Want to receive free Awesome Indies e-books?

Awesome Indies Books invites you to join our Read to Review program. If you sign up, once a month we will email you details of the Awesome Indies approved books that are up for review. You then have two weeks to let us know if you’d like to read any of them. The author will then send you the book in whatever file suits your ereader.

In return for this FREE READ you agree to:

• Post a review on the Awesome Indies Book site, Amazon, and on one other review site (eg your blog, B&N, Kobo, or Goodreads) within two months of receiving of the book.
• The review should be a minimum of 100 words and include the following at the end: I received this book free from Awesome Indies Books in return for an honest review.
• When completed, email the administrator the links to your review on the three sites. If for some reason you didn’t finish the book or don’t feel you can review it for any other reason, then please let us know why. If after two months you don’t leave a review and we don’t hear from you, we will remove you from the reviewers list.

All the books you’ll be offered have already passed Awesome Indies approval—that means they’re good. Though you may not like a book, we can guarantee they’ll be well-written and edited. Two of my books, The Englishman and Coffee and Vodka, have been awarded Awesome Indies Approval badge.

Sign up here to start reading FREE Awesome Indies books now!

New Countdown Deal on The Englishman!

To celebrate Valentines Day, my Nordic tale of love, The Englishman, is only £0.99 or $0.99 today!

But hurry, the price will go up day by day!

Click here to get the deal at Amazon.co.uk and here for Amazon.com.

Quality Books for Only 99 Cents!

If you're looking for critically-acclaimed contemporary fiction ebooks, a number of them are on sale now until the New Year, including Coffee and Vodka for only 99 cents!

Coffee and Vodka is only 99 cents
for a limited time only!

Over at Awesome Indies the Holiday Bonanza Sale has just started, so pop over and see contemporary fiction at UNBEATABLE low, low prices. This sale won't go on forever. Fill your Kindle now!

Kindle Countdown Deal on The Red King of Helsinki

To celebrate Finnish Independence Day tomorrow, The Red King of Helsinki, my Nordic spy thriller,  will be JUST $0.99 for 24 hours! Offer starts 8am PST - 4pm UK time. But HURRY, the Kindle Countdown Offer means the price will go up every 24 hours!

Here are the details:

6th December at 8 am PST (4pm GMT) the price will be reduced to $0.99

7th December at 8 am PST (4pm GMT) the price will go up to $2.99

8th December at 8 am PST (4pm GMT) the price is back to normal $4.99

Don't miss this excellent offer, get it here!

Coffee and Vodka FREE Weekend Offer!

I know it's crazy, but I am offering Coffee and Vodka free this weekend only!

You can download a copy from Amazon today until midnight on 27 October 2013.

This is what people are saying about my Nordic family drama:

‘Coffee and Vodka is a rich story that stays with us….with moments of brilliance.’ - Dr Mimi Thebo, Bath Spa University. 

‘The descriptions of the difficulties of childhood, sisterhood, relationships and parenthood transcend national borders.’ - Pauline Masurel, editor & writer. 

‘Like the television series The Bridge, Coffee and Vodka opens our eyes to facets of a Scandinavian culture that most of us would lump together into one. I loved the way the narrative wove together the viewpoint of Eeva the child and her shock at arriving in a new country, with Eeva the sophisticated adult, returning for the first time to the country of her birth, and finding it both familiar and irretrievably strange.’ Catriona Troth, Triskele Books. 

‘I loved reading this. After picking it up (or opening it on my Kindle I should say) it was hard to put it down; I even missed my stop on the bus to carry on reading.’ Gretel, Goodreads.

Hurry, there's only three days to download your free copy of Coffee and Vodka!

(If you don't have a Kindle, you can downloaded a Kindle App from here)

VAT on e-books

In my other job as accountant, I've recently been involved in examining in detail the VAT rules for the travel sector, where the EU is desperately trying to harmonise the taxation rates across its member states.

Much like travel, VAT on books is also charged at different rates in different countries.

In the UK e-books carry 20% VAT while print books are free of tax. In France e-books have 5.5% VAT, while in Luxembourg where Amazon is based, the VAT is charged at 3 percent.

This week, however, according todays Bookseller magazine, the European Council is going to debate the issue, with the aim of harmonising VAT on e-books across Europe.

Related to this issue is a new law coming into force in 2015 where VAT has to be charged on the level of the rate in the country where the book is sold, not in the country where the e-store is based. This will make pricing decisions more complicated for us indies, but, on the other hand, if the UK becomes VAT free for e-books, it will also reduce the price of the books for our readers.

