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KND Kindle Free Book Alert, Thursday, August 11: TEN (10) BRAND NEW FREEBIES IN THE PAST 24 HOURS! Search 950+ FREE TITLES by Category, Date Added, Bestselling or Review Rating! plus … Raquel Byrnes’ PURPLE KNOT (Today’s Sponsor, 4.9 stars – 14 Straight Rave Reviews!)

Powered by our magical Kindle free book tool, here are this morning’s latest additions to our 950+ Kindle Free Book listings….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

“This book was truly a non-stop roller coaster ride of action, suspense, and romance.–Mary Manners

Purple Knot (Shades of Hope)
by Raquel Byrnes
4.9 stars – 14 Reviews
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled 
Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

“The plot keeps the reader moving through the book, but brings many surprises along the way and there is just enough romance to soften the suspense.

–B. Anderson



Here’s the set-up: 
 

A killer strikes. A love rekindled. A life-altering choice.

When her best friend, is murdered, Reyna Cruz doesn’t believe the police have the whole story. An investigator by trade, she has the talent to track Summer’s killer, but when clues lead to a family connection and a vicious gang, she suddenly becomes the hunted. At the end of her rope, Reyna must decide to trust the God she believes abandoned her.

Wanting justice for his sister’s murder, lawyer Jimmy Corbeau agrees to help Reyna—even though she’s his ex-fiancé, and their break-up devastated him. Romance is reawakened, but so are memories of their tragic undoing. Jimmy must decide if he will fight for a future with Reyna or allow their past to derail the investigation and his second chance at love.

When the investigation goes awry and Summer’s infant daughter is kidnapped, Reyna must put her life on the line. Will Jimmy and Reyna survive the desperate measures it takes to recover his niece, catch a killer, and secure a happily-ever-after for them all?


One Reviewer Notes:


“Private Eye Reyna (Rain) Cruz feels like she just lost her best friend. Probably because she has. And Rain knows who to blame: the victim’s abusive husband.


“While that would be a disastrous start for many novels, which either underplay an emotional response or fall into a pit of maudlin sentiment, Byrnes portrays a perfect blend of competence and concern as Rain, aided by her intern and the victim’s brother (Rain’s former fiance) set out to prove the husband’s guilt.


“Straightforward? Hardly. What follows is a series of twists, turns, and dangerous developments that will delight both mystery and suspense (and romance) readers.

Barbara Early


About the Author

Raquel Byrnes lives in Southern, California with her husband of sixteen years and their six children. She considers inspirational fiction a wonderful way to minister to others. She writes romantic suspense with an edge-your-seat pace. Her first book in the Shades of Hope Series is Purple Knot. You can visit her at her website: www.raquelbyrnes.com and her writing blog, Edge of Your Seat Romance.

Click hereto download Purple Knot (Shades of Hope) (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them.

Authors and Publishers: Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Free Contemporary Titles in the Kindle Store 

Welcome to Kindle Nation’s magical and revolutionary Free Book Search Tool — automatically updated and refreshed in real time, now with Category Search! Use the drop-down menu (in red caps next to the menu bar near the top of the page) to search for free Kindle books by genre or category, then sort the list just the way you want it — by date added, bestselling,, or review rating! But there’s no need to sort by price — because they’re all free!


