Two online bookstores closing up shop this month, and free story updates

Two online bookstores are closing up this shop – Sony and Diesel.  It’s a pity to see them go, because as Smashwords partners they didn’t cost any extra effort to distribute to.  Diesel only ever made me $5.40 over the 1.5 or so years I’ve been an author, and Sony made me $23.40, but dammit I liked the fact that they were out there and they were options besides Amazon.  Sony is putting its customers first and has arranged to transition their customers to Kobo (another place where my titles are available), but Diesel seems to be just closing up shop at the end of the month and leaving everyone hanging.  That annoys me, because customer experiences like that are exactly why customers will want to buy their eBooks at Amazon instead of smaller booksellers.  Barnes + Noble is still out there fighting the good fight, but I’m not sure how durable they are.  I’m just really hoping that Scribd makes a go of it.  The world needs more good eBook sales competition, and Scribd is to eBooks what Netflix is to video.  It’s also something Amazon could easily do with its Kindle lending library, but they limit it to one eBook a month.  If they start offering a flat fee for unlimited eBook access, I’m sure they’d bury poor Scribd unless Scribd has a lot more content opted-in for it.  I know I sure as hell won’t opt into KDP’s terms, which Amazon would probably want in order to make your eBooks available for a Netflix-style revenue stream setup.

New editions of my free stories.  Lately, I’ve been working on re-editing the free versions of my stories – the Progenitor series, Breeding Camelot Style, and She Only Wore a Shirt to the Funeral.  I realized that since that’s the first exposure most people have to my writing, it’s probably for the best if I make sure that writing is better-polished.  And because I want to maintain better control over updates, and be able to update the “Check out my other stories!” links in the back readily, I’m actually going to host them on this site.  I’ve already put Progenitor 1 out as a PDF (see below), and I’m just about done with She Only Wore a Shirt to he Funeral.

Progenitor 1, Free PDF Edition
Progenitor 1, Free PDF Edition

Changes to the way I link to my stories.  Instead of having the icons on the right going straight to Amazon, clicking a book’s cover will now take you to a page for the story in question, where you may click on the vendor of your choice to make your purchase (or download the free version, for stories with free versions).

 


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One response to “Two online bookstores closing up shop this month, and free story updates”

  1. […] Incidentally, this is the link to my previous post on both Sony and Diesel shuttering their stores… https://new.haramiru.com/2014/03/two-online-bookstores-closing-up-shop-this-month-and-free-story-updates/ […]

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