Apparently the Santa in my life thought I was just nice enough to deserve a brand new Kindle for Christmas. Eventually, maybe, I would have gotten it for myself, but it really is a very thoughtful gift and so far, I love it. It’s also important because it will probably be the first format I publish my novel in, and as writers, we’ve got to get with the program.
My favorite feature on it so far is the ability to download a sample of a book before buying the whole thing. I decided to try this feature out on a writer I follow on Twitter who has done a shitload of self-promotion and whose persistence I figured warranted my no-cost 30-minute (40 if you count the part where I stopped to reheat my leftover Christmas ham) perusal. On Kindle, his book’s list price is $5.99, which is about 3 times what I typically pay for a book, and since I had the option to try it before buying, I leapt at the chance.
I was THIS close to buying the book after the sample, and it wasn’t even that good. Still, it had enough good moments to make buying the book a weighty decision in my mind. I know the sample will sucker me into cracking open the wallet for much better written books in the future.
It also gave me a little confidence boost. After all, this guy isn’t some schmo who self-published in his basement. He’s a guy that got picked up by an independent press that does their business mostly in ebooks. He was trying way, WAY too hard to imitate Tucker Max but did so badly. He overused metaphors and even did some shifts in tense in the same sentence – things even a lowly barely-published writer with a BA in Creative Writing from a state school could pull off. If this guy can get accepted by an independent book publisher and charge $5.99 for his work, then I probably can, too.
New Year’s Resolution to follow…
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