KINDLE UNLIMITED. WHAT IT MEANS TO YOU

 

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT, ALFIE?

 

 

Amazon launched KINDLE UNLIMITED last Friday ...

 

Where for a fixed fee of $9.99 a month

 

readers can read as many books as they want from a certain subset of the ebooks sold by Amazon.

 

It also includes a limited number of audio books from Audible.com.

 

Here is how the numbers break down:

 

– 2,769,500+ ebooks in Amazon
– 645,790 books in Kindle Unlimited (about 23%)
– 2,157 audio books (about 0.3% of the Kindle Unlimited Books
– 2,773 books in KU are free (even if the reader isn’t subscribed to Kindle Unlimited)

At $9.99 a month, Kindle Unlimited is the most expensive of the three services.

Scribd is $8.99 and Oyster is $9.95.

The Kindle Unlimited platform will feature such blockbuster titles as

The Harry Potter series, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings trilogy, the Hunger Games trilogy, Diary of a Wimpy Kid books, and Flash Boys.

Several of these big titles aren’t available on Scribd or Oyster, which have around 400,000 and 500,000 ebooks to choose from, respectively.

BUT HOW DOES THIS AFFECT US AS AUTHORS?

The fee we will get is about $2 when 10% of our book is read.

If your book is in Kindle Direct Select, it is automatically entered into Kindle Unlimited. 

Amazon is allowing you a chance to withdraw your books now.

Amazon is also GIVING A FREE ONE MONTH TRIAL. 
 

Free.  I would suggest you see what Kindle Unlimited does for you in the next month before you withdraw any books.

Unless you are a best selling Indie author like Hugh Howey, your book must be EXCLUSIVE WITH AMAZON.

It's REAL LIFE folks:

If your books make lots of money for Amazon, you will be accorded special treatment.  Life is what it is.

But protests howled when Kindle Direct Select first came out ...

and then, the Indies discovered that those first who entered, got the best rewards.

I suggest trying Kindle Unlimited as an author.  You can always withdraw.

Check out my books.  Many of them are in KINDLE UNLIMITED.

And for those of you who do not want to spend $10 a month --

FOR A LIMITED TIME --

THE LEGEND OF VICTOR STANDISH
 http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG/

and

RITES OF PASSAGE
http://www.amazon.com/RITES-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/

ARE FREE!

NEVER RUN FROM WOLVES.

"Never run from wolves. You'll only taste better."

- Victor Standish.

http://www.amazon.com/LEGEND-VICTOR-STANDISH-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B005NCUTAG/

 

Victor Standish here.  Even stories with no end have a beginning.  Mine is no different. 

 

But for a LIMITED TIME you can get MY BEGINNING FREE!

 

And once having gotten my Kindle book, you can get the AUDIO BOOK for $1.99!

 

How cool is that? 

 

And along the way you will meet fascinating characters like Mesmer, the only cat who owns a French Quarter restaurant.

 

You know what's missing from TODAY'S FANTASY and SCIENCE FICTION?

 

OPTIMISM .... and ... FUN.

 

 

I mean I sleep in libraries, and all you see these days on the shelves are Dystopian ...

 

Is it just me but does Dystopian sound like a sick stomach?

 

And these Apocalyptic novels? 

 

The girl who is fated to save the world.  Give me a break.  Hitler would've made short work of Katniss.

 

In a world gone mad ...

 

The best we kids can do is try and survive the madness of the adults around us and find a way to thumb our noses and laugh.

 

And what is it with all the zombies?  I mean my time in Detroit gave me all I want from them!

 

Ah, Alice, you're a ghoul, not some mindless zombie. 

 

Would you stop looking at my fingers like that?  Alice!

 

See?  Harry Potter never had this kind of trouble with Hermione!

 

 

HAVE YOU EVER WONDERED?

Have you ever wondered?

Monday, I noticed a tattooed man talking animatedly in the parking lot of the Eye Clinic to which I was going to get my new glasses.