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These eleven short stories explore the wonders of the natural world. The title story is about a backwoods man living in the Blue Ridge mountains who captures beavers to start a business selling beaver-chewed walking sticks. Alerted of the enterprise, the local sheriff and his posse race through the...
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This short, easy-to-read children’s book contains 31 sentences and 31 color photos. It is about a stuffed animal named Kitty who has fun visiting the countries in the United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland....
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Kitty Travels in the U.K.
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In the fourth book of the Never Alone Series, Tyler Donovan, the Director of the U.S. Attorneys Office in Washington, D.C., takes the lead in investigating an international mystery. Some of the wealthiest digital money investors from around the world are showing up dead. The deeper Tyler digs into...
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Saddle up and head west with four women and three separate inspirational journeys...to a better life and frontier men.This is a bundle of 4 stories- New Home for a Wyoming Bride - Frontier Hope- Golden Bride- The Prize Out WestThese are clean romance stories that follow three amazing women through...
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There are three gorgeous, growly groomsmen at the wedding, but only one sweet, generous bridesmaid ready to share.At my best friend’s wedding, I had the luck to meet not one handsome groomsman, but three.Trace is a real estate developer with bright blue eyes and the body of a Greek god.Tanner is a...
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Easy Izzy!‘Can’t we just go home?’ Izzy let out a big sigh before asking his dad for the umpteenth time. His dad says ‘umpteenth’ can describe something that happens again after happening a couple of times before. And Izzy used it right! Izzy already knew the answer to his fifty-seventh...
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The planet Terram is submerged in an endless informational storm that leaves encoded patterns all over the earth. Light, sound and information reflect in a special way, driving the planet’s creatures through predefined thoughts and emotions, affecting their choice and evolution.Only one kind of...
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This is a Fun Early Reader Thanksgiving Story Book for Toddlers, Preschool, Kindergarten and 1st Graders with an Interactive, Simple, Easy to Read Style for Kids ages 2 to 5 and above This is a book both parents and kids will read and enjoy together this Thanksgiving Season!This is a fun story that...
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What foods give YOU super powers?Explore all the different colour fruits and vegetables that give your body the powers it needs to do AMAZING things!We know that we should 'eat a rainbow' of different food colours to keep our bodies healthy. SUPER FOOD POWER gives kids knowledge about nutrition and...
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I wasn’t ready for love, but fate had other plans. All it took was one night.One night I let my lust get the better of me.Nine months later,I'm a single mother.And Damon?He disappeared after that night,and I haven't seen him since.Image my surprise when seventeen years later,he walked into my...
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Secret Baby With The Billionaire
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Kindle Nation Bargain Book Alert: From 1120 to 1307, the Knights Templar answered to nobody, had the strongest military, crossed borders at will, and financed monarchies. What if they returned now to challenge Al Qaeda without worrying about media, Congressional hearings, or the next election cycle? Terrence O’Brien’s THE TEMPLAR CONCORDAT is our Kindle eBook of the Day: 4.9 Stars and Just $2.99 on Kindle

If you loved the ideas behind Da Vinci and The Lost Symbol, but you weren’t so crazy about all the arty esoterica, THE TEMPLAR CONCORDAT could hit your sweet spot.

Here’s the set-up for Terrence O’Brien’s The Templar Concordat, 4.9 stars from 9 reviewers and just $2.99 On Kindle:

When the truth is your greatest danger, and the enemy knows the truth, things can only go downhill when the enemy finally gets the proof. And that’s the proof the Hashashin get when they steal what the Vatican doesn’t even know it has.

Now the infallible decrees of two Twelfth Century popes and three kings, stolen by the Hashashin, threaten to catapult the bigotry, bias, and religious blood baths of the Third Crusade straight into the Twenty-First Century.

When Templars Sean Callahan and Marie Curtis are drawn into the mess, they face an ancient enemy that has already nearly won the battle, a newly elected Mexican pope being undermined by entrenched Vatican powers, world class scholars who will sell their prestige to the highest bidder, and terrorists lingering over lattes in sidewalk cafes.

Moving from Rome to London, Switzerland, and Saudi Arabia, Callahan and Curtis are desperate to find some way to stem the success the Hashashin are having enlisting the majority of moderate Muslims in their Jihad.

From the Author

The idea for the book began to grow a few years ago as news reports revealed more and more about Al Qaeda. What struck me was the fact that it had no national allegiance. It operated outside the established nation state system. Al Qaeda didn’t care what the government of Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, or Iran thought. It did whatever it wanted, and claimed to be doing it to further world-wide Islam. 

