Jerrod Balzer

Free eBooks via eBook Tinder!

I need help spreading the word about this, so please pass it around. Wherever all your Kindle-loving friends hang out and discuss eBooks, tell ‘em about this! All genres are welcome!

eBook Tinder is a site I created for readers to submit their reviews of Kindle books. If you have a review site, I’ll take old reviews, too. They’re new to someone, right? And they’ll link to your site as the contributor.

So why submit to eBook Tinder? Isn’t posting a review on Amazon good enough?

If you took the time to post a review, then you obviously want people to know about the book you enjoyed (or didn’t enjoy), and if someone ran a search for that author or book on the Internet, they would find the link to the Amazon product, and your review would be there, along with everyone else’s.

Fair enough.

But that’s only one link. If you really want to support an author and their work, you need to help them gain all the exposure possible, and this can be achieved through a stronger web presence. More links.

Don’t just post that review on Amazon, post it on your site. Post it on Goodreads. Send it here. Then when people type in the book or author using their favorite search engine, that presence will show and the probability of the person buying the book is higher. And you’ve just helped the author.

So what are you waiting for? Submit your reviews today!

Original Article

Kindle and changing ebook prices

A while back, there was some outrage going around about teh ebil Amazon empire and their treacherous ways with lowering Kindle prices on some ebooks, which may or may not affect royalty payments.

One author, we’ll call him John Doe, went on for weeks about it. He’d published an ebook through Kindle and one day, he found the price was lowered drastically. Upset, he contacted Amazon about this and they quickly turned the price back. Problem solved, right?

One would think so, but the issue turned up on several blog posts afterward, lighting the fires under several others who basically had no idea why they were angry but why the hell not! It even turned out that the author’s ebook had, indeed, lowered elsewhere beforehand, and Amazon had simply price-matched, per their TOS, but… THEY’RE STILL EBIL!

The unnamed author kept saying how the big publishers would never treat him that way. To that, I say bullshit. Not just bullshit, but big, wormy, steamy, bullshit. And I add, why isn’t he back with them if they’re so snazzy?

Let’s clarify a few things: when you put something up through Kindle, you may think you’re self-publishing but you’re not. Sure, it’s a lot closer to self than the traditional route. No rejections to deal with. But Amazon is still the publisher. You come to an agreement with them, make a contract to provide a good for their services, the same as you would with Bantam or Harlequinn or any other publisher. They allow you to set a price but there are stipulations: don’t undersell them, and royalties will be higher or lower depending on the price you choose. It’s your job to adhere to that agreement and not throw a big nasty tantrum all over the Internet if you fuck up.

And if this happens, and they choose to change the price of your book, it’s the same as if any other publisher decides to change the retail price in order to keep up with the competition. This is rarely the case with them because they let the bookstores handle all that, but in Amazon’s case, they ARE the bookstore. But if a publisher is at a convention and they need to push some books, they’ll damn sure knock the selling price down to sell, paying the author a royalty of THAT.

Personally, Google Books screwed with the prices of some of KHP’s titles and Amazon adjusted to match, and they still pay the normal royalties. Everything is cool with that. No need to FFfFFFFfffrreeeeeaaakkk!

Get what I’m saying? Chill people. I’m going to bed now.

Original Article

Call for Kindle reviewers and guest bloggers!

Most who know me understand that I’ve been having a rough time with this Conversion Disorder and it’s limited what I can do at KHP. They still keep me busy, though, with site maintenance, business decisions, and communications, so no problem there.

It’s still a challenge to find things to do, however, that will keep my focus without bogging me down too much. I’m good at maintaining sites (when I’m not burning them down, lol) and I like to help promote others when I can, so I had the idea of starting up a review site. Reading all the books and writing the reviews would bog me down too much with my illness and all, but screening others’ reviews of books they love or hate, and putting them on the site… that’s something I can handle, and it would help with my focus, etc.

I ran it by the others at KHP and they loved the idea! They even provided the domain and hosting for me to run it (so the little KHP window dressing on the side is the least I could do). I really appreciate their support!

So enough with the chit-chat - this is completely for fun, and it’s aimed toward Kindle ebooks so I wouldn’t be buried in providing links to every store on the Net. Most importantly, this is for all genres, and the reviews can be old or new.

I’m up for posting well-written reviews, author readings, guest blogs, interviews… if it involves a book available on Kindle, let’s hear about it.

Full details can be found here, and I appreciate any feedback as I’m new at this (also pass it around, please):

Original Article

Free Vampire Apocalypse stories from Derek Gunn

Taken from the Amazon description:

Prelude to the Apocalypse is a series of five works of short fiction written in Derek Gunn’s Vampire Apocalypse universe. Each is a diary entry written from a vampire’s point of view and set in five different periods in history.

From the author:

The main kernel of my Vampire Apocalypse series of books came from the proliferation of ‘nice’ vampires that are so popular in fiction today. I never saw the vampire as an aristocratic figure, noble to a fault and lonely for a good woman’s, or man’s love. I always saw them as creatures who had moved on from being human over the centuries. They do not consider themselves human, most have probably forgotten they ever were. They are creatures ruled by base hunger. For all their power they are slaves to a gnawing hunger that rules there very existence.

I have written some diary extracts recently as part of a back story to the Vampire Apocalypse series. Over the course of the centuries we can see the changes going on inside the head of a vampire, how his thoughts of humanity, religion and his place in the world change him. I have tied this into the ‘real’ history of the world, offering a different view of how some of history’s events actually happened, and the impact this had on the mindset of the vampire.

They are short vignettes that try to go some way to explain how these creatures can change so drastically. Even the most noble would change their attitudes over centuries and humans are food after all. How often do you have to eat meat to no longer consider the source as intelligent?

Pick it up on Kindle for FREE here:

Don’t have a Kindle? There are free apps for your computer or other devices HERE!

And remember, Black Death Books carries the print versions of Derek Gunn’s Vampire Apocalypse series:

(Click on the covers below to learn more)

Original Article