He was walking in circles, talking into a cell phone – his left arm waving wildly like a rabid windmill.

As I got out of my car, I heard him wail to the phone: 

“Baby!  You gotta believe me.  I wasn’t drunk.   I wasn’t!  I promised you I wouldn’t drink, and I haven’t.  If I sounded funny to you it was ‘cause I was on dope!”

He went silent, listening to the phone.  And I almost walked back to him to ask  what his “Baby” was saying in reply. 

But I wasn’t suicidal that day so I walked into the Eye Clinic.  Yet, I wondered how did he think what he said made things any better?

Yesterday, I read a Wall Street Journal article about Putin seeking a “Double-Tier” solution to his woes about the shot down airliner: 

to apologize yet still be right.

I could feel a nose-bleed coming on so I stopped reading.

I remember reading what Winston Churchill wrote after completing his volume on his early life {1874 to 1904} in 1920.

“I have drawn a picture of a vanished age.  

The character of society, the foundations of politics, the outlook of youth, the scales of values are all changed –

And changed to such an extent I should not have believed possible in so short a time without any violent domestic revolution.”

I reflected on how much further his world changed after 1920 until the time in 1953 when he won the Nobel Prize in Literature.  

Yes, LITERATURE not peace.  Politics was a dirty world in those days as well.  The “Lion in Winter” was a rival to be diminished in British politics back then.

Edward R. Murrow, the journalist who braced and shamed McCarthy, said of Churchill in 1940:

“He mobilized the English language and sent it into battle.”

I wonder:

Do words carry any weight anymore?

Like Gore Vidal wrote:  Has this age gone from the Guttenberg era to the Dark Ages of MTV?

Are we destined to devolve not evolve in our society?

How much has society changed around you since you were a teenager?

Was the world simpler only because you, yourself, was simpler?

Or have we edited our memories, as Churchill did who was emotionally abandoned by both parents

yet enshrined them in his memoirs?

 

Oh, by the way –

Congrats to Justin Bieber for FINALLY getting an advantage in life by cutting lines at Disneyland by being pushed in a borrowed wheelchair by handlers for a bad knee.

Disneyland allows its disabled guests to cut the lines at any rides that can accommodate them.

Of course, Disneyland has a fast line for the famous, but the wheelchair allowed him to get in front of his famous peers as well.

I wonder what Churchill would say?

 

(I love the dialogue in this movie)

GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING_for FREE!

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.”
 - Samuel McCord

http://www.amazon.com/RITES-PASSAGE-Roland-Yeomans-ebook/dp/B004XQVPYM/

In the French Quarter of the Roaring Twenties, there is a strange night club owner whom society shuns ...

unless their world has become nightmare.

Travel back to the FIRST and listen to Samuel McCord recount a tale of horror, love, sacrifice, and redemption to a young William Faulkner ...

A tale from the mists of America's beginnings in the year 1853.

Meet Meilori Shinseen, her vicious twin Maija, Elu, and the Turquoise Woman for the first time!

FOR FREE!  For a LIMITED TIME.  Want MORE?

Upon getting the FREE kindle book, you can download the AUDIO for a MERE $1.99!

Go back to McCord's beginning ... FOR FREE!

GYPSY, ghost cat VS ALIEN!

{Courtesy Dave Melvin}

 

“When everything is coming your way, you're in the wrong lane.”
― Gypsy, Ghost Cat

 

 

So there I was watching the rolling credits to ALIEN, thinking what a great human Ripley was for going back for her cat.

 

I was curled up in Food Guy's favorite chair.  He wasn't using it.  He was out on one of those blood runs of his.

 

Why do I still call him Food Guy when I can't eat?  He still puts out food for me to knock around the kitchen floor.

 

I coulda won the World Cup for America if they just accepted ghost cats.

 

I went cold as I heard hollow laughter.  Aw, mouse turds.  That DayStar Guy. 

