Lending Enabled: the sport of kings.

All of my titles on Amazon have lending enabled as far as I know, and currently my new thriller 'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery,' is free for Kindle from Amazon. I am not however enrolled in the new KDP Select program, which is where Amazon has a fund to pay out to authors who make their book available for free.

The offer has some rules. Authors may promote their books free for five days, and it must be exclusive to Amazon. The prize kitty is divvied up based on the percentage total of books loaned out monthly, according to stats kept by Amazon.

Fair enough. I didn't enroll, and I didn't really have any good reasons. Maybe just caution, or a wait and see attitude.

When 'The Handbag's Tale' went free a few months ago, it was because I was giving it away on Smashwords and Amazon has a price-matching policy.

I wasn't even online, being in the midst of 'temporarily transitioning between places of abode.' I was signing onto other people's computers and basically just trying to maintain some sort of a web-presence.

Imagine my surprise to discover that I had given away about 800 books and it wasn't even nine-thirty on a Monday morning. During e-book week on Smashwords the previous March, I worked my butt off to give away 130 e-books, and thought that was doing okay, right?

Over the course of two or three months, I gave away about 7,800 copies of 'The Handbag's Tale.' When 'Core Values' went free on Amazon, we gave away something like 6,300 copies of that e-book.

Since 'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery' went free a week ago Monday, I've given away less than 600 copies in a week. This is probably due to the fact that a lot of authors have clued in on the value of giving away free product, and have signed up for KDP Select. Essentially, there are a lot more people doing it, and Amazon promotes those books in a separate area, and my book is not in there.

'The Handbag's Tale' was as high as #7 in its category at one point, and spent a fair amount of time in the top 20. 'Core Values' made it up into the top 20 briefly, but even then, it was quickly apparent that once she starts to fall, there's not a whole lot a relatviely unknown author can do about it, bearing in mind the limited audience I have so far managed to build.

It's quite a kick to see a book flying out the door, even when it's free, yet the second time the rush was somehow diminished...I wouldn't say it has become routine, but maybe our expectations are a little more realistic. That's not to say we won't keep going, because we will. Right?

Right.

As far as 'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery' is concerned, it got up to #450, and then quickly began to plummet once more. Now it's around the #1500 level, and seems likely to keep on going.

Other than that, lending is enabled and so is 'text-to-speech,' a feature that I consider a wonderful option if you're considering e-books for the elderly or the disabled.

This really is the sport of kings.

Excerpt, 'Redemption'

Cold wind blasted at his face, the stench of petrol ever-present. Focused as he was, thoughts of fire reveled in the back of his mind. Huddled over the stick, bundled in layers of clothes, his guts still ached from the hours of shivering.

Looking over the side, the crossroads he sought passed under his wheels. Huddled in the cockpit against the icy chill, inscrutable in the helmet, mask and goggles, the beauty of the land below, darkened in irregular blotches by patches of cloud, a low mist still hanging in some of the valleys, meant nothing. The brazen sun came in over his right shoulder, and the details leapt up at him, but there was no joy in this revelation. It was irrelevant.

The clock on the instrument panel mocked his every desire, and reinforced his every terror. If only she knew what he knew, she would never forgive him. But for her, he had sacrificed everything, and it still wasn’t his fault.

It wasn’t his fault and he didn’t want to pay the price. White knuckles gripped the control column, and his head swung on a pivot, his gleaming dark eyes probing everything with rapier-sharp focus from behind the thin glass. He had no choice in the matter.

The fearful burden that he bore must go with him to his grave, for surely the truth, a truth so obvious, would never be accepted. It would never be accepted of him, never in a thousand years.

One little lie to get somewhere in life, and it had led to this inescapable moment in time. The barrier looming ahead made his lower guts tighten up in anticipation. Heavy straps tugging at his body in the sudden turbulence gave little reassurance.

The white fog obscured all vision and even dulled the sound of the motor. Rarely for him, the tension rose a thousand-fold, but this was different. There was no going back now. He stared at the turn-and-bank indicator in fixed concentration. What people said was absolutely right—there was just no way to tell if you were in straight and level flight inside of the cloud, or if you were in a one-way, one-gravity death spiral, with the cold and indifferent earth rising up to meet you. If the instruments had shaken, or tumbled, or gone off in any way, he might have given up and just let go, but they were serene in their confidence to measure simple forces. Theory was nothing when confronted by the reality.

The parachute bulging so uncomfortably under him was of no comfort at all. The thought of using it for anything other than an emergency, a fire in the air perhaps, had always terrified him.

People also said you couldn’t really tell the difference between vertigo and sheer horror. They said it was a kind of physical, totally-detached temporary insanity, where the whole world was spinning on you. In his experience, people said an awful lot of stupid things.

Normally a very confident young man, he was finding that this one was unfortunately true. He felt sick, deep in the pit of his stomach, a feeling that had been constantly with him for many hours.

Perhaps it would be just as well if he did lose control. He could die with a little dignity and his honour intact.

'Redemption: an Inspector Gilles Maintenon mystery,' is presently free across all platforms, so whether you have a Nook, a Kindle, or an iPad, a Sony Reader or other device there's no excuse not to take advantage of this offer.

I hope you enjoy the story.

The Raven

Watching with a baleful eye
A black scavenger,
Sentinel of the sky
Looking for a weakness,
Looking for a chance
Looking for an error,
Young lovers, caught up in the dance
With a shriek and a pounce,
He seizes on his prey
And another newborn baby
Is safely stole away
Lurking in the darkness
Clutching a branch so cold
Raven has the desperation of youth
And the sour wisdom of the old
In spite of all the raucous noise
In the end he is alone
And when I look out through his eyes
I can see why he is so bold
For the world is a big and empty place
And the nights get very cold.

Appears in 'Selected Poems,' available from Smashwords in several popular formats.