Extras for "A Gift for the Sultan"

In case you've been intrigued by the history behind A Gift for the Sultan, this page is for you.

Inspired by the Shelfari/Amazon system of "book extras", available to anyone who has purchased the book for Kindle, I've put background material (including historical tidbits) on my own website, available to everybody — including those of you who have not yet purchased the book. You can find it here: Sultan

And here is mostly the same information on Shelfari. 

More news: The Turkish translation has now been completed, and the Turkish edition of this novel is scheduled for presentation by the publisher, Nokta, at the Tüyap International Book Fair in Istanbul in November.

E-book pricing: Writer Beware™ Blogs!

This whole blog entry may be of interest, but what caught my attention is the discussion of pricing (scroll down the blog).

Writer Beware™ Blogs!

I've priced the e-book editions of A Gift for the Sultan at $4.99 on both Smashwords (for all e-readers: Nook, Kindle, iPad, etc.) and Amazon's Kindle. (The Amazon Kindle price may be higher if you are ordering from outside the United States — that's something I don't control, has to do with Amazon's relations with foreign distributors. The Smashwords price should be constant wherever you are.)

Was that wise? Is it really "competing" against all those e-books offered at $0.99? Or are those cheapo books in an altogether different category for potential buyers? $4.99 feels right; it's accessible to anyone really interested, and those are the people I want to buy it — those who will actually read it.  (The discussion of the difference between readers and buyers is one of the most interesting parts of this "Writer Beware" post.) So far, more people have bought the paperback ($15.70 + shipping from Amazon, or save the shipping if you order it through a bookstore). Now those buyers are almost certainly going to be readers.

I plan soon (as soon as I get it scanned and formatted) to offer my 1988 collection of short stories, Welcome to My Contri, as an e-book at $1.99. That seems pretty cheap for a book reviewed in The New York Times Book Review. But it's not such a throw-away casual purchase as a 99 cent'er.

Your thoughts?

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything : Monkey See : NPR

You know that list of 1,000 books you must read before you die? It's not true. You will be permitted to die even if you don't read them. So, sad to say, delaying reading them is no guarantee of a longer life. But there may be other reasons to put them off.

The Sad, Beautiful Fact That We're All Going To Miss Almost Everything : Monkey See : NPR