The 6th, and last, free ebook I’m offering is the Innerscape Omnibus which includes all three books of the Innerscape trilogy.
If you’ve already downloaded the individual books, there’s no need to download the Omnibus, unless you want to, of course. 😉
The Omnibus is free on Amazon now, and I’ve provided some of the major links to the various Amazon market places below. As with the first five books, the Omnibus will be free for 5 days [ending April 3, 2021].
I left the Omnibus until last because I intend to unpublish it on April 14, 2021 which is two days after I first published it on April 12, 2020 – an almost-anniversary. I know we’re not in the clear from Covid yet, but at least there’s light at the end of the tunnel, so I feel it’s a good time to retire this particular version. I may drag it out of mothballs for the odd special occasion, but for now it will enjoy a well earned rest. 😀
I would love everyone to grab a copy of the Omnibus while it’s free. I’d also urge anyone who hasn’t grabbed a copy of the other books to do so now, while they’re still 99c. On April 3, they will all return to their normal pricing.
I’ve tried not to check the Amazon reports too often so I’ve been gobsmacked by how many people have downloaded the books. I’ve also been incredibly heartened by the wonderful reviews they’ve all received. That was a very pleasant surprise as I’d only been hoping for a couple of reviews for Miira and Vokhtah. Thank you, all of you. -hugs-
I think we all know by now that 2021 is not going to become a good year any time soon. Despite the rollout of vaccines in most countries, it will take a long time before enough people are vaccinated to provide herd immunity* to those who aren’t. For most diseases, that means at least 70% of a population have to be vaccinated before herd immunity can kick in. With Covid-19, no one’s sure how much of the population has to be immune. There’s also a great big question mark around what the current vaccines will actually accomplish. Will they simply stop the disease? Or will they also stop infected people from passing it on?
So…. 2021 is likely to get a lot worse before it gets better. For the Offspring and I, that means we’ll be in self-isolation for a long time yet. Because of that, I thought there was no point setting any goals for the coming year. I was wrong. There are things I can do, both for myself and for others; it just took a while for me to see it.
One thing I’ve always been bad at is marketing, but marketing these days is mostly digital, so I’ve decided that my goal for 2021 is to get one more review for Miira and Vokhtah. Both are sitting on 19 reviews, and I’d love to see that number change to 20. Not a big goal, I know, but it’s an achievable goal if I pull my finger out and actually do some marketing!
“But I hate marketing!”
I’m probably the world’s worst salesperson, but I discovered a long time ago that when I believe in a product, my enthusiasm accomplishes what my lack of skill cannot – I can make others want to see what has me so excited.
“But I hate marketing my own stuff!”
Sadly, women of my vintage were brought up to believe that ‘showing off’ was the worst thing a woman could do short of flashing her boobs in public. I recognize the conditioning. I acknowledge that it’s incredibly unfair – why should men be able to blow their own trumpet while we have to be demure and self-effacing? But this fear of being seen as a show-off is so deeply ingrained that I cannot shift it.
But I can trick it into shutting up. 🙂 And this is where my light bulb moment kicked in. If I give my books away for free, I’ll be getting eyes on my work AND I’ll be providing some escapism for those who are still in limbo. And that is exactly what I plan to do.
The first step of this grand plan is to drop the price of all my books to 0.99 cents. Then, once every two weeks, I’ll put one of the books up for free on Amazon. The book will remain free for 5 consecutive days before returning to the 0.99 cent price point. When the last book has had its turn at free, I’ll put all the books back to their original price points.
This is what my books cost now:
Prices shown are for Amazon.com as at January 15, 2021
I’m not sure how long it will take for the price change to register on Amazon, but I’ll post an update when the new prices are available.
So that’s my grand plan. If I achieve the two extra reviews I’ll be happy. If I don’t, I can still hope that my stories ease the strain of this weird point in time, at least a little, and…I’ve got a plan for the next twelve weeks.
much love, Meeks
…*… herd immunity works by surrounding infectious people with people who are already immune. To survive, the bacterium or virus needs new hosts to infect. With no new hosts available, the bacterium or virus runs its course and dies. Eventually, every infected person recovers and bingo, no more virus. To get to that point though, an awful lot of people have to be immunised at the same time, otherwise the virus just keeps ticking along.
Bad news for WordPress.com users – the progress bar can only be installed by those using WordPress.org. The reason? Only the paid, hosted version allows bloggers to install plugins. And the progress bar is a plugin.