So, I wondered what things would be like if there was an organization in the West that was also free from the governments of the West. How would they combat Al Qaeda? What kind of scene would play out across the world if that kind of group challenged Al Qaeda without worrying about media, Congressional hearings, appeals courts, public opinion, or the next election cycle?

Then I remembered there once was such a Western organization when the Knights Templars were active from 1120 to 1307. They answered to nobody, had the strongest military of the day, crossed borders at will, amassed a huge fortune, engaged in trade and commerce, and financed many of the monarchies.

So, why not bring the Templars forward in time, and let some escape the ambush by the King of France and the pope that destroyed them in 1307? And since the Templars were a creation of the Crusades and the Church, let those players come into the present day, too. And the Hashashin, a secretive branch of Islaimi Shiite Islam that excelled in covert operations? Let them escape their destruction by the Mongols in 1275, and come forward to the present day.

I also noticed news stories about the discovery of the Chinon Parchment from 1308 dealing with the Templar trials. The document had been misfiled in 1628 and was lost to history until an Italian researcher found it buried in the stacks of the Vatican Library in 2001. So the notion that things could get lost for hundreds of years in a library was definitely reasonable.

The result is The Templar Concordat. I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Terrence O’Brien

After leaving the Marine Corps I began a career in mine and oil field development. So, I have followed the oil fields spanning Alaska, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, and now live with my wife in Kansas City where I became a floor trader at the Kansas City Board of Trade. I’m currently working on Avram’s Cross, the second book in the series.

And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample:


Amazon Announces Kindle Cloud Reader, Ready Now for Online & Offline Reading Anywhere With Safari on iPad, Safari on Desktop and Chrome

Introducing Kindle Cloud Reader
Read over 950,000 Kindle books in your web browser – no download or installation required
Based on HTML5, Kindle Cloud Reader optimizes for the platform you’re using and automatically stores your latest book locally for offline reading
Instant Books – no waiting for a download, start reading the book immediately, offline or online
SEATTLE, Aug 10, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) — 

(NASDAQ: AMZN) – For over two years, Amazon has been offering a wide selection of free Kindle reading apps that enable customers to “Buy Once, Read Everywhere.” Customers can already read Kindle books on the largest number of the most popular devices and platforms, including Kindles, iPads, iPhones, iPod touches, PCs, Macs, Android phones and tablets, and BlackBerrys. Today, Amazon.com announced Kindle Cloud Reader, its latest Kindle reading application that leverages HTML5 and enables customers to read Kindle books instantly using only their web browser – online or offline – with no downloading or installation required. As with all Kindle apps, Kindle Cloud Reader automatically synchronizes your Kindle library, as well as your last page read, bookmarks, notes, and highlights for all of your Kindle books, no matter how you choose to read them. Kindle Cloud Reader with its integrated touch optimized Kindle Store is available starting today for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome at www.amazon.com/cloudreader.

 

“We are excited to take this leap forward in our ‘Buy Once, Read Everywhere’ mission and help customers access their library instantly from anywhere,” said Dorothy Nicholls, Director, Amazon Kindle. “We have written the application from the ground up in HTML5, so that customers can also access their content offline directly from their browser. The flexibility of HTML5 allows us to build one application that automatically adapts to the platform you’re using – from Chrome to iOS. To make it easy and seamless to discover new books, we’ve added an integrated, touch optimized store directly into Cloud Reader, allowing customers one click access to a vast selection of books.”