Here's hoping that the European Council will come to the right decisions for us, and that e-books will in the future be charged at 0% rate VAT, to make them equal to print books. Because, even if e-books are generally cheaper than print books, surely there is absolutely no reason to charge VAT on the digital content if the print copy doesn't carry it?

Here's a link to The Bookseller article for those who are interested in these matters.

The Fussy Librarian

I came across this new website which promotes books in rather an individual way, called The Fussy Librarian.

This site gives readers their very own personal librarian. You type in your email, tell them what kind of books you like to read and how you feel about profanity, violence and sex in novels. Then a daily email comes with your ebook recommendations. 

What's more they're featuring my book, Coffee and Vodka soon and they're supportive of authors like me, so I hope you'll support them and sign up! 

Here's the site address give them try, I've already downloaded a couple of books they have recommended to me according to my preferences (which I decided myself). www.thefussylibrarian.com. 

Coffee and Vodka

Book Beginnings on Fridays: House of Silence by Linda Gillard

I found Book Beginnings through a site called Jaffa Reads Too. It's is a kind of a linked Round Robin, sharing the first chapters of the book that you are currently reading. This clever idea is hosted by Rose City Reader.

This is how Book Beginnings on Fridays works in the words of Rose:

Please join me every Friday to share the first sentence (or so) of the book you are reading, along with your initial thoughts about the sentence, impressions of the book, or anything else the opener inspires. Please remember to include the title of the book and the author's name.

There is a a Mr Linky on Rose's site where you can add your Friday Book Beginnings post onto the thread. You can also share this post (or/and your own) on Twitter with the hashtag  #BookBeginnings.

Book Beginnings on Friday really appeals to me because I'm a great believer in the first chapter of any book being a taste of what's to to come. It's a contract that the author makes with the reader.

'This is how the story is going to be; this is the style, setting and flavour of the novel'  

I'm averaging a book a week at the moment, so it makes great sense to share the beginning of the novel I'm reading each Friday.

My first book is House of Silence by Linda Gillard. This is how the novel starts:

A Beginning

Chapter One

Gwen

I used to wonder if Alfie chose me because I was an orphan and an only child. Was that part of the attraction? I came unencumbered, with no family.

We were kindred spirits in a way. Detached, self-centred , yet both obsessed with the past. Our past. The difference was, I had no family and Alfie did. He had a family - a large one - but mostly he behaved as if he didn't, as if he wanted no part of them, however much they might want a piece of him.

I love this kind of retrospective beginning to a novel. The protagonist is writing about something which she has already experienced, but which still affects her deeply. From reading the blurb, I know this book is about Gwen's boyfriend's unusual family and their ramshackle Georgian home, which hides secrets that everyone, but most of all Alfie, want to forget. Even without knowing what the central story is, the reader will know from these first two paragraphs that this is a book about a troubled relationship, about a troubled past and about a troubled family. There's a darkness to the words, such as 'orphan', 'obsessed' 'past' and 'kindred spirits'. I cannot wait to read on!

House of Silence 

by Linda Gillard

Amazon Kindle edition £1.98

Paperback copy £6.19

An Awesome Magical Mystery Tour

The Awesome Indies is having a Magical Mystery Tour from the 27^th to the 30^th September. The tour highlights some of the magical and mysterious books listed on the Awesome Indies.

Take the tour for a chance to pick up some special offers and win some awesome prizes at  the blogs participating in the tour. At the end of the tour you get to enter the Giveaway for an  Amazon gift card. (First prize is a $25 card, second prize is $15 and third prizes is a $10 card.)

All you have to do is start at the Awesome Indies, follow the links from blog to blog, read the story and pick up the clue to the mystery key to enter the draw when you get back to the Awesome Indies.

Every book you buy from the tour gets you an extra 5 entries into the draw. Like all books listed on the Awesome Indies, these books have all been checked for quality and approved as being the same standard as mainstream published books.

Start the tour now by clicking HERE

The tour begins at 00.00 hrs on the 27th September  Pacific Daylight Time.

I've won an Alice Award!

I am absolutely thrilled and amazed that the lovely people at Displaced Nation have given The Red King of Helsinki an Alice Award!

Here is what the Alice Award is all about:

Displaced Dispatch presents an “Alice Award” to a writer who we think has a special handle on the curious and unreal aspects of the displaced life of global residency and travel. Not only that, but this person likes to use their befuddlement as a spur to creativity.

