Card rep said I’d get a new card in the mail in a few days. (Barnes & Noble.com, are you listening? You can learn something from the folks at Discover Card.)

So, no problems there.

Until I went to buy some ebooks and my default credit card – yup, Discover – was denied, because I’d forgotten to update it.

Amazon sent me a polite email informing me that the charge had been denied, and suggesting that I update my payment method, and re-place the order. Which I did.

When I tried to order from Barnes & Noble, they emailed me too – informing me that my credit card was denied, my account was locked and I’d have to call customer service to get it unlocked.

WTF???

OK, I get that they don’t want to take a bad credit card, no problem there. But really? LOCK my account??? And they expect me to CALL to get it unlocked, just so I can switch out my credit card and SPEND MONEY??? Just do a quick search on that one to see what B&N’s customer service is like – stories of hour+ hold times abound.

I admit I didn’t even try to call. Did I mention I’m not fond of talking on the phone? And if I wanted to, you know, talk to someone, I might have just, oh I don’t know, gone to a STORE? And the big question: Why bother calling at all when a couple clicks will take me to AMAZON?

So that’s my story. How about one of my friends’? She started out with a Nook reader, and loved it – for about three months. Then it stopped holding a charge. Could she take it back to the store? NO! Granted, this was probably because she’d bought it at Best Buy, not B&N, but still… so she shipped it back. And waited for a replacement. And waited. And waited. Finally, her new, refurbished Nook came a month later.

Which she again loved. Until it, too, stopped holding a battery charge.

To make a long story short, she ended up going through this twice more. When she was on her fourth Nook, she finally said screw it and bought a Kindle 3, which she’s been enjoying without problems for over a year.

So do I think that the Microsoft infusion will cure these ills? I’d love it if they did, because really, competitions is good for everyone (well, at least for the consumers). If B&N stepped up their game, it would keep Amazon better as well, and the readers would continue to have choices, something I’m definitely in favor of. Of course, I’d be even more in favor of a universal ebook format (like that’s going to happen anytime soon). But failing that, choices are good. But my skepticism meter’s pegged out. I’ve used Windows computers since 1997. Customer service? If I have problems with Windows, I go look it up on a web forum. So hopefully if nothing else, the Microsoft partnership will spawn a bunch of those, where we can get self-serve support.

Because I really like that Nook Touch with Glow Light (with expandable memory!). But until the support situation improves, I’ll keep reading Kindle books on my Android phone. 😀

What do you think? I’d love to hear from you! Do you think Microsoft’s buy-in to the Nook will make things better for the customer? Do you have any other crystal ball revelations? Please share!

The Stylish Blogger Award: Favorite Things

Last month, blogging friend Debra Kristi honored me by awarding me the Stylish Blogger Award. Thank you, Debra! She actually posted this on Nov. 5th, but I had other posts booked already, and Stacy McKitrick had awarded me the Versatile Blogger Award just a few weeks earlier, so didn’t want to post something similar so soon.

The Stylish Blogger Award works in much the same way: post seven random things about yourself, then name four or five blogging friends you’d like to pass the honor on to. I’m posting seven of my Favorite things:

Favorite drink: Mountain Dew. I love this stuff. I could drink it all day, but in the interest of health (and my waistline), I limit myself to one per day. Among the many cool things we saw when I went to China a couple years ago with my daughter’s choir, was finding Mountain Dew at the Terra Cotta Warriors museum in Xian. Being made with cane sugar, it tasted like our Throwback Mountain Dew, which is the best!

I will use this photo on my blog whenever possible, because it’s that awesome

Favorite car: Camaro – especially the new ones, but I like them all. This probably started with my earliest memory: going to get my dad’s new car when I was two and a half. It was a red, ’69 Camaro with black stripes, and my brother still owns it.

Favorite children’s book: Black and Blue Magic, by Zilpha Keatley Snyder. I was probably twelve when I read it for the first time, and I still remember it. It’s the story of a lonely, geeky boy who lived in a boarding house in the 1930’s (I think), where a boarder gave him a special, magic ointment that would make him grow wings for the night. You can imagine the trouble this kid got into! It’s gone through several different covers since, and when I searched, none looked familiar until I found this on a book collector site. The book was first published the year I was born, and this was the original cover. It gets a lot of blame for the book’s initially low sales.

