Holiday Freebies

During November and December, you'll be able to get free copies of Crump (11/12-11/16), Crump Too (11/26-11/30), and Psalms of the Apocalypse (12/22-12/26) on Amazon Kindle.

Each of these books will only be free for the five-day window listed by each title above, so make sure you get in there and get your copies during those short windows or else you're out of luck.

Once you get your copies, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD PLEASE LEAVE A REVIEW. 

Best Review of All Time

As a not-so-well-known writer, I feel like I'm always begging for reviews. But after today, I think I can hang up my hat because I have received the single best review of all time.

You can still get Crump for FREE on Kindle through 5/4. Go get a copy, be offended, and write me an amazing review.

Reviews

I'm not a best-selling author, but I do have consistent sales across a variety of genres. But even though a growing number of people have paid money to get their hands on my books, I find that drumming up reviews is like pulling teeth. So when I do get a review, I'm super excited. I love getting feedback from readers. Getting a review on Amazon or Goodreads makes it feel less like I'm tossing my books out into the void and more like I'm making some sort of meaningful contribution to the zeitgeist.

So just to recap: Reviews are awesome. Please review my books. Be brutally honest. I can take it.

That said, would it kill people to sprinkle their reviews with a dash of intelligence? It's grating to get a review along the lines of... 

"This book was great, but it's part of a series and I hate series book. One star."

"Super engaging and fun to read, but I hate science-fiction. One star."

"I laughed, I cried, I shit my pants. But I don't like words with vowels in them. One star."

Why do people write reviews like this? Granted, only two of these examples are based on actual reviews, but the point's the same. People that knock a product because they didn't like some innate aspect of that product (such as its genre or number of pages) should have their reviewing rights revoked. How the fuck can you like something and then give it a shitty rating because of something that is a feature and not a bug?

Anyway, there's my Friday rant.

And again, I love reviews. I want them. Please write them. Just don't be an idiot about it.

Kindle eBook Updates

One of the coolest features of Kindle eBooks is that they can be updated to correct distracting formatting or publishing errors, to add new content, or to fix gaping plot holes. These updates happen automatically for many of Amazon's reading devices and apps (and is the default option for some platforms).

I highly recommend that you turn on these updates so that you always have the most up-to-date version of your eBooks. As an example of new content that you would be missing, if you didn't have automatic updates enabled, I've recently started to update all of my books to take advantage of Amazon's X-Ray feature. Without automatic updates, you wouldn't be able to see all this new content!

I grabbed these instructions from Amazon on how to enable automatic updates for your eBooks. Turn it on and stay up to date!

To receive updates to your eBooks automatically:

1. Turn on the Annotations Backup* for your Kindle device or Kindle reading app. This will sync your notes, highlights, eBookmarks, and furthest page read 
2. Go to the Manage Your Content and Devices page 
3. Select "Automatic Book Update" under the Settings tab
4. Select "On" from the dropdown menu

Note: The Automatic Book Update feature might not be available for markets outside of the U.S.
*The devices listed below automatically enable the Annotations Backup. As a result, you won't be able turn off the Backup.

• Fire HD

• Fire HDX

• Kindle for Android

• Kindle for Windows 8

• Kindle for BlackBerry 10

Crump Giveaway

In celebration of the one year anniversary of the United States electing a bright orange man-child to the highest office in the land, I'm giving away free copies of my political satire novel Crump! If you'd like to get a paperback copy of Crump (and you have a Twitter account), then you should definitely enter the Crump Amazon giveaway. It's running through 11/8/2017. Good luck!

X-Ray for Kindle

I was reading through Amazon's monthly newsletter and learned about the X-Ray feature - which is essentially an on-demand index that you can pull up by pressing and holding on the name of a character, place, event, or term in the book. This is super cool, so I've been updating all of my books to have X-Ray. I'll probably have them all updated in the next week or so.

Reviews!

It's the end of October, which means that the holiday season is just around the corner and the gift-buying frenzy of Christmas is already getting started. During the next couple months many, many Amazon Kindles will be sold and many, many more Kindle eBooks will be consumed. It's a very exciting time for KDP writers. All those Kindles flying off the shelves means more and more people getting access to Amazon's massive eBook library and to the books that we write!

If you happen to be one of those lucky new Kindle owners, or maybe you're just going to be catching up on some reading during the holidays, I'd like to give you a nudge to leave reviews on all the books you read. It's super easy to review a Kindle book (you don't even have to write anything, and you don't need to attach any of your own personal information to the review), and reviews are priceless to authors! Not only do reviews help us with feedback about our work, reviews also play a vital role in how our books are displayed on Amazon. The more reviews, the better. Especially 5-star reviews. And since we are entering into the holiday season, you can definitely think of your reviews as presents to the authors that you enjoy reading.

So feel free to spread holiday cheer this season and leave reviews for every Kindle eBook that you read. Your reviews will make KDP authors very, very happy and keep them writing all those wonderful books that you love to read.

Lumiuxx Kindle Edition Giveaway

This week (8/14-8/18) you can get the first book in the Psalms of the Apocalypse series for free on your Kindle. Click here to get a copy and don't forget to leave a 5-star review :)

What to Read

As a relatively unknown and unread author, the plight of the emerging writer is one that I can relate to quite well. Because of this, I made the decision back in May to start focusing my scarce reading time on the work of independent, new, and relatively unknown writers. I'll be honest, much of the stereotypes about independently published authors is firmly based in reality, but I've also found some real hidden gems.

That said, my goal isn't really to find authors that I enjoy reading. What I'm aiming to do here is to read and then honestly rate books so that they can be represented on Amazon in a way that provides other readers with meaningful feedback on the book and the author with the chance to get an idea of what people really think about their work. I think that this is the sort of thing that all small time authors should be doing. Not only does it help our own writing, but it also helps out fellow authors. It is frustrating as fuck to have books out there that get consistent (albeit low) sales, but garner zero reviews. Reviews help drive sales and, perhaps more importantly, reviews help keep writers motivated to keep writing.

So, I'm issuing a call to action to all independent, aspiring, emerging, fledgling, amateur, semi-pro, self-published, unknown writers out there: go and read a book by another author that's in your same situation. Once you've read it, leave an honest review. If we all did this, we would all have a handful of reviews (or at least starred ratings), and I feel that the writing world would genuinely be a better place :D