Features of Kindle Cloud Reader include:

 

  • An immersive view of your entire Kindle library, with instant access to all of your books
  • Start reading over 950,000 Kindle books instantly within your browser
  • An embedded Kindle Store optimized for your web browser makes it seamless to discover new books and start reading them instantly
  • New Kindle Store for iPad is built from the ground up for iPad’s touch interface
  • Your current book is automatically made available for offline use, and you can choose to save a book for reading offline at any time
  • Receive automatic software updates without the need to download new software
  • Select any book to start reading, customize the page layout to your desired font size, text color, background color, and more
  • View all of the notes, highlights, and bookmarks that you’ve made on other Kindle apps or on Kindle
  • Sync your last page read across your Kindle and free Kindle apps so you can always pick up where you left off

 

Kindle Cloud Reader is available for Safari on iPad, Safari on desktop and Chrome starting today. Kindle Cloud Reader on the iPad is optimized for the size and unique touch interface of iPad. Without even leaving the app, customers can start shopping in the Kindle Store and will find a unique and immersive shopping experience built specifically for iPad’s Safari browser.

Kindle Cloud Reader will be available on additional web browsers, including Internet Explorer, Firefox, the BlackBerry PlayBook browser, and other mobile browsers, in the coming months.

Amazon.com customers can start reading their Kindle books immediately using Kindle Cloud Reader atwww.amazon.com/cloudreader.

 

KND Kindle Free Book Alert, Wednesday, August 10: FOURTEEN (14) BRAND NEW FREEBIES IN THE PAST 24 HOURS! Search 940+ FREE TITLES by Category, Date Added, Bestselling or Review Rating! plus … If you loved The Paris Wife and Midnight in Paris, you’ll love Ruth Harris’ THE LAST ROMANTICS (Today’s Sponsor, $0.99)

Powered by our magical Kindle free book tool, here are this morning’s latest additions to our 940+ Kindle Free Book listings….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor

Thousands of Kindle Nation citizens have loved THE PARIS WIFE at $12.99 … Now, for just 99 cents, it’s time to discover New York Times bestselling author Ruth Harris’ take on those roaring but romantic twenties in
THE LAST ROMANTICS

The Last Romantics
by Ruth Harris
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled 
Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

“A great love story that sweeps over time! Very well
written, easy and fun to read… The characters kept me guessing, and I
really liked the whole story!
 

–Janelle E. Glanz



Here’s the set-up: 
 

A passionate and sweeping historical romance set in the glittering capitals of Paris and New York between the end of World War I in 1918 and the beginning of World War II in 1940.

Kim Hendricks is American, a legendary war reporter and celebrated novelist, a daring big game hunter, glamorous but dangerously flawed. Nicole Redon is French, a gifted fashion designer whose shocking and revolutionary ideas changed the image of women around the world. She is beautiful, charming, lonely, haunted.

He confronts a devastating tragedy. She guards a desperate secret. They meet by chance and pursue their star-crossed romance in New York and Paris, on safari in Africa, in glamorous resorts on the French Riviera and the savage blood-drenched front lines of two world wars.

They were the last romantics, the first contemporaries. Destiny brought them together but would fate—and the tides of history—keep them apart?


One Reviewer Notes:


“Loved the time period and the characters in this novel. My parents lived through this time span so I had a lot of identification with it. The lives of writers intrigue me and there were plenty of descriptions of famous American authors’ writing diciplines, celebratory periods and their lives in general.

“Reading about Paris made me wish I had travelled there. I think it would be super if a reader had visited all of these places and could picture exactly where those parts of the story were taking place. Now, about the two main characters, it definitely was love and I don’t think I could ever be involved in that type of relationship but I had to keep remembering the times: World War 1, the roaring twenties, the depression, World War 2 and also Kim and Nicole’s individual careers.

KO of Boston


About the Author


New York Times bestselling author Ruth Harris has sold many millions of copies around the world in hardcover and paperback editions. Her fiction has been translated into 19 languages, published in 25 countries and selected by the Literary Guild and Book-of-the-Month Club. Ms. Harris worked in traditional print publishing as a copywriter, editor and publisher before turning to the exciting new opportunities in electronic publishing. She lives in New York City with her husband, writer Michael Harris, the author of Always On Sunday and The Atomic Times: My H-Bomb Year at the Pacific Proving Ground, both available in Kindle editions.

