Mostly zombie novels that don’t appear to have anything to separate them from the pack, alas. I don’t think zombies are played out, but they’re so popular that I don’t feel like a new one from someone I’ve never heard of is any sort of automatic purchase unless they have a clever hook. Even at 0.99. I did pick up your urban fantasy though. And I enjoyed The Undead Situation so I picked up Ms. Knapp’s Pulse.
One day sales fail to create any sense of urgency when you don’t hear about them until the next day. They might want to consider lengthening the sale time.
Also, fewer zombie books please.
This event, the second I’ve put together, was a Facebook hosted affair. We brought together about 500 fans and had well over 1K sales for the day - as stats continue to roll in I think we’ll be closer to 1.5K. The idea is to bring many authors together for one day and cross promote our fan bases. The issue with having multi-day sales is that people put off buying books and then forget about the event. All that said, my team is looking at ways to make the next event even larger but to offer fewer books. Eloise’s book was the largest seller and shot her into the top 20 best selling in her categories.
Oop, another Humble eBook bundle
Wil Wheaton - The Happiest Days of Our Lives
Holly Black - Tithe: A Modern Faerie Tale
Steven Gould - Jumper
Various Authors - Zombies vs. Unicorns (edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier)
Pay more than the average to get:
Yahtzee Croshaw - Mogworld
Scott Westerfield - Uglies
- more (as they always do it)
Pay over $15 to get an audiobook of
Cory Doctorow - Homeland narrated by Wil Wheaton.
So… I’m not too interested in the audio book, but it is pushing up the average at the moment, but its still a good deal if one or more of these interest you.
Jumper is an excellent novel. I have it, but if you don’t, it’s worth pursuing this just for Jumper.
Mogworld is OK. Essentially the premise is that the protagonist is a character in a MMOG that doesn’t know it’s a game. The conceit being that state of the art has advanced to the point where the NPCs are real AIs, but the real point is to poke fun at how dumb player characters would appear to inhabitants of WoW if it were a real world. Oh, and he’s an undead mage who doesn’t particularly want to be undead.
Completely uninterested in the $15 audiobook, since it’s Cory Doctorow, and I find him borderline unreadable. He tends to be heavy-handed when he does political novels, and I gather Homeland is political. And it’s worth noting that since it’s Doctorow, he has the text version available for free if you look for it.
Tithe is pretty high quality if you dig faerie novels and are okay with it being for a YA audience. It’s a little romance-y but a) it’s genuine romance and not creepy fucked up stalker/fundamentalist “romance” like in Twilight and b) there’s still plenty of the dark side of the Fair Folk on display.
And Jumper is amazing.
Significantly better than the movie, of course
Yeah, the movie Jumper is almost unrelated other than being about a guy who can teleport. The weird thing is that Gould did a novel that ties into the movie continuity (“Griffin’s Story”) rather than his own. Fortunately when he decided to do a fourth novel (“Impulse”) he returned to his own story.
I picked up the audiobook for $10 and enjoyed it quite a bit. Croshaw read it himself, and did a good job. Overall, I thought the storytelling was solid for a first novel (that I know of, of course), and that it only really felt weak during the infrequent action sequence.
I definitely enjoyed it as well, I just can’t point to anything and say “this part was particularly good” if I’m going to recommend it to someone else.
The first 3 “DragonRiders” books by Anne McCaffery are available on both the Nook and Kindle in a compilation entitled The DragonRiders of Pern for $1.99
As a Stephen King fan, I found the following bargain:
11/22/63 with audio/video for just $2.99. The other version which is just text is still $7.48
The Shining for just $1.99. COME ON, you gotta buy this!
Great deal on 11/22/63. Just a great book.
Excellent deal on 11/22/63, but I wouldn’t say it’s a great book. In fact, it pissed me off a lot by the end. It’s only saved from the “utter crap” label in my mind by King’s as-usual excellent characters that I cared about.
It’s an odd book in some ways, because it’s a time travel book that isn’t really about time travel or JFK, it’s more about King’s nostalgia for the late 50’s / early 60’s. It works best when it’s not about time travel. It’s when he returns to the “main” plot that the book begins to slide, and the more he deals with the mechanics of time travel the worse it gets.
Still, despite my negative feelings about the book, it’s a hell of a door stop for $3, and there’s plenty of good in there with the bad.
And don’t forget that this version is the one with video interviews and some other recordings about his inspiration for the work. It’s hell of a deal!
I, Claudius is on sale for $1.99 today for people who are interested.
Good stuff. It’s been a long while since I read this, and the sequel Claudius the God.
B&N had the Nook version of Lev Grossman’s first book in the Magician series on sale for $2.99 earlier this week. Its still on sale and its available at Amazon as well.
I’m seeing Alison Weir’s excellent history The War of the Roses is for sale for $1.99. Not sure for how long, but well worth buying.
— Alan
Wilbur Smith’s Egyptian historical series is on sale for $1.99 each. I just picked up the first two as they seem to have the best reviews. The second two were not received quite as well.