How do I know? This is a screenshot from the download site for the progress bar. It shows what the plugin looks like after it’s installed:
For newer bloggers, that’s the old Admin. Dashboard. With WordPress.com you cannot add anything to the Dashboard menu. Nothing. Zip. Rien. Therefore, the screenshot must be of the WordPress.org dashboard. And that means us Freebloggers can’t use the progress bar. -cries quietly-
<<end update>>
While looking for something else entirely, I discovered a WordPress widget called ‘Gallery’. And voila! There it is on the sidebar to the right. The images are a little small, but it’s nice to be able to do something useful with all those faces!
And the gallery provides a nice introduction to the price change for the Innerscape Omnibus. In line with most other bundles on Amazon, I’ve raised the price to $5.99. This price point makes it slightly cheaper than buying each book separately, and it allows me to do ‘specials’ every now and then without having to do an exclusive via KDP.
The instructions mention that you can get this app via the WordPress widgets. That’s not quite right. It is not available on the free, WordPress.com widget page. I assume it will be available to the paid WordPress.org sites. If someone could check that out for me I’d be eternally grateful!
Still on the progress bar, there is a manual way of inserting it into your blog but I haven’t tried it out yet. If I get it to work, I’ll post a mini how-to about it. Alternately, if someone out there gets it to work, please post some instructions, preferably with pictures so we can all start using it!
Ahem, and the reason I want that progress bar is because, as Robert Chazz Chute says:
‘The meters really get me amped and moving. I don’t want to see a static progress bar and measurement gives me a sense of momentum. That which cannot be measured will not be improved.’
Like Robert, I’m all betwixt and between at the moment. Once I sit down and start writing, I’m okay, but getting myself to that point has never been this hard before. I know what’s causing at least part of the problem – that miserable virus – but knowing and ignoring are two very different things. So, I’m hoping a progress bar will give me that little bit of extra incentive to ignore the outside world and escape into Vokhtah again.
Okay, I feel as if I’ve been productive enough. Time for some lunch. Cheers!
While looking for something else entirely, I discovered a WordPress widget called ‘Gallery’. And voila! There it is on the sidebar to the right. The images are a little small, but it’s nice to be able to do something useful with all those faces!
And the gallery provides a nice introduction to the price change for the Innerscape Omnibus. In line with most other bundles on Amazon, I’ve raised the price to $5.99. This price point makes it slightly cheaper than buying each book separately, and it allows me to do ‘specials’ every now and then without having to do an exclusive via KDP.
The instructions mention that you can get this app via the WordPress widgets. That’s not quite right. It is not available on the free, WordPress.com widget page. I assume it will be available to the paid WordPress.org sites. If someone could check that out for me I’d be eternally grateful!
Still on the progress bar, there is a manual way of inserting it into your blog but I haven’t tried it out yet. If I get it to work, I’ll post a mini how-to about it. Alternately, if someone out there gets it to work, please post some instructions, preferably with pictures so we can all start using it!
Ahem, and the reason I want that progress bar is because, as Robert Chazz Chute says:
‘The meters really get me amped and moving. I don’t want to see a static progress bar and measurement gives me a sense of momentum. That which cannot be measured will not be improved.’
Like Robert, I’m all betwixt and between at the moment. Once I sit down and start writing, I’m okay, but getting myself to that point has never been this hard before. I know what’s causing at least part of the problem – that miserable virus – but knowing and ignoring are two very different things. So, I’m hoping a progress bar will give me that little bit of extra incentive to ignore the outside world and escape into Vokhtah again.
Okay, I feel as if I’ve been productive enough. Time for some lunch. Cheers!
Starting Monday the 20th of April, the Innerscape Omnibus will be free on Amazon. The free period ends on April the 24th, so expect to be annoyed with constant reminders until them. 🙂
Please share with anyone who’s stuck at home and likes sci-fi. And reading, of course! At almost 1000 pages, the Omnibus should keep all but the fastest readers occupied for quite a while.
At this point, I’m thinking of unpublishing the Omnibus once the 90 day KDP exclusive period is over, so please grab a free copy on Monday! Or Tuesday. Or Wednesday…
In my last post I sent out a call for help, and my wonderful online friends answered.
This is the ‘before’ blurb:
‘Innerscape is marketed as a digital paradise where the terminally ill live out their lives in young, pain free bodies indistinguishable from the real thing. But Miira Tahn, last Lady of Dhurai, soon discovers that all is not well in paradise; an assassin is stalking the Burning Man, and nothing is what it seems. Together with friends, Kenneth Wu and Jaimie Watson, Miira becomes embroiled in a deadly game of cat and mouse where losing means death. Only by fighting back can she save herself, and those she loves.’