 

Why couldn't he pick on someone his own size -- like the Statue of Liberty?

 

It came from the kitchen.  I padded all ninja-like to peek around the corner.  Aw, jeez.  An honest-to-acid blood Alien.

 

And it was drooling all over my food!

 

I charged it, hissing.  It hissed back.  I hissed louder, bucking my back to boot. 

 

"Lay off my food, Drool Lips!"

 

Its inner teeth shot out at me, and I dodged.

 

"Hey, no French Kissing on the first date!"

 

It lunged for me.  I twisted and ran into the front room.  It followed. 

 

I stopped in front of the mirror, spun around, and wiggled my rear in its face.

 

"Hey, Ugly!  I wear mine on the right end!"

 

Like I figured, the Alien darted for me.

 

I yelled out, "Elu, don't fail me now!!"

 

Elu? 

 

He lives in what he calls the Mirror World.  I saved his life once from the Sphinx of Thebes, and the Apache Shaman owes me.

 

I hoped he wouldn't welch on the debt.

 

Elu didn't. 

 

The alien slid right THROUGH the mirror.  I followed.  Maybe I could convince the Dildo-Headed Alien to be pals. 

 

Hey, it could happen!

 

{Courtesy Dave Melvin}

 

“Why isn’t the word “phonetically”

spelled with an “f”?”

 

―     Gypsy, Ghost Cat

FINISHING

I am at the 60,000 word mark on

THE STARS BLEED AT MIDNIGHT ...

   And the silence is loud, the inertia of writing weighing down on me. 

After all this work, will anybody really WANT to read this novel?

I hear gruff words above me: 

"Tarnation, Son!  Let me tell you about two hellions who wrote ...

to each other ... and to the world at large."

It is the ghost of Mark Twain:

"Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald

had a lot in common. They were both drunks ... let's not be PC about it, shall we?"

Mark wrinkled his moustache.

"They both had intense and complicated marriages. They were both deeply committed to their craft.

Most importantly, they were literary giants at a time when the Great American Novel was more than just a myth—it was a real possibility."

"I don't want to write the Great American Novel ...." I began.

Mark laughed, "Shoot for the moon, son.  Anyway, the two of them wrote to each other on how things were going for them."

The ghost of Hemingway sat down beside me, grumbling,

“Scott took LITERATURE so solemnly. He never understood that it was just writing as well as you can and finishing what you start.”

He lit up a cigar.  "You quit, kid, and I will kick your butt from here to Putin.  He loves you, don't you know?"

He shook his head. 

"I was a believer in self-discipline while Scott depended on his Muse ... and week long benders, scribbling frantically and pushing his lank blonde hair out of his eyes."

Hemingway snorted,

"Me?  I wrote like clock-work -- standing up at the typewriter, at the same time every day -- pushing through even the 'dry' days when the words came slowly."

He jabbed his cigar at me.  "In life, you are either a doer or a dreamer."

Hemingway gruffed, "You just have to go on when it is worst and most helpless—

there is only one thing to do with a novel and that is go straight on through to the end of the damn thing.”

Mark lit up his own cigar.  "Sometimes even Hemingway is right."

SOFT DIPLOMACY, DEAD INNOCENTS

"Wet on me, and I will have your mother shot."


When President Obama took office, he promised a re-set in Russian Policy and a radical approach in ‘soft diplomacy.’

It is a tragic mistake many make in dealing with other cultures, putting your ethic in the minds of those of another mind-set.

The Westerners who showed compassion to the Indian thought the warriors should respond in kind. 

The warriors merely believed their Medicine was strong, and the White Men were weak.

European politicians tried to placate Hitler and millions died.

Now, we are going down a similar tragic path.

"Oh, but you do not know Putin," I hear many wail.

Do you?

 

Many consider Vladimir Putin to be roughly a cross between Joseph Stalin and Sauron.