Favorite band: Rush. Actually, I’d be hard-pressed to choose between them, Front Line Assembly, KMFDM, and Emerson Lake and Palmer right now, but Rush has been a favorite longer than any of the others. Please don’t ask me to pick a favorite album or song! I got my first Rush album, Exit Stage Left, when I was in ninth grade. What’s funny is my teen daughter is into vinyl records, and has been listening to all of my old Rush albums! I now have them all on MP3s.

Favorite movie: Beavis and Butthead Do America. I really can’t explain why, but almost all of my favorite movies are comedies. Maybe it’s because I can’t write funny to save myself. So imagine how excited I am that MTV brought them back last month, and I can now watch every Thursday night at ten PM. Only now, instead of making fun of music videos, they make fun of other MTV shows, like Teen Mom and Jersey Shore. Suddenly two shows I can’t stand are funny!

Favorite place to shop: Amazon. That goes double during the holiday season, because I HATE crowds. Amazon has just about everything I want or need, and I can get free shipping on orders over $25, which isn’t hard to do.

Favorite holiday show: The Grinch who Stole Christmas. Yes, I can be one, and once I actually was one, in a play. It was a choral reading rendition, and all the actors were girls. I got to play the Grinch, because I was the only one who had a suitably dark voice. My favorite scene in the original TV special is where the Grinch is slithering beneath the Christmas tree like a snake, collecting stuff. This is also my family’s favorite.

 

And now for the Stylish Bloggers to whom I’m passing the award! To accept, all you need to do is save the award image to your computer, then include it on your blog (or a post) where you list seven random things about YOU, and then pass it on to four or five other fantastic bloggers!

Samantha Warren: The author of fantasy novels like Blood of the Dragon and the Vampire Assassin series shows that generosity is never out of style. Samantha’s 30th birthday is this weekend, and to celebrate, she’s giving away free books every day this week, and a Kindle as a grand prize! Be sure to stop by and check out her Blog Scavenger Hunt for details on how you can search, answer, and win!

Karen McFarland: Karen blogs about odd yet uplifting things in the news, and hosts a bunch of cool guest bloggers. Whatever the topic, it’s about people – the fascinating, the positive, and sometimes just strange, but always a fun read.

Deborah Dale: Deborah’s Making the Most of a New York Minute blog touches on a variety of topics that include a four-part series on her and her family’s brush with the supernatural during their visit to Gettysburg.

Michele Stegman‘s Thoughts from a Writers’ Block covers all things writing, with an emphasis on things readers who also aren’t writers can find of interest too.

 

So check out those blogs, and in the meantime, pop in and share – what are some of your favorite things? Do you have a favorite scene in The Grinch Who Stole Christmas?

Guest Blog: Jim Winter

First of all, thanks to Jim for joining us here, and helping to make the mundane magical! I’ve known Jim for a loooooong time – we met my freshman year in college, <cough> years ago, through a mutual friend. I served as an early sounding board for some of Jim’s early Star Trek fanfic (you knew I’d mention that, didn’t you?:)) and later, as a beta reader for his first efforts at publishing crime fiction. Jim returned the favor and gave me some good advice for Time’s Enemy, and assured me that, yes, Tony indeed thought and acted like a guy.

So let’s dig a little deeper, and take a look at what makes Jim – and his characters – tick:

Jim, you’ve been published before by a small press. Your novel, Northcoast Shakedown, was a crime fic piece that I really enjoyed, even though that’s not a genre I read a lot. Please share your publishing experience with us:

Well, when I signed, the publisher was full of energy, and everyone on the roster became everyone else’s cheerleader. There were some hiccups getting Northcoast out, but it was a fun ride. And at the time, I had some money to spend on travel, so I used that to beef up my networking and get to know authors and booksellers. That first year was fun.

The second year was not so fun, but when any business goes under, there’s no clean way to sever ties. It’s too bad, because I really thought they could do something or be a decent launchpad for a lot of the writers. I think that’s true of a lot of small presses when they overreach. I remember UglyTown did not go quietly, despite both the publishers’ and authors’ best efforts, and Point Blank just sort of faded away. But for a short time in the middle of the last decade, it was a wild ride.

There are two more books featuring Nick Kepler, the protagonist of NCS, both of which I also beta-read and really enjoyed. I remember reading Bad Religion at work during a slow period, and having to restrain myself from laughing out loud. IMO, these books deserve to see publication, and NCS deserves another chance. Now that you’ve gone indie, do you have any plans to (re)release them?