Click hereto download The Last Romantics (or a free sample) to your Kindle, iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, BlackBerry, Android-compatible, PC or Mac and start reading within 60 seconds!

UK CUSTOMERS: Click on the title below to download

Each day’s list is sponsored by one paid title. We encourage you to support our sponsors and thank you for considering them.

Authors and Publishers: Interested in learning more about sponsorship? Just click on this link for more information.

Free Contemporary Titles in the Kindle Store 

Welcome to Kindle Nation’s magical and revolutionary Free Book Search Tool — automatically updated and refreshed in real time, now with Category Search! Use the drop-down menu (in red caps next to the menu bar near the top of the page) to search for free Kindle books by genre or category, then sort the list just the way you want it — by date added, bestselling,, or review rating! But there’s no need to sort by price — because they’re all free!


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These eleven short stories explore the wonders of the natural world. The title story is about a backwoods man living in the Blue Ridge mountains who captures beavers to start a business selling beaver-chewed walking sticks. Alerted of the enterprise, the local sheriff and his posse race through the...
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This short, easy-to-read children’s book contains 31 sentences and 31 color photos. It is about a stuffed animal named Kitty who has fun visiting the countries in the United Kingdom – England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland....
Read more »
Kitty Travels in the U.K.
By: Timothy T. Perry
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In the fourth book of the Never Alone Series, Tyler Donovan, the Director of the U.S. Attorneys Office in Washington, D.C., takes the lead in investigating an international mystery. Some of the wealthiest digital money investors from around the world are showing up dead. The deeper Tyler digs into...
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Saddle up and head west with four women and three separate inspirational journeys...to a better life and frontier men.This is a bundle of 4 stories- New Home for a Wyoming Bride - Frontier Hope- Golden Bride- The Prize Out WestThese are clean romance stories that follow three amazing women through...
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There are three gorgeous, growly groomsmen at the wedding, but only one sweet, generous bridesmaid ready to share.At my best friend’s wedding, I had the luck to meet not one handsome groomsman, but three.Trace is a real estate developer with bright blue eyes and the body of a Greek god.Tanner is a...
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Easy Izzy!‘Can’t we just go home?’ Izzy let out a big sigh before asking his dad for the umpteenth time. His dad says ‘umpteenth’ can describe something that happens again after happening a couple of times before. And Izzy used it right! Izzy already knew the answer to his fifty-seventh...
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The planet Terram is submerged in an endless informational storm that leaves encoded patterns all over the earth. Light, sound and information reflect in a special way, driving the planet’s creatures through predefined thoughts and emotions, affecting their choice and evolution.Only one kind of...
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This is a Fun Early Reader Thanksgiving Story Book for Toddlers, Preschool, Kindergarten and 1st Graders with an Interactive, Simple, Easy to Read Style for Kids ages 2 to 5 and above This is a book both parents and kids will read and enjoy together this Thanksgiving Season!This is a fun story that...
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What foods give YOU super powers?Explore all the different colour fruits and vegetables that give your body the powers it needs to do AMAZING things!We know that we should 'eat a rainbow' of different food colours to keep our bodies healthy. SUPER FOOD POWER gives kids knowledge about nutrition and...
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I wasn’t ready for love, but fate had other plans. All it took was one night.One night I let my lust get the better of me.Nine months later,I'm a single mother.And Damon?He disappeared after that night,and I haven't seen him since.Image my surprise when seventeen years later,he walked into my...
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Secret Baby With The Billionaire
By: Zenna Rose
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Kindle Nation Bargain Book Alert! Don’t miss our eBook of the Day, Kathleen Shoop’s The Last Letter – – 4.5 Stars on 45 out of 51 Rave Reviews and just 99 cents on Kindle!

Here’s the set-up for Kathleen Shoop’s The Last Letter, just 99 cents on Kindle: 

Katherine wouldn’t have believed it if she hadn’t found the letter…


Katherine Arthur’s mother arrives on her doorstep, dying, forcing her to relive a past she wanted to forget.

