Tom Dulaney

Friday, October 29, 2010

REPURPOSE KOONTS

Dean Koontz 2 New Releases: Novel Idea to Promote A Novel--Sell a Novella Introducing the Villain

Bestselling author Dean Koontz emailed fans this wee, highlighting his “first ever ebook original novella,” Darkness Under the Sun. It's $1.59 in the Kindle Store, and is currently sitting high on the Kindle Store paid bestseller list at 39.

The ebook introduces the evil villain who will appear in the December release of What The Night Knows, now available for pre-order with a price tag of $15.12. Veteran citizens of Kindle Nation Daily know the latter price may well go down before the book delivers on Dec. 28, and they will be charged the lower price.

The“first-ever” Koontz novella is carrying water for the upcoming full book is timed for Halloween, and is a treat for the author's fans languishing for their next fix from the bestselling writer. Writers call Koontz “a writer's writer” and readers just love him—by the millions. So what if the novella's timing is also a marketing “trick?”

Authors and publishers continue to tinker with and fine tune marketing strategies, and Darkness is a fine illustration of one method to pump up book sales. This novella introduces the evil character of, Alton Turner Blackwood, “the killer at the dark heart of What The Night Knows.”

The promotional text beneath Darkness points out it is “the perfect read for Halloween” and reveals the “secret, fatal turning point in the career of” Blackwood. So, meet the killer for Halloween, then greet him again during Christmas break.

Other vital signs for Darkness, which presage success for What the Night Knows: The book rose to the top 25 on Amazon's volatile Movers & Shakers list for a while but doesn't show on the volatile list at the moment.

All of those numbers indicate both the author's strong following and the odds that the novella is leading to a successful December kick-off for What the Night Knows.

The novella released exclusively as an ebook on October 25. It gives new readers a fine—and inexpensive—chance to discover Koontz. It gives his dedicated fans a treat to keep them going during the necessary dry spells between books. The author's hopes, no doubt, are that new readers will enjoy Darkness so much they will visit the author's extensive backlist of some 54 Kindle Store books while waiting for What the Night Knows to emerge at the end of the year.

Another part of the strategy: If readers like the novella, they'll pre-order the book. When Dec. 28 rolls around, those pre-orders join first day sales to rocket the book as high as it can go on bestseller lists. The higher on the list, the more visible to all book buying visitors, the more likely it capture more sales and rise higher still.

For Kindle Nation Daily readers who go into the Koontz archives, take a look at the book many faithful Koontz fans consider to be his best ever: Watchers.

On his web site, Koontz explained last year that he works on his novels one page at a time, not leaving a page until it is as perfect as he can make it. He blames a huge dose of “self-doubt” for the process, but adds that he rarely has to revisit the page in the future. When it's done, it's done.

Koontz has an army of ardent followers, swollen to large numbers back in the Eighties with the success of Watchers. Published in 1987, it was one of the first bestsellers to pair up a genetically altered and thereby amazingly intelligent and supernaturally gifted dog with its likewise-escaped lab mate from the cages, an enraged and envious creature.

Skilled Reader Online, 'Digital Doofus' offline? Library Professionals Discussed Future of Reading, Not The Future of Books at Chicago Summit

By Tom Dulaney, Editor in Chief

Waiting on-line (as in a queue of people) to check out a few books at the local library, I went online (via Kindle) to finish a few chapters of my current ebook.

A young librarian, arms laden with books, glanced at my Kindle. Her lip curled in obvious anger, her eyes met mine.

“Have you seen this thing?” I asked, because it seemed a dose of friendliness was in order.

“It's a Kindle,” she spat. “I hate that thing. It's going to kill libraries.”

In the ecstatic rush of daily news about ebooks, the promise of the iPad and the revolution inflamed by Amazon's Kindle, it's easy to forget that a lot of jobs, professions, careers and lives seem threatened by the ebook.

Beyond just having jobs, dedicated library professionals worry about the literary health of students who spend more time reading online (48 minutes per day on average) as opposed to off line (43 minutes).

That's why today's report in the Library Journal at libraryjournal.com fascinates. Several articles cover the School Library Journal Summit held at the end of last week in Chicago. “As always, the goal of the summit is to tackle an urgent issue that school librarians and other educators are facing,” say the summit organizers on the web page for the meeting.

