Ray Sullivan SciFi Zone: The Wild, Weird, Wacky World of ePublishing

I guess a few of you have noticed that Project: Evil had been launched as an eBook, as within minutes of it going live on Smashwords I saw the downloads clock up. Within a day, more copies of Project: Evil had been downloaded on Smashwords than any other book I've listed there, including my other free to download book, The Last Simple (AKA Da Dan Brown Code).

I noticed that all my other books were being looked at a little bit more than they had recently, so it appears that listing the book for free had the effect of opening up my other work to new eyes, which is a nice way of marketing, I think. I was pleasantly pleased to see The Last Simple being downloaded as well, initially at about one tenth of the rate Project: Evil was being downloaded. Now, The Last Simple didn't get much attention from the Smashwords community from when I listed it on Christmas Day, so a slow uptick was pleasant enough. In fact, the only place where The Last Simple had seemed to generate any real interest up until now was on Barnes & Noble, where they frequently report largish monthly downloads of the book - it must be something about Nook readers that it tickles, I guess.

But then suddenly I noticed The Last Simple downloads increasing and in the last 36 hours three times as many copies have been downloaded from Smashwords as had been downloaded in the previous seven months. Now it's Project: Evil that's running at ten percent of The Last Simple download rate!

Right now I'm waiting for Smashwords to approve Project: Evil for their Premium Catalogue - once that happens it'll ship to Apple, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, Sony, WH Smith and many other good eBookstores. Hopefully the reaction on Smashwords is an indication of what the consumers at these stores will have.

And then there's Amazon.

Regular visitors to this blog will know I've been experiencing some issues with the paperback versions of my books being listed correctly outside of the US with the exception of the German Amazon organisation. It's been going on for months now, but in the UK and most EU Amazon stores there's no blurb attached to two of my paperback versions, Skin and The Journeymen. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone should want to buy a book without a description of the content unless it was so famous that the blurb was irrelevant. Amazon seem to think it might work, it would seem. Incredibly I actually sold a paperback copy of The Journeymen in the UK despite the lack of blurb, so some reader obviously had a lot of faith in the product. I hope he or she enjoyed the book and if that person is reading this I can confirm absolutely that it is the only production paperback version sold, so if you want me to validate it as such (in case I become famous) then drop me a line!

Anyway, I've been periodically checking Amazon UK to see if the blurb had turned up and tonight I noticed that Digital Life Form, Skin and The Journeymen paperbacks have been discounted by Amazon, approximately by the amount of royalty I'm supposed to get after one is sold. I've asked the inevitable question as to who bears the discount and await their reply. I was checking the US site to see if they were discounting my paperbacks only to notice something even more disturbing - they've jacked up the price of my eBooks taking Skin, for example, up to $6.42. I list it at $3.99 everywhere else and that's the price I instructed Amazon to list it at. It's no wonder I'm not getting a lot of sales from Amazon over the pond!

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I can be followed on Twitter too - @RayASullivan
or on Facebook - use raysullivan.novels@yahoo.com to find me

To find out more about my ancestors visit my sister’s website http://sullivanfamilyhistory.angelfire.com/

Visit my books on Amazon (for Kindle owners) and Smashwords (for access to all other formats and access to Apple iBooks, Barnes and Noble, Sony, WH Smith, Kobo and many other good ebookstores.

Digital Life Form is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $7.99 and Amazon.co.uk for £5.99

The Last Simple is available on Amazon.com in paperback for $5.99 and Amazon.co.uk for £4.99

The Journeymen is available for $8.99 or £6.99 in the UK

Skin is available for $9.99 or £6.99 in the UK

For quick access to the various Kindle, Kobo, WH Smith and Smashword links please use the table below to view my books.

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