When Katherine was young, the Arthur family had been affluent city dwellers until shame sent them running for the prairie, into the unknown. Taking her family, including young Katherine, to live off the land was the last thing Jeanie Arthur had wanted.  But she would do her best to make a go of it. For Jeanie’s husband Frank, it had been a world of opportunity. Dreaming, lazy Frank. But, it was a society of uncertainty—a domain of natural disasters, temptation, hatred, even death.

Ten-year-old Katherine had loved her mother fiercely, put her trust in her completely, but when there was no other choice, and Jeanie resorted to extreme measures on the prairie to save her family, she tore Katherine’s world apart.

Now, seventeen years later, and far from the homestead, Katherine has found the truth:  she has discovered the last letter. After years of anger, can Katherine find it in her heart to understand why her mother made the decisions that changed them all? Can she forgive and finally begin to heal before it’s too late?

Kathleen Shoop, PhD, is a language arts coach in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Last Letter is her debut novel.

She is published in four Chicken Soup for the Soul books and regularly places articles and essays in local magazines and newspapers. Kathleen is also married and the mother of two children.

And here, in the comfort of your own browser, is your free sample:


Publetariat Dispatch: Publishers Be Crazy…Or Desperate

Publetariat: For People Who Publish!

In today’s Publetariat Dispatch, Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton marvels at Bookish.com, major publishers’ latest plan to compete with booksellers directly.

I just read this article about Bookish.com, a new joint venture being launched later this summer by Hachette Book Group, Penguin USA and Simon & Schuster. Per the article:

The site intends to provide information for all things literary: suggestions on what books to buy, reviews of books, excerpts from books and news about authors. Visitors will also be able to buy books directly from the site or from other retailers and write recommendations and reviews for other readers.

The publishers — Simon & Schuster, Penguin Group USA and Hachette Book Group — hope the site will become a catch-all destination for readers in the way that music lovers visit Pitchfork.com for reviews and information.  

A couple of sentences further down, you’ll read:

“There’s a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” said Carolyn Reidy, the president and chief executive of Simon & Schuster. “We need to try to recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment, but which we don’t believe is currently happening online.”

There are three problems with Ms. Reidy’s statements.

First, there is NOT “a frustration with book consumers that there’s no one-stop shopping when it comes to information about books and authors,” because in fact, there are several sites that offer one-stop shopping for author/book information. Perhaps Ms. Reidy just hasn’t heard of such obscure, underground sites as Amazon.com, Goodreads.com, Shelfari.com, and LibraryThing.com.

Second, nobody needs to “recreate the discovery of new books that currently happens in the physical environment,” because for the average consumer, discovery of new books NO LONGER HAPPENS IN THE PHYSICAL ENVIRONMENT. Once again, it’s Amazon, Goodreads, Shelfari and LibraryThing to the rescue here, not to mention genre-specific online communities like Smart Bitches, Trashy Books and format- and device- specific online communities like Kindle Nation Daily.

Third, Ms. Reidy and her compatriots don’t “believe [this is] currently happening online.” Why not?! How is it possible that publishers are THAT FAR out of touch with book buyers? I’ll tell you how: traditionally, publishers have viewed booksellers as their customers, and book-buyers as the customers of booksellers. They have little to no idea what’s bouncing around in the head and life of the typical consumer, because they haven’t had to know those things to run their business at any time in the past—past being the operative word there.

So these three major publishers are sinking massive amounts of time, effort and money into a huge new initiative that I think just about any typical book-buying consumer on the street could tell you today is destined to fail. And how do you suppose they’ll be financing this new initiative? Certainly not by reducing the prices of their books, or signing more new, unproven authors, or keeping books on physical shelves longer to give them a better chance of catching on, or giving individual authors more marketing money.

