Monday, November 15, 2010

All Over the Map


The folks who contribute posts to this blog have access to a cool feature: Down at the very bottom of this page there’s a little oblong box surrounding the word “sitemeter”.

If you, as a visitor, click on it, all you’ll get is an ad for the service.

But when I, and the other registered administrators of this blog click on it, we get information about our readers.
We don’t get email addresses, or anything confidential like that.
We get general information.
Information like how you got here.  (Did you have us bookmarked? Did you find us through Google? Did you access us via a link from someone else’s site?)
Like how many visits we got in the past hour, past day, past week, past year.
Like which of our posts were most popular, most read, most stood the test of time.
But coolest of all, I think, is the map feature.
When I click on that one, I get a world map.
I can zoom in on a particular area, or I can choose to look at it by continent.
I can choose the last ten visits, twenty, or fifty, or a hundred.
And every visit is indicated by a little dot on the map.
For the last three days, I’ve been doing regular checks to see where you, our readers, dropped in from.
Turns out, it’s all over the map.
You’re on every continent and a lot of islands in between.
Just in the last seventy-two hours you’ve been checking-in from Korea, Thailand, India, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, Malaysia, Singapore, The Philippines, Australia, New Zealand, Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Mexico, Colombia, Peru, The United States, Canada, Puerto Rico, Anguilla, Antigua, Hungary, Norway, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Russia, Iceland, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the UK, France (including one visitor from Corsica), Switzerland, the Czech Republic, Tunisia, Cyprus, The United Arab Emirates, South Africa, Jamaica, The Netherlands Antilles and Vanuatu.
Vanuatu?
Yeah,  Vanuatu.
Honest.

Murder is Everywhere is…well…truly everywhere.
Our books, alas, are not.
The two great impediments to that are language (translations) and availability.
If you’re reading this, you obviously don’t have much of a problem with English.
But, if you’re our reader on Vanuatu (I’d find it hard to believe there’s more than one) you might find it difficult to get your hooks into a copy of Yrsa’s latest, even in English.
That’s changing.
And what’s changing it is ebooks.
Ebooks are exploding.
I just got a royalty statement from my publisher and discovered that my ebook sales doubled in 2009 over 2008, and, to date, have more than tripled in 2010 over 2009.
These days, it doesn’t matter where you live – as long as you own an ebook reading device, you can get Yrsa’s latest.
Last week, I did something I should have done earlier.
I digitalized my first book, Blood of the Wicked, and put it up on Amazon everywhere in the world where Kindle Books are sold, and where I hadn’t already sold the rights to a local publisher.
And I’m going to do the same with my other books at the rate of one book a month.
The cover image, because of copyright restrictions, is very different from the versions sold in places where the book has already been available. Here's what it looks like:
And, if you’re a reader of this blog, you can get it for free.
Not forever, but absolutely free until the end of this month.
Own an ebook reader?
Haven’t yet read Blood of the Wicked?
Live outside of North America, the U.S. Possessions and the Philippines?
If the answer to all three of those questions is “Yes”, then all you have to do is contact me.
Write to me through my website (you can get there by clicking on my photo over there on the right).
In your email, simply specify whether you’d like to have the book in Kindle or epub format.
And I’ll write back, attaching a free ebook.
Again, because of copyright restrictions, the deal isn't available to residents of the United States, Canada, the U.S. possessions and the Philippines - and it expries at the end of the month.
Write now.
Wherever you are in the world, it'll take you less than a minute to ask for it.
And only seconds to download it once you receive my reply.

 Leighton - Monday

10 comments:

  1. Thank you for this kind offer I look forward to reading it.

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  2. Enjoyed your post. It is truly amazing all the places from which bloggers visit. I'm not a big fan of e-readers (yet) but I can see where they have a wonderful advantage to offer a book around the world.

    Mason
    Thoughts in Progress

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  3. You do not need to buy the Kindle e-reader to read an e-book on Kindle. You can download for free Kindle for PC or Kindle for Mac and read it on your computer. Kindle apps are also available for iPhones, iPads, etc. If you can read this blog you can read anything on Kindle without having to buy an e-reader.

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  4. Michael,
    Thank you for pointing that out.
    (The availability of Kindle e-readers.)
    Readers will find the applications on all of the dedicated book pages in the Kindle store.
    They take up very little space on your hard drive and the downloading is the work of an instant.
    Then, all you have to do to read the book is to double-click on the file.
    So, if you're thinking of taking advantage of my free Kindle offer, that's one way to do it.

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  5. I am definitely not a computer maven. Frequently things I want to access or to download have to wait until my son comes by.

    The Kindle for PC was amazingly simple to put on my laptop. Buying books is so easy and they are on the PC so fast that I thought I had made a mistake. It literally takes seconds for the book to be delivered.

    If I can do it, anyone can.

    Beth

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  6. Hi Leighton,

    What an interesting cover design!

    I think it's perfectly apropos to the book, Blood of the Wicked.

    I think it's very cool.

    Susie

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  7. Hi Susie,
    How kind of you to remark about the cover.
    The guy who did it, Peter Ratcliffe, is a young art director who I've known since he was a child.
    He recently moved to the United States and is open for more work of this nature. He is quick and his prices are eminently reasonable. If there are any other Kindle authors out there who need covers, and would like to consider Peter, they need only contact me through my website and I'll put them in touch with him.
    Within a few days, Peter will have his website up, so they'll be able to look at some of the other things he's done.
    Advertising, mostly.
    And, if you think the BOTW cover looks good, wait until you see the one he just did for "Buried Strangers".
    Matter of fact, ya know what?
    I'll send it to you right now by email.
    It's a knockout.

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  8. Hi Leigthon - I did not even know that there was a place called Vanuatu. Now I am going to look it up. One thing regarding being translated into English is that the English version of my book is not mine so I have no say over wether it is available on Kindle or not. I am going to check if it is available or not.

    This is completely unfair, it is not as if English doesn't already have all of the good swear words and about four times the number of all other words as well when compared to my native tounge. Icelandic doesn't stand a chance of becoming global with this kind of competition.

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