I jest but it is only because the man is truly scary:

Putin's parents lived through the siege of Leningrad in World War II, his father was probably a KGB agent,

and none of their neighbors remembers little Vladimir even existing as a child younger than about seven or eight years old,

so there is some speculation that his very existence began with theft, when his "parents" stole him from his real parents.

These are the type of things that can happen in a country ruled by Josef Stalin.

But whether he was kidnapped or sold or honestly born, Putin had a deceitful streak from a very early age, as any good son of the KGB should.

Those who claim to remember what he was like as a child (including himself) will tell you that he was a tough kid,

he ran with a bad crowd and was often the leader of it, and he would stop at nothing to punish anyone who crossed him.

As he matured, he got his act together just enough to become a KGB agent.

Russians in the 1990s were looking at an exciting but confusing new world.


MARCH, 1997:


Vladimir Putin is plucked from obscurity out of the St. Petersburg local government apparatus by President Boris Yeltsin and named Deputy Chief of Staff.

In June, he defends his PhD dissertation in “strategic planning” at St. Petersburg’s Mining Institute.

Later, this document proves to have been plagiarized from a KGB translation of work by U.S. professors published many years earlier

(as if nobody would notice, and in fact for quite a while nobody did).


JULY, 1998:


In a second inexplicable move, Yeltsin names Putin head of the KGB (now called the FSB).


NOVEMBER, 1998:


Less than four months after Putin takes over at the KGB, opposition Duma Deputy Galina Starovoitova,

the most prominent pro-democracy Kremlin critic in the nation, is murdered at her apartment building in St. Petersburg.

Four months after that, Putin will play a key role in silencing the Russian Attorney General, Yury Skuratov,

who was investigating high-level corruption in the Kremlin, by airing an illicit sex video involving Skuratov on national TV.

Four months after the dust settles in the Skuratov affair, Putin will be named Prime Minister.


AUGUST, 1999:


Completing a hat trick of bizarre spontaneous promotions, proud KGB spy Putin is named by Yeltsin Prime Minister of Russia.

Almost immediately, Putin orders a massive bombing campaign against the tiny, defenseless breakaway republic of Chechnya,

 apparently seeing the reassertion of Russian power there as key to overall resurgence of Russia’s military and state security apparatus, his primary political objective.

On August 26th, he’s forced to acknowledge the horrific consequences of the bombing. Hundreds of civilians are killed and tens of thousands are left homeless as civilian targets are attacked.


NEW YEAR'S EVE, 1999:


Boris Yeltsin resigns the presidency of Russia, handing the office to Putin in order to allow him to run as an incumbent three months later.

[Between April 2000 and March 2002, Russia plunges into a nightmarish conflict in Chechnya eerily similar to what America now faces in Iraq.

Opposition journalists, especially those who dare to report on what it going on in Chechnya, suddenly start dying.

In 2000 alone, reporters Igor Domnikov, Sergey Novikov, Iskandar Khatloni, Sergey Ivanov and Adam Tepsurgayev are murdered --

not by hostile fire in Chechnya but in blatant assassinations at home in Russia.]


APRIL, 2003:


Sergei Yushenkov, co-chairman of the Liberal Russia political party, is gunned down at the entrance of his Moscow apartment block.

Yushenkov had been serving as the vice chair of the group known as the “Kovalev Commission”

which was formed to informally investigate charges that Putin’s KGB had planted the Pechatniki and Kashirskoye apartment bombs


to whip up support for the Putin’s war in Chechnya after the formal legislative investigation turned out to be impossible.

Another member of the Commission, Yuri Shchekochikhin will perish of poisoning,

a third will be severely beaten by thugs,

and two other members will lose their seats in the Duma.

The Commission’s lawyer, Mikhail Trepashkin will be jailed after a secret trial on espionage charges.

Today, virtually none of the members of the Commission are left whole, and it is silent.