To be honest, when I thought of a name for my Cold War Russian spy character, I wasn't thinking of the Red King in Through the Looking Glass. Strangely, though, my King does have some connotations with the 'baddie' in Lewis Carroll's ageless tale.

If Carroll intended to portray the red side of the chess-game as being representative of the negative sides of human nature, then the vice he had in mind for the Red King was idleness.

Well, Kovtun isn't idle, but he certainly has some negative sides to his character!

Plus for me, even to be mentioned in the same sentence as such a classic writer, makes my head spin more than Alice's ever did.

Thank You Displaced Nation!

Here is the full list of all the hugely deserving Alice Award recipients.

I am in receipt of an Alice Award!

Book Review: Tread Softly by JJ Marsh

I read Tread Softly by JJ Marsh while on holiday in Provence, and although the book is set in Spain rather than France, the theme of wine and food suited my mood perfectly. This was my first introduction to Beatrice Stubbs, a police detective from the Metropolitan Police, who in Tread Softly is on a sabbatical in Northern Spain, with a plan to sample the regions fine wine and foods.

Beatrice's holiday in Spain is interrupted when an old acquaintance, the young and strikingly beautiful investigate reporter, Ana, asks for her help to track down a missing colleague. Before she can stop herself, Beatrice is knee-deep in intrigue and corruption, and getting into trouble not only with the police in Spain but also with her bosses back in London. 

Tread Softly is a brilliantly executed police drama. The start is quite violent, and I was a little afraid there’d be more scenes like that (The Englishman says I can't watch anyone break as much as a fingernail in police drams on the telly). But I needn’t have worried, because although there are more scenes like the first one, the violence is never gratuitous, or too gory. The character of Beatrice, an older woman with some stress-induced mental health issues, is very well drawn. The reader is often made to feel very worried about Beatrice, and at the same time in awe of her persistent, and intelligent, pursuit of justice.

The story is skilfully paced, with lovely, atmospheric descriptions of the Spanish town of Vitoria, as well as the food and wine Beatrice manages to consume in spite of the intensity of her investigations. After reading Tread Softly, I downloaded the other two detective novels by JJ Marsh, featuring Beatrice Stubbs. I can’t wait to devour them in the same quick manner as I did Tread Softly. 

Tread Softly by JJ Marsh 
is published by Triskele Books
www.triskelebooks.com

£6.99 Paperback

£2.68 Kindle version

Kindle Offer

I've got another quick Kindle HD Offer for you. If you get your device from the link below, you get £20 off the list price!

You can choose from the Kindle Fire HD 7" 16GB for £139 (usually £159) or the 32GB version for £159 (usually £179).

Click here for the offer now, but hurry, this offer is valid this week only (7-14 July 2012)

Is the e-book revolution passing Finland by?

Ulla-Leena Lundberg Picture: Teos.fi

E-book sales have been sluggish in Finland, as displayed by the sales figures of the latest Finlandia Prize winning novel, Jää, by Ulla-Leena Lundberg.

According to the Finnish newspaper, Uusi Suomi, Lundberg’s best selling book has sold over 100,000 old-fashioned paper copies, but only 100 e-books. That’s a mere 0.1 percent of the total sales. And this is even less than the total Finnish e-book sales in 2012 , which made 1% of total book sales, compared to about 10 % in Britain.

But Jää may be a bad example. It’s a high-end fiction title, a genre which often attracts a different kind of buyer. Award-winning books are also often bought as a present, which could explain the low e-book figure, say the Finnish publishers of Jää, Teos.

At the other end of the spectrum, titles such as Fifty Shades of Grey (all three books in the trilogy were bestsellers in Finland) have done much to increase the popularity of e-books worldwide. This may be due to privacy issues; no-one can see the cover of an e-book and judge its reader accordingly.

In spite of the disappointing sales of e-books, the trend is definitely on the up, even in Finland. According to the Finnish Book Publishers Association, printed book sales went down in 2012, while the sales of e-books rose in the same period by 8%.

Because the cost of publishing an e-books is negligible, there has been an explosion of independently published e-books by author/ entrepreneurs worldwide. The Fifty Shades trilogy is one such success story, which has made author E L James a millionaire. 

This trend is bound to be mirrored in Finland, so who knows, at this very moment there may be a Finnish independent author who is penning his or her best-selling e-book. In my view, that is when the sales of e-books in Finland will also explode.

This article was also published in the summer issue of the Finn Guild magazine, Horisontti.