I’m sure the publishers would say this initiative is all about supporting their authors and marketing books in a cost-effective way, so kudos to them for good intentions. But while they may know book and author marketing today is all about author platform, they clearly don’t understand that author platform is all about community, and community is about making personal connections and feeling like you’re part of a movement. Which do you think a fan of Stephen King would rather visit: Stephen King’s personal site and online community of fans, or the obviously corporate umbrella site, Bookish.com?

Bookish.com content will necessarily be vetted and vanilla, so as not to hurt the corporate images and reputations of its backers and to avoid offending any site visitors. Anyone who wants the raw, unfiltered version of musings from their favorite authors and opinions of others in those authors’ communities won’t bother with Bookish.com when they can get the straight scoop right from the horses’ mouths elsewhere.

I hate to sound so negative and dump all over publishers like this, because it’s a good thing that they’re finally willing to try something new. But at this point, they face the same problem Microsoft did with its Zune MP3 player: Apple got there first with the iPod, and they did it very well. If you’re going to enter the marketplace with a new product for which the demand has already been fulfilled by someone else (or several someone elses), then your product has to be so incredibly, amazingly compelling that consumers will feel they’re missing out by not switching to it. Microsoft tried it with the Zune; I think by now we can all agree they failed to capture enough of the MP3 player market to even make Apple break a sweat. And Microsoft has decades of experience with technology and marketing direct to consumers.

So Bookish.com gets an A for effort, but a goose egg for vision and sustainability.

Publishers: maybe you’re looking at this all wrong. Maybe instead of trying to supplant the Amazons, Goodreads and Shelfaris of the world, you should be looking for ways to leverage what those sites and communities are already doing, and doing very well: crowdsourcing.

Let them tell you what the readers want to see in print and ebook forms. Listen to consumer complaints about ebook release windows and pricing, and respond accordingly. Switch to POD book production so you can offer a much wider variety of titles at a much lower cost; grousing about the lack of variety and fresh, new voices from mainstream pub is so common as to be a pastime in reader communities. Stop chasing after blockbusters and start tuning into the pre-existing discovery network to locate your new literary stars. Keep your ears to the ground for breakout indie authors, and sign them, knowing they’re already proven commodities. Get and keep a bead on technologies consumers are excited about (color ebooks, interactive book apps, etc.) and invest in those technologies.

Your role as arbiters of taste and gatekeepers is a thing of the past, and the position of Reader Community Leader has already been filled. Own it. Restructure your businesses and legacy thought patterns to embrace this new reality. Now, your role is to find out what consumers want in print books, ebooks and emerging media technologies, and give it to them. Period.

This is a cross-posting from April L. Hamilton‘s Indie Author Blog.

KND Kindle Free Book Alert, Tuesday, August 9: TWENTY (20) BRAND NEW FREEBIES IN THE PAST 24 HOURS! Search 937 FREE TITLES by Category, Date Added, Bestselling or Review Rating! plus … Discover Dan Armstrong’s PUDDLE OF LOVE (Today’s Sponsor, $3.99)

Powered by our magical Kindle free book tool, here are this morning’s latest additions to our 930+ Kindle Free Book listings….

But first, a word from … Today’s Sponsor
Puddle of Love
by Dan Armstrong
Text-to-Speech and Lending: Enabled 
Don’t have a Kindle? Get yours here.

It is unfortunate that Jesse is dead, because he’s the guy who could solve all the town’s mysteries. How can he reveal the secrets behind his own murder from the other side?



Here’s the set-up: 
 

Jesse Wallace’s dilemma is that he knows too much. He knows all the deepest, darkest secrets in the little town of Briley, Oregon. But he can’t tell a living soul. He knows the daughter of the town’s most successful rancher is addicted to drugs. He knows Briley’s highly respected parson is having an affair with a local prostitute. He knows the details of a young girl’s kidnapping, and he saw two horrible murders. But he can’t inform the town sheriff or the state police. In fact, he can’t say a single word at all, because one of those murders was his own. Jesse’s dead, and he’s stuck on the other side.

Ever hear the story about the ghost in the whorehouse? This is it.


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