Books Don't Go Bad, They Just Page Away

As a life-long book nerd, I'm pretty pumped to be part of a bundle of novels and stories all focused on books and bookish things.

The BOOKS GONE BAD BUNDLE, from BundleRabbit, is a collection of nearly 260,000 words of 2 novels and 10 stories from 11 authors and is certain to be an excellent 24 hours or so of reading for those who revel in book-themed tales.

Using the catch-phrase "Speculative Tales about a Uniquely Portable Magic" (in reference to the quote from Stephen King), the bundle, which is available at all major eBook retailers, contains:

• "Clockwork Lives" by Kevin J. Anderson and Neil Peart (Novel)
• "Quest for the Three Books" by Dawn Blair (Novel)
• "These Chains" by Dayle A. Dermatis (Story)
• "Warning! Do Not Read This Story!" by Robert Jeschonek (Story)
• "The Page Turners" by DeAnna Knippling (Story)
• "Active Reader" by Mark Leslie (3 Story Collection)
• "Guardian of the Grimoire" by Karen McCullough (Novella)
• "The Story for the Letters" by Kate MacLeod (Story)
• "Petra and the Blue Goo" by Kristine Kathryn Rusch (Story)
• "Invasion of the Book Snatchers" by Ryan M. Williams (Story)

My own collection of three bookish themed stories, Active Reader, is a part of the bundle and was the genesis for the idea for the bundle. I love bookish themed stories and I wanted to see if there was a way to collect a bunch of them together to give other book nerds like me an easy way to read a bunch of book-centric tales of books, booksellers and librarians.

The bundle, as mentioned, is available at all major eBook retailers. You can get to it by following any of the links below:

BundleRabbit Page: With full synopsis of bundle and each individual eBook - and retailer link
Books2Read.com (links to all retailers, including Kindle, Kobo, Apple and Nook)

5 Ways To Use Free As An Author

When I was recording a recent episode of the Stark Reflections on Writing & Publishing podcast, I began reflecting on the various ways that an author can leverage FREE in order to build their author platform.

Below are those points, quickly summarized.

1) To Get Readers Hooked on a New Series

Offering the first book in a series free can bring a large funnel of new readers to your books. And, for authors who perhaps don't have more than a few books in that series, sometimes offering a free short story that is linked to that series is a great way to get people to try out your characters and their unique world/setting.

Examples:

Finding Inspiration in Everything

I was pretty pumped to be interviewed by USA Today bestselling author Patricia McLinn on her relatively new podcast that focuses on readers.

AUTHORS LOVE READERS is a conversation between authors about how and why they create stories.

 
It was a heck of a lot of fun! 

The episode was entitled FINDING INSPIRATION IN EVERYTHING WITH MARK LESLIE.

I know Patricia from author circles and usually see her once a year at the annual NINC (Novelists, Inc) writer's conference in Florida. It was great to be able to catch up with her and to share some insights and reflections on the writing part of my life, which I have recently returned to with new dedication and conviction.

Patricia asked some great questions and pulled some interesting tidbits out of me as well, including why I chose to market my work as "horror" even though most of the material, though dark, doesn't quite go into what most people think of as horror.

Podcast: Stark Reflections on Capturing Reading Data via eBooks

In the third episode of the Stark Reflections on Writing and Publishing podcast, Mark interviews Sinead McElhinney, PR Coordinator on the Communications team from Rakuten Kobo in Toronto, Ontario about some interesting reading data that Kobo released near the end of 2017. They discuss the analysis of reading data, understanding core eBook readers better, as well as some of Sinead’s favorite things about her role in the book industry.

Sinead and Mark at RT (Romantic Times) in Atlanta in May 2017 (May the 4th, if you catch the subtle hint from Mark's t-shirt)

During their conversation, Sinead and Mark discuss: