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Start spreading the news...

by Jenna Bennett Yes, it’s me. I have a new name. And to go with it, I have... well, not a new book, exactly. Just a new edition of an old book.

It’s a long story, but the short version is that the publisher who published A Cutthroat Business last year, decided not to publish the sequel, Hot Property, this summer. They gave those rights back to me, and for a couple of different reasons, none of which matter to this blog post, they threw in the subsidiary rights for A Cutthroat Business as well. Subsidiary rights meaning audio, electronic, foreign, movie and serial rights. Anything except print.

What that means is that I can now self-publish A Cutthroat Business in electronic format, along with all the other books in the Savannah Martin mystery series.

So that’s what I’m doing. What you’re looking at is the new cover for A Cutthroat Business, which is available from Amazon.com, BN.com, Smashwords.com, and maybe a couple of other sites, for the low, low price of only $3.99.

(Yeah, I know there are people out there who sell their books for $.99. But this is 88,000 glorious, beautiful words that I spent a year of my life crafting, and believe me, they’re well worth $3.99. Library Journal said so. “Will delight fans of chick-lit mysteries and romantic suspense.” And if Library Journal says it, you know it’s gotta be true. Besides, $3.99 is only half of what the DIY e-books sell for, and I have it on good authority – I did a poll – that my readers would pay more.) In another month, I’ll be publishing Hot Property, and the month after that – that’ll make it July – I’ll be throwing book 3, Contract Pending, out there. Book 4, Close to Home, is written but not yet edited, so I don’t know if I can get it ready by August – I’m a third of the way through writing DIY-6, and that’s the priority right now – but I’ll be able to get Close to Home out sometime this fall. If I’m super-focused and really, really lucky, I might have book 5, which has the tentative title of A Done Deal, written by Christmas, although that’s probably pushing it.
Anyway, for the next couple of months, my posts will most likely be focused around this brand new adventure I’m trying on for size. If you’re not interested in e-publishing and the skinny on my journey through the twisted maze of doing it myself, feel free to tune out the first Friday of every month.
If, on the other hand, you find the new frontier to be as exciting as I do, stick around and answer a few of the following questions for me:
1. Do you buy/read e-books?

2. Does it matter to you whether an e-book is self-published (by the author) or traditionally published (by a publisher)? Do you even know whether it is or not when you buy it?

3. Do you think the e-book revolution means the end of the printed word as we know it? How does that make you feel, one way or the other?

4. Does it piss you off when people show almost malicious glee at the thought that print books are on their way out and traditional publishing may go the way of the dodo? (You can probably tell where my feelings are on this subject.)

5. If you’re into e-books and I offered you a free download of A Cutthroat Business, would you read it and do me the favor of posting a review somewhere?

Thanks, y’all! I’ll see you next month with an update.
Posted by Working Stiffs at 1:05 AM Labels: A Cutthroat Business, ebooks, Jenna Bennett, Jennie Bentley, Rafe Collier, Savannah Martin, self-publishing 
Congrats on the new adventure! And thanks for planning on keeping us posted.

I think $3.99 is an excellent price for an ebook. I only balk when the prices go above $10, or when the ebook price is higher than what I'd pay for the paperback.

To answer your questions:

1. Yes, I buy and read ebooks.

2. Generally, it doesn't matter, but I have run across some self-published ebooks that shouldn't have been published in ANY form.

3. Print books will always be around.

4. Yes.

5. Of course!

5/6/11, 7:27 AM PatRemick said...

Congrats!! This sounds MOST exciting.

To answer your queestions:
1) No
2. No
3. No
4. Yes
5. OK

5/6/11, 8:26 AM 
All right, well, those of you who want a free electronic copy can get one from Smashwords for pretty much any format you can imagine; Kindle, Nook, iStuff, Sony, Diesel, Kobo - and PDF. If you click to buy the book, it'll give you a field where you can put in a coupon code. If you feed it the following - NG73T - between now and May 15th, it'll give you the download for free. The coupon expires after that. And just FYI, if you don't have an e-reader but would like to check out how it feels to read on one, both Amazon and B&N offer a free Kindle/Nook for PC/Mac application/program that you can download for the computer. You'll have to read on the computer, but you can read Kindle books on your Kindle for PC/Mac and Nook books on your Nook for PC/Mac. I have both - it helps me to check formatting before I upload, to see what the books actually look like - and everything I've tried so far looks great. Just so you know.

5/6/11, 10:20 AM 
Congradulations on your new endeavor, and not letting a publisher get you down with not publishing after saying they would.
$3.99 is a perfect price.
I'm ePublished and still like paper, and I don't think we'll stop having paperbooks until we run out of the stuff. Which could happen. There will always be collectors.
What the eBook business is doing to the traditionalists in publishing is kicking them in the behind over the elitism they've been practicing. They deserve it.

5/6/11, 5:18 PM