Spotlight on Rachel Caine

Rachel Caine's Lord of Misrule has just been released ($5.59 on the Kindle) and is book #5 in the Morganville Vampire series. The entire series is out for the Kindle at the bargain price of $4.79 each:

Glass Houses
The Dead Girls' Dance
Midnight Alley
Feast of Fools

This series gets classified with Children's books and although aimed at young adults, it is a series that adult readers can also enjoy. Lord of Misrule is already at #7 in it's genre and the entire series is more well-written than the Twilight series that has dominated the lists in recent weeks. It's already on my Kindle and waiting for me to finish my current book (Living with the Dead, by Kelley Armstrong, which I started right after Personal Demon; these are books 8 and 9 in the Women of the Otherworld series, with only book 2 missing from the Kindle) and start on it next.

I first read Caine's Weather Warden series and now look forward to both of these series. It looks like I'll have to add another series to the must-buy list, as she is releasing Undone) on February 3, the first in a new series, Outcast Season, which looks like a spinoff from the Weather Warden series and aimed once again at the more mature audience.

Weather Warden novels:

Ill Wind $5.59
Heat Stroke $5.59
Chill Factor $6.39
Windfall $6.39
Firestorm $5.59
Thin Air $5.59
Gale Force $6.39


Other books by Rachel Caine
Devil's Bargain $3.60
Line of Sight $3.96

Free Ebook, Audiobook and Win a Kindle Contest

Scot Blum is giving away, for a limited time, either a text or audio copy of his book Summer's Path. Several formats are available, including DOC and RTF, so you should be able to convert this one for the Kindle or other reader, as well as read it on your computer or listen on your iPod. As if that were not enough, once you've downloaded the book you can enter his contest to win both an Amazon Kindle and a credit for 65 books. He has a new book, Waiting for Autumn, coming out in April (the preorder for the Kindle Edition is not yet active), but this first book is not available at Amazon, so download it while you can.

Summer's Path is the remarkable story of Don Newport, an engineer that comes face to face with his personal destiny under extraordinary circumstances. After losing his job and his health insurance, Don learns he has a terminal disease with only a few months left to live. On his death bed, he meets Robert, a brazen angel of death that promises to help Don with a graceful exit. As Don prepares to say his last goodbyes to his loving wife, Robert attempts to change Don's perspective about his mortality and proposes an exceptionally unique option.

Robert leads Don through an astounding meditation of life and death and reveals various healing and spiritual concepts including walk-ins, embodiment and soul destiny. On this magical journey of self realization, Don discovers that it's never too late to learn profound life lessons about ourselves and our loved ones.

Free ebook on Kindle: Long Hard Ride

Long Hard Ride by Lorelei James

Samhain Publishing has marked another Kindle book for free. Please make sure you read the content warning before purchasing (most of the books they've offered have been for adults only). This should stay as a free download until January 12th, but free offers at Amazon have been known to disappear early.

Synopsis:

One lucky woman-three sexy cowboys...she's in for the ride of her life! Channing Kinkaid itches for a change; a wild western adventure with an untamed man. Determined to shed her inhibitions and embrace the steamier, seamier side of life, she sets her sights on hooking up with a real chaps-and-spurs-wearing cowboy. Enter Colby McKay -- bull rider, saddle bronc buster and calf roper. From the moment he sets lust-filled eyes on the sweet and fiery Channing, he knows he's found the woman who-s up to the challenge of cutting loose. What rough and rowdy cowboy could resist a no-holds-barred sexual romp with a sassy young thing starring as his personal buckle bunny? Intrigued by Channing's bold proposition of horsing around on the road, Colby impulsively sweetens the deal; sexual escapades not only in his bed, but in the bedrolls of his rodeo traveling partners, Trevor and Edgard.

Although Channing's secretly longed to be the sole focus of more than one man's passions, Colby's demand for complete submission behind closed doors will test her willful nature.
Can Channing give up total control? Especially when not all is as it seems with the sexy trio? Or will the cowboys have to break out the bullropes and piggin' string to break in this headstrong filly?

Warning: This title contains the following: lots of explicit sex, going strong long after the cows come home, graphic language that'd make your mama blush, light bondage with bullropes, menage-a-trois, and -- yee-haw! -- hot nekkid cowboy man-love.

The Best You?

The Best Life Diet
by Bob Greene

Digital List Price: $17.99
Print List Price: $15.00
Kindle Price: $3.39

This book is another that is associated with Oprah's Best Life Week and featured on Amazon's New Year/New You promotion. It's currently being offered at a bargain price; just be forewarned that he mentions his pay site a LOT and at $20/month, this probably doesn't fit in with Suze Orman's Best Life show and would not be much of a bargain unless it really is the only thing that helps you follow your diet - in which case it will probably save you many times that that in health care costs alone, in the long run.

He also has several other books out, one of which is the recipes that go along with the diet (it's $9.99).

It's Almost Like I Was Psychic! DRM Part 2

When I wrote about DRM yesterday, I didn't think the next DRM shutdown would come the next day (actually, later that night) and affect me. This just in from Fictionwise:

... Overdrive, recently gave Fictionwise notice that they would cease serving files to Fictionwise customers as of January 31, 2009. That means that eBooks purchased from Fictionwise via Overdrive's servers will no longer be downloadable after that date.

Read the full story here. Basically, you have until the end of this month to download and make copies of any books you have purchased at Fictionwise and back them up at your end. After 01/31/09, you will be unable to download these books in the format purchased.

The good news is, first, only about 4% of the books sold at Fictionwise were served by Overdrive (some customers have reported having none and I had only two of my books affected). Second, Fictionwise has already started replacing the books with ereader formatted books at no charge (sorry, no other format for this - they can do ereader because they own the format and don't have to pay an access fee to do this). They don't have them all replaced, as each publisher has to be contacted and an agreement worked out individually, but this was a fast response to what could have been a huge problem (and PR nightmare).

So, have your books been affected? Has it changed what you will tell the Federal Trade Commission in their “town hall meeting?

It's obvious some Kindle users don't care about DRM. Of course, Amazon now promises your books will stay downloadable forever, but what about how long your Kindle will be serviceable, since the books can't be read anywhere else. What else explains that Suze Orman's 2009 Action Plan by Suze Orman, at a Kindle price of $7.99, is now the #1 bestselling Kindle book in three categories and the #5 of the overall Bestselling Kindle books? Despite the book being a completely free Download at Oprah.com, for an entire week (including today)? Sending the PDF to you Kindle would cost at most 10 cents (but is actually free, as Amazon still doesn't charge for this service).




#1 Finance
#1 Finance & Investing
#1 Financial Planning.
#5 The Kindle Bestsellers

BTW, for those who think the Amazon Bestsellers list and the Kindle Bestsellers lists are the same thing, this is one where Suze hasn't even broken the front page of the print book's list, nor is it listed on the National Bestseller's page. You can find the Kindle Bestsellers only from the Kindle Store tab, which, sadly, isn't the place you land when you use the categories menu to go to the Kindle store. Instead, you land on the order a Kindle page and most people then go to the Kindle Books page and browse bestsellers there (where print books have a big influence on rankings). Suze's book hasn't even broken the top 100 there.