This is the ‘after’ blurb that will accompany the Omnibus onto the Kindle:
Innerscape: a virtual paradise where the terminally ill live out their lives in young, pain free bodies. But Miira Tahn discovers paradise is an illusion. An assassin stalks the Burning Man. Lies masquerade as truth. Together with her friends, Miira plunges into a deadly game of cat and mouse. If she loses, she loses everything. Her life – Those she loves – All of Innerscape.
As I explained in the post ‘The Omnibus hits a pot hole‘, I can’t make Innerscape directly available on the Kobo ereader because Rakuten won’t allow me to use ‘acflory’ as my name. -rolls eyes- But where there’s a will, and a lot of help from a friend… ta dah, a workaround!
The friend in question is Dawn from DawnGillDesigns. You may also know her as the Silversmith. Anyway, I knew Dawn used the Kobo ereader so I contacted her and asked her to see if she could download the epub version of the Omnibus from sync.com, and read it on her Kobo. These are the pics she sent me:
This was straight out of the box, so to speak. The next one is after she adjusted both the font and the margins:
Proof positive that the epub can be sideloaded onto the Kobo! But how did Dawn do it? And was it hard to do?
When I quizzed Dawn about her method, this is what she wrote back:
‘It was super basic. I clicked on the link you sent me. My virus scanner scanned it, and then I plugged in my kobo. This automatically brought up a pane within file explorer, so I was able to drag the download icon at the footer of my browser window across. Then I ejected my kobo, by right clicking on the USB icon, and let it do it’s thing. Even easier than a library book, because all I had to do was drag and drop.’
So me lovelies, you too can download the Innerscape Omnibus onto your Kobo ereaders, and here’s the link to do it:
The ‘for Kobo’ link on the sidebar to the right will also take you to the same download link.
The Omnibus is free for everyone stuck at home during this global lockdown, and you won’t need to sign up or register or do anything at all. As with the PDF version, simply click the link and follow the onscreen instructions. Then follow Dawn’s instructions to sideload the epub file onto your Kobo ereader.
All I ask is that you don’t try to get some kind of commercial gain out of it. This is my gift to you. Read, share, enjoy, and #StayHome .
I uploaded the epub file of the Innerscape Omnibus to Draft-2-Digital last night and expected to be able to provide links to the various e-readers today. Not going to happen, at least not the way I thought it would. 😦
This is the email I received this morning:
The metadata problem is this:
‘Current vendor formatting guidelines require standard author name spelling (First Last name format). Please supply author name in First Last name format in the metadata Contributor field, within book manuscript file, and on cover image to proceed with publication at the stores you selected.’
My author name is ‘acflory’ – all smooshed together and in lower case. It’s been my author name since 2013. It’s my brand. It’s how I, as an author, am known on social media…
This was my reply:
I have been aware that Apple would not accept my books because of how I write my pseudonym, but having ALL ebook distributors playing this game is ridiculous. ‘acflory’ is my /brand/. I cannot just ‘change’ it without losing years worth of work, not to mention marketing.
I was going to publish my omnibus with D2D before Amazon because I wanted non-Kindle readers to get a free copy before Amazon’s exclusive 90 day period could begin. Now I won’t bother. I’ll simply make the epub available to readers directly.
Please advise how or if I have to withdraw my books from D2D.
acflory
By ‘make the epub available to readers directly’ I mean like the PDF version, via sync.com. Unlike Kindle ebooks, epubs are the same regardless of which e-reader – e.g. Kobo, Nook etc – is used. But…people wanting to read the epub on their e-readers will have to download the Omnibus file to their computers and sideload onto the e-reader from there.
As sideloading is not as easy or convenient as downloading the book directly to the e-reader, I’m hoping D2D will find a better solution. If they don’t, I’ll have to ask those of you with different e-readers to test the process, and perhaps write a how-to for others? I’d do it myself but I only have the Kindle and Kindle Fire e-readers.
Anyway, that’s it for today. I’ll keep you all posted on the outcome.
Back in this post, I asked for your feedback on the cover for the new Innerscape Omnibus. To my huge surprise, almost all of you chose version 3:
Of the three, this one was the one I liked least, from a purely aesthetic point of view. Plus it was obvious that the less nerdy amongst you didn’t know that the big square lump in the middle was meant to be the chip on the circuit board. So…
First I came up with this:
I really liked the new parts of the new design, but now some of the older parts of the circuit board looked messy. And that lump was still too big. So…
The differences are subtle, but to me they make the whole thing more aesthetically pleasing. Yes? No? Maybe?
Would love to get your reaction, and please don’t hesitate to point out things that don’t work. You guys really, really surprised me last time, but I had to admit that you were absolutely right. So… what do you think?
Meeka's Mind 