Northcoast will definitely be out later this year. Noir master Ken Bruen wrote me a very nice intro, and I found out it was sitting on a shelf he uses for quotes when he writes. So I was very touched by Ken’s intro. He’s been one of my mentors for years, and I have one project under wraps that will bear his name on the dedication page. I’m not saying which one.

The second book, aptly titled Second Hand Goods, is going to get a rewrite and a fresh edit. I’ve evolved as a writer, and since its collected cyberdust for the last five years, I can look at it a bit more objectively.

Bad Religion is just screaming for some fresh material based on my experiences since the early drafts. I’ll likely downplay Nick and Elaine somewhat to focus on some of the other characters.

Road Rules coverWhich brings me to your new release, Road Rules. This book has a history of its own, including snagging an agent’s interest. Can you share a bit of that with us?

The seeds of Road Rules have been around for some time. Tim Mason was the earliest. A mutual acquaintance of yours and mine introduced me to this weird coworker. I’d toyed with making him a lawyer in a standalone (picturing Seth Green in the part) and a thorn in Kepler’s side, a role eventually taken by the Eric Teasdale character.

A couple years later, my publisher and I kicked around the road trip idea. I wrote a short sketch about two guys in a stolen Cadillac trying to get to Miami. Tim Mason sort of attached himself to the story.

After I got orphaned, a few friends prodded me into doing NaNoWriMo in 2006. So I fleshed out the story, hit on the idea of the decadent, yet spiritual drug lord, Julian Franco as the cause of all this chaos, and boom! The story demanded to be written.

Road trip stories are always fun! I love your tagline, “The road to hell begins with a stolen car.” But what really pulled me in were the characters. Were there any particular events, places, things you saw/heard/read that inspired the overall premise of the book, its events, or any of the characters?

The route they took was once the “long way home” from Hilton Head, SC, over a few years last decade. And having visited Savannah a few times in the process left me longing to write something set in that city. I still wanted to write about Cleveland, where I-77 begins, so the setting fell together easily.

I saw a few shows on History about holy relics and one of those true crime things about the theft of one such relic. Put those together in a city with a large Slavic population and you get St. Jakob.

Mike is based on years of working in the insurance industry. Maybe too many years. And Cinnamon was part of my desire not to have a bunch of macho white guys hosing the freeway down with testosterone. Plus, instead of the angsty tarnished knight, she’s someone just trying to prove herself.

Back in May, you released your first indie title, a short story called “A Walk in the Rain” (also a good read). What made you decide to go indie?

Well, crime doesn’t really pay well. Of course, I’ve got a short story in West Coast Crime Wave coming out this month from Bstsllr.com, which I did get paid for, but the paying markets are few and far between. I decided to get paid for my short work. I also found out that 1.) It’s the cover, stupid (though content still rules), 2.) people don’t really buy a lot of short fiction on Amazon unless it’s a collection, and 3.) it might help if you actually market an ebook.

(Jennette: A Walk in the Rain is available at Amazon for $0.99.)

Now that you’ve tasted the control and flexibility that comes with indie publishing, are you still pursuing a traditional publishing contract, or perhaps another agent?

I think eventually, I’d like to go traditional, but only under certain circumstances. I’m in a position now where I don’t have to make this a career. So the terms have to be right, and I have to be able to keep control of material I’ve already published. But if the right deal can be worked out, sure, I’ll sign.

Are you planning to offer Road Rules in print?

If enough copies sell, I’ll put it on CreateSpace. If a publisher makes a sweet enough offer, I’ll seriously consider it.

Now that Road Rules is out, what’s next for Jim Winter?

Northcoast, as I said, will be coming out. And the other two Keplers will see revisions and fresh edits. Then there’s my “magnum opus,” which I’ve been reworking since the original draft checked in at 105,000 words.

 

Thanks again for being here, Jim! And to everyone else, Road Rules is a fantastic, fun read that you owe it to yourself to check out, even if you don’t normally read crime fiction. It’s a fast-paced caper that will keep you reading – and laughing – all the way from Ohio to Georgia, along with Mike, Stan, and Cinnamon. Road Rules is available in your choice of e-formats for a knockout price of $ .99 at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords.

Jim keeps a fun, entertaining blog at http://eviljwinter.wordpress.com where he writes about books, publishing, sports, Cincinnati, technology, and whatever else strikes his fancy.

Anyone have questions for Jim? Feel free to ask, or just comment to say Hi!