JUNE, 2004:


Nikolai Girenko, a prominent human rights defender, Professor of Ethnology and expert on racism and discrimination in the Russian Federation

is shot dead in his home in St Petersburg.


JULY, 2004:


Paul Klebnikov, editor of the Russian edition Forbes magazine, is shot and killed in Moscow.

Forbes has reported that at the time of his death, Paul was believed to have been investigating a complex web of money laundering involving a Chechen reconstruction fund,

reaching into the centers of power in the Kremlin and involving elements of organized crime and the FSB (the former KGB).


The murders of Putin's opponents keep piling up year after year after year after year ...


JULY, 2009:


On July 14, 2009, leading Russian human rights journalist and activist Natalia Estemirova, a single mother of a teenaged daughter, was abducted in front of her home in Grozny, Chechnya,

spirited across the border into Ingushetia, shot and dumped in a roadside gutter.


THE PRESENT:


The shooting down of a passenger jet over Ukraine – with the loss of nearly 300 lives – is a human tragedy and a moral abomination.
 
Part of the outrage is that Russian leader Vladimir Putin is trying to avoid culpability. His hands are bloody, or should we say bloodier.

Russia started this confrontation with Ukraine and armed pro-Russian separatists with surface-to-air missiles

that almost certainly brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17.

 Putin and his minions can’t now disavow the horrible consequences if trigger-happy separatists mistook the Boeing 777 for a Ukrainian military plane on Thursday.

This is a conflict of polar opposites. On one side of the terrifying crisis blowing up on the borders of Russia and Ukraine stands

Vladimir Putin, the ruthless former KGB officer, focused with deadly intent on rebuilding the Soviet empire.

On the other are

the frivolous, dithering politicians of the West, high-fiving each other at summits and conveying their condolences, after a monstrous atrocity, on the teenagers’ medium of Twitter.

It is Hitler and the dithering politicians of the West once again ...

but this time the weapons of war are truly monstrous.
 

Read more here: http://www.mercedsunstar.com/2014/07/18/3754023/editorial-putin-cant-avoid-responsibility.html#storylink=cpy

YOUTUBE HAS KILLED BLOGGING

Text on the Net used to be Power ...


     Ah, like in 2006.  But today?

But we live in an age of multimedia and reading requires effort. Effort that could be spent looking at cute photos. Or watching cute videos. - See more at: http://theantisocialmedia.com/blogging-cool-anymore/#sthash.6Jy8uAgT.dpuf

But we live in an age of multimedia and reading requires effort. Effort that could be spent looking at cute photos. Or watching cute videos. - See more at: http://theantisocialmedia.com/blogging-cool-anymore/#sthash.6Jy8uAgT.dpuf

I mean, reading requires, like you know ...

Effort and stuff. 

I get headaches if I read more than 43 characters in a row and all.

And reading takes away from my time looking at FB pictures of cute kittens

and laughing at stupid pet trick video's on YouTube.


Then, there's FACEBOOK, guys ...

Facebook may be pulling off one of the most lucrative grifts of all time:

 First, they convinced authors they needed to purchase all their Fans and Likes --

 even though everyone knows you can’t buy love.

 Then, Facebook continues to charge those same authors money to speak to the Fans they just bought!


Then, there's INSTAGRAM!  I mean what says LOOK AT ME! better than Instagram?  I mean sometimes even with TWITTER you have to, you know, INTERACT.

What a pain, right?

But with TUMBLR, PINTEREST, and INSTAGRAM, you just look at the pretty pictures.  Instant kindergarden all over again.

 A post by Karen Jones Gowen says we have become too selfish in what is supposed to be a SOCIAL media.  What do you think?

Then, Denise Covey has written a post asking if we have changed our blogs with the changing times?

http://laussieswritingblog.blogspot.com/2014/07/the-trouble-with-blogging-has-your-blog.html

Have you?  Me, I am a dinosaur.

And speaking of YouTube, here is a great vid by Jesse Cook: