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Free Day – Standing Guard on Amazon
January 1, 2013
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Happy New Year!To start the new year with a bang (hopefully), Standing Guard is free to download on Amazon today, world-wide.
Amazon.com
Amazon.co.ukOther Amazon Sites:
Amazon.com (includes India)
Amazon.co.uk (UK)
Amazon.ca (Canada)
Amazon.fr (France)
Amazon.de (Germany)
Amazon.it (Italy)
Amazon.es (Spain)
Amazon.co.jp (Japan)
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A Select Affair
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I've put my first title into Amazon Select.
Usually when I release a story it goes to Amazon and Smashwords to get full distribution. However thanks to a computer issue I can't generate .doc files for Smashwords at the moment and I'm writing everything in .rtf, so Standing Guard went onto Amazon only. So this gives me a chance to try out Select.Select offers authors two things: money for borrows, and the ability to offer their book for free on certain days. For me, the second is the larger advantage. The ability to give away titles through Amazon free is something I usually can't do since Kindle Gifting is unavailable to authors outside the US. So I'm trying it out.
The Day: New Years Day
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The Title: Standing Guard
The Place: -
Sample Sunday – Standing Guard
December 23, 2012
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Amazon.co.uk or Amazon.com
This Sunday's sample is the first few pages of Standing Guard.The laws of sea and air are clear: the person who receives a distress call is bound to assist.
Even if they are in a very old aircraft, over a very large ocean, looking for a very small boat.
Amazon Prime members can get this book on loan free to read.
KindleReader.LoadSample({containerID: 'kindleReaderDiv37', asin: 'B00AP71U1G', width: '500', height: '671', assoctag: 'kindleboards-20'});
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Samples of other books are available here. -
Fire Season Feature
December 18, 2012
Fire Season - Fire Season has just been featured on Indie Author Anonymous, as today's spotlight book.View FeatureWith Standing Guard out now and available, that's good timing. The second story in the Days at Brooke's Vale series is due shortly, provisionally titled Guarding the Gate. Read More
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Standing Guard – a new short story
December 17, 2012
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A new blog, and my first announcement is a new ebook short story. Standing Guard is a short story, part of the series set the season after Fire Season.
Flying home from their display seems a perfect time for Jim to train his wife on radio procedures. An SOS on a non-aviation channel was the last thing he expected to hear. The laws of sea and air are clear: the person who receives a distress call is bound to assist...
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...even if they are in a very old aircraft, over a very large ocean, looking for a very small boat.
Originally these stories were going to be one novel, but with everything that has happened this year I have been unable to complete that. Instead the set is going to be released as a series of short stories, hopefully with an anthology at -
Migration from blogger
December 17, 2012
Uncategorized - Migration away from the blogspot blog will be occurring shortly, since my new blog will be integrated with the book websites, making things easier to keep track of. There's a preview of the new blog at: http://vhfolland.com/wp/ ...and the first post has a small announcement.Read More
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A Smashwords Announcement
May 8, 2012
Uncategorized - I have just transferred all my Smashwords titles to Ragged Angel Ltd, who will now be handling most of my account on there. This isn't because I'm upset with Smashwords (on the contrary, I think they are great) but because it simplifies a lot of things at this end. RA already handle my Amazon titles, so it puts all the royalties in one place. This obviously simplifies tax and accounting. Also, because of the obvious difficulty of trying to get an ITIN with a penname, managing tax through a company that is a legal entity and can get its own is a lot simpler.On the admin side, they already do the formatting for me, so instead of me writing, sending the manuscript off, getting the formatted copy back and uploading, now I just send it off and they do the rest. They also own their own ISBNs,Read More
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Sad news
April 22, 2012
Uncategorized - There is no easy way to say this: the person to whom Fire Season was dedicated has died.The words are inadequate, but he will be sorely missed by all that knew him.Never forgotten.Read More
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Smashwords and Tools
February 21, 2012
Uncategorized - Less about writing, more about testing: the Smashwords Tools have moved to http://www.smashingreads.com.The move had been planned for a while, but after Smashwords downtime due to the Slicehost failure it became obvious we needed it. The new setup has server caching that should keep the widgets visible throughout any downtime. And there's a new widget to go with it: author minisites with convenient links to third parties. Rather than detail them, I'll just show you mine as an example:http://www.smashingreads.com/author/vhfollandRead More
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Musings on Marketing
February 14, 2012
Promotion - This is an odd post, and one that I didn't expect to write.Before Christmas I went all out on marketing - blogs, promotions, even a book launch and signing. After Christmas I stopped. Aside from one token offered in a competition right at the start of January I have done no promotion at all for the last six weeks. My sales figures are exactly the same. This hard data is a telling comment on the effectiveness of my marketing efforts. It's also a good reason to stop spending any time or money on them and focus on writing. The only things I am likely to continue with are the Project Wonderful ads (since the publisher manages those) and sending out review copies. Anything else appears to have very little effect.Many indie authors take the line that the best marketing is the next book. I thinkRead More