With ebooks, iPads and Kindles the big buzz in the world of books this year, it's no surprise the overall topic of this year's summit was “The Future of Reading.”

“We're experiencing a sea change,” the summit web page states. “For starters, ebooks and other digital content have challenged the basic notion of what constitutes reading and books.” Ebooks are just the “starters,” and the whole digital age is the rest of that iceberg challenging the printed book and its world.

The conference leaders pointed out the meeting “is about the future of reading, not the future of books.”

Online reading does not equal traditional reading, argued one of the speakers, Donald Leu. He holds an Endowed Chair in Literacy and Technology at the University of Connecticut, where he is also Director of the New Literacies Research Lab.

His research indicated “there is no significant correlation between” measures of traditional reading comprehension and online reading comprehension.

Online reading requires skills that off-line (traditional) reading does not, Leu says. Up to 20% of students classed as “low scoring readers,” he adds, are “extremely savvy” when working with online content. And significant percentages of “high scoring readers” by off-line standards do poorly with online content.

Students viewed as “digital natives,” highly skilled online, are “digital doofuses” when it comes time to “appraise the resources they uncover” on the internet.

Bottom line: Disturbing indications that “digital natives” may be skilled at manipulating streams of data—facts--blasted into them at high speed by high tech devices, but comprehending the information, evaluating its validity, and finding meaning in the words is problematic.

Students had their chance to be heard at the conference, and a report reveals a four-student panel discussion, all the participants in high school, talking about such things as “bookless libraries,” a world without paper text books, and how they view ebook readers like the iPad as part of both their life and their education.

They weighed the pros and cons of Amazon's announced plan to enable book lending of Kindle books. The topic, itself, is a sign of these digital times since that announcement was made at the time of the conference.

In all, the online reports about the summit are a fascinating eye full for anyone interested in the future of the ebook and its impact on our lives. Videos of some of the speakers can be seen here.

Thursday, October 28, 2010

Planet iPad Daily Free Book Alert, Thursday, October 28: Happy Endings and abortive beginnings among our Free Book Listings, plus ... If you are passionate about the paranormal, you're going to love Inhuman (Today's Sponsor), and over 100 other fully updated free Kindle ebooks for your iPad listings

Planet iPad Daily Free Book Alert, Thursday, October 28: Happy Endings and abortive beginnings among our Free Book Listings, plus ... If you are passionate about the paranormal, you're going to love Inhuman (Today's Sponsor), and over 100 other fully updated free Kindle ebooks for your iPad listings

We reap what we sow. During the past couple of weeks we've offered our readers substantial free excerpts from two Joe Konrath books that have moved with lightning speed up the ranks of Kindle bestsellers, so who are we to complain about the fact that a couple of the most recent additions to our Free Book Alert listings have been excerpted previews from forthcoming novels by James Patterson and Oliver Pötzsch? They're there if you want them, but we'll let them share the spotlight today with a free book about a company I love, a company whose share price has more than tripled in the past 9 months, a company whose stock, if we'd all bought it back then, might mean that we'd never have to go looking for free Kindle Store books again. Happy endings indeed....

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Danielle Lee

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Text-to-Speech: Enabled
Science Fiction Action/Adventure - Approx. 55,000 words

With tuition fees looming, University student Cassia Tiponi is forced to offer herself as a guinea pig to the science department. After much poking and prodding by future doctors, a blood test reveals something startling...

Cassia does not have human DNA.

While being hunted by a dark faction of the government, she must uncover the secrets surrounding her mysterious birth to discover who...and what...she is.

Contains mild sexual content, coarse language

About the Author

A paranormal investigator, she has an avid and instinctive curiosity for the strange and unknown. She and a group of ghost enthusiasts investigate homes and locations for suspected paranormal activities and try to obtain proof of the afterlife.
Endeavoring into the world of fiction, her first novel Dimensions of Genesis delves deep into the realm of the unknown.

Her articles have appeared in online sites such as UFO Digest, Paranormal News, The Anomalist, The Debris Field and many others. Recently her Ghost Hunting Etiquette 101 article has been accepted by Sci-Fi channel's Ghost Hunters TAPS (The Atlantic Paranormal Society) Paramagazine.

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