Using Kindle Unlimited and New Book Covers

Thursday at our house - Today, Saturday, I worked in short sleeves in the garden
-WYOMING-

Now You Can download all of my Books for Free with Kindle Unlimited - Like many writers that self-publish I am constantly looking for more revenue. With that in mind, I decided to move all of my books to Kindle Unlimited. I have always had a few there, but decided I would give it a try with all nine of my books and my one published short story. Not sure what will happen but if nothing else, it will give me something to check every day.

So what is Kindle Unlimited? - For those of you not familiar with Kindle Unlimited, it is a subscription with Amazon that allows members who pay $9.99 a month to download an unlimited number of books each month. Readers can have up to ten books at any one time but must return books to go past ten in a month. Not a bad deal, some readers return books as soon as they finish or if they decide it is not what they want and order another. Some readers report downloading dozens each month. It also looks like a good place to sell old-fashioned genres such as Westerns and Historical Fiction.

Links to my Western/Historical Fiction books here. 

Take a look and read the free sample.

Take a look at The Ghost Dance Here

Author Pay – Authors are paid by how many pages are read from each downloaded book, works out to a bit over a half cent per page, which for a 300-page book would work out to $1.50, or a little more depending on the month as the payment does vary. Considering that the same book, sold as an eBook for $2.99 would pay the author about $2.00 it is not much different.

   I have not tried it yet myself but believe when late fall comes around again I will give it a try. My old bones do not like the cold weather of winter, and a good book is always a nice companion.

My Garden Book is now .99 cents as an eBook – I also reduced the price of my latest book, Beginning Gardening & Other Entertaining Lies to under a buck. (As I write this late Saturday afternoon the price change has not appeared yet but should change soon)

   This one is a bit shorter, 130 pages in soft cover and 80+ as an eBook, not sure why the big difference, as it takes a pretty small font to knock off 50 pages. This one also contains four short stories that all start with a dead body in the garden. Fun stuff. The actual gardening advice is solid and time tested, a terrific way for gardeners to get going. Take a look at the sample here.

New Covers - My kid's book series – I am starting to put new, and better, covers on my three book, so far, kid’s series. Here is the new cover and the link to the first.

Edit or Self-Edit and Book Covers Too

I have been spending more hours than I want to count this week updating two of my book covers. I like the new ones, probably because I may have a better understanding now than I did when I built my first ones two years ago.  I am not going to re-do all of them, right now, but likely will do one or two more soon.

I am also back working on my nonfiction book. I took five months off to finish up some other projects and am now enjoying the research and writing of nonfiction once again.

At one time in my life, I spent a lot of time, often too much, editing other writers works. I don’t do much of that any longer as I mostly worked with historical nonfiction although I did take on a few fiction projects. Now I mostly edit my own. What am I getting to here? All the advertisements I get in the form of tweets or email offering, book doctor or editing services. Often the promo starts with a line telling all who read that there are so many, maybe millions, of books and eBooks for sale that are chalk full of errors. And, it’s possible there are, but I would rather read a book with a handful of errors than one that is perfect but without a good story.

 I have downloaded, read and enjoyed, self-edited books by several authors. All were people I follow online or on Twitter, and most were pretty good reads. I did not notice a multitude of errors in any of them and the things I noticed can sometimes be found in mainstream novels. As I said above, if the story is a good one, I will read it.

My point is not that books do not need a good edit, but that some self-edited books come out pretty clean. If you are writing a book and hope to sell a thousand copies, which is what you will need to sell to pay for a middle of the road priced editor. I mentioned book covers above, and good ones will help sell books if the book can be found among the 8,000,000 or so on Amazon. Once again writers like myself, who sell books, steadily but not spectacularly, need to be weary of not spending too much for the creation of a cover. I am not crazy about many of the new covers that seem to be black no matter what the subject, they all look the same to my old eyes.

Today’s photos are from my backyard.

Meanwhile, keep on reading and keep on writing.

Oh - one of the redone covers, this for my first kid's chapter book

Covers and Chapter Books

Looks like I need a new cover for one of my chapter books. I have read so many posts about how important a book cover is. I never really paid attention but I guess they might be right. I take no more than a passing glance at a book cover, couldn't tell you what has been on the cover of any book I have ever read. I might be able to make a guess. I look at the title, turn the book over and read the back material, if I like it I go further, if not, I put it back and pull another book. I do like titles and sometimes will pull a book from the self because I like the title, I turn it to the back and read. I must be out of the norm - far out. That probably is the case.

Not sure what to think - see all my books here.

But the second book in my kids chapter book series is selling much better than the first. And I love that first cover. Why? Well, maybe because it was my first. So, guess what, I will be changing it. I had a professional designer/artist tell me why the second cover was good and the first was lacking.

The cover to be changed - too bad for me

I do the covers myself, using simple templates, and might someday try a professional, but the cost is too much. I only make a few dollars each month from my four books and am not ready to spend several hundred on a cover or covers.

The better cover - designer liked the colors and photo better

I am taking a longer look at my eBook covers and may do more changes on them, it is much easier to do only a front. Much easier than front, back and spine.

The following book covers seemed to have passed the first look test.

My target readers, historical society and park types love this cover

My western mystery novel cover