My Kindle with its GelaSkin cover

I haven’t blogged about my Kindle and writing here for a long while. I generally save those posts for my other blog at http:www.bookarecool.com, but I thought it was time for an update here.

First of all, my Kindle has been transformed. The kids clubbed together to buy me a GelaSkin for it for my birthday. It took the scenic route via the North Pole and then the South Pole to get here several weeks after the event, but it was worth the wait. Isn’t it brilliant? I had no idea such things existed. Totally frivolous and pointless, but wonderful.

I now have two books up on Kindle. Beat the Hackers has joined Oh Auntie! up there on the various Amazon sites. Caiti designed me a super cover for it. You’ll find a sample here. The book itself is here on Amazon.com and here on Amazon.co.uk.

 

 

Benj busy scanning

I’ll have another half dozen books out on Kindle soon. Benj has been busy scanning my print books for me into OCR format so that has dramatically speeded up the process. I’d had to type Hackers out again, updating and revising as I went, all 15,000 words of it, as I didn’t have the original files any more. They are on a long defunct computer and a nearly as long defunct backup device! So with Caiti designing some of the covers, Benj scanning and Chris helping on the SEO side of things and helping me build websites to go with a couple of forthcoming books, my books are a real family affair. I must mention Roger Fereday too, who drew the cover for Oh Auntie! and is busy creating some more for me.

A further spin-off from my indie authoring venture is that I’m setting up a new editing business. I’d noticed a lot of posts on forums asking about where to find editors for ebooks. And since I’m an editor, and have been for 25 years, and also through my authoring have an understanding of the ebook world, this seemed like a good opportunity for me. So www.ebook-ed.it will be hitting the world soon. Since the suffix .it is the abbrevation for Italy, someone somewhere in Italy has to OK my using it for the website! I’ll let you know how that goes.

Caiti's awesome cover design

However, I’m buying fewer Kindle books. I’ve become increasingly frustrated at having to pay 3.44 dollars for 99 cent books because of the extra sales taxes Amazon plonks on books ‘sent’ to France. I now buy the same books in .mobi format from Smashwords. I’ve uploaded the Kindle app onto my PC and I read the books on there. I much prefer reading from my Kindle, but I’m not going to keep on paying an unnecessary 2.45 dollars for ebooks.

Finally, a quick mention for Kindlegraph. This is a way that authors can ‘sign’ books on Kindle. It’s quite ingenious. Take a look here.