Free Book & New Books

For a while, I’ve been using the gift certificates from Amazon to fund my book giveaways.  Readers click on my Amazon links to buy things, which leads to gift certs for me, which I turn around and use to have Amazon send out free books.  Sounds great, right?

Only I had a minor case of dumb.  Shipping one book from Amazon runs $3-4 in shipping, so every winning copy of The Stepsister Scheme eats about $11 from one of those gift certificates.

It suddenly occurred to me that I could use Amazon’s 4-for-3 deal, which also qualifies the order for free shipping.  Suddenly each book is $6.  I order the books to me, and even with paying shipping myself to send them to the winners, it’s still cheaper than buying them individually through Amazon.

So from here on out, I’ll be ordering those in batches and shipping prizes myself.

What better way to celebrate my triumph over the dumb than by giving away another book!  When I was still setting things up in Wordpress and playing around with layout, some of you said I should find a way to keep Smudge on my web site.  As of this week, I’ve done just that.  All you have to do is find him.*  It’ll be just like Where’s Waldo if Waldo was a spider and would set you on fire.

E-mail me at jchines42 -at- hotmail.com or by using the Contact form on my site.  Include the web address where you found Smudge.**  I’ll pick a winner at random some time next week and send her or him an autographed copy of The Stepsister Scheme [Amazon | Mysterious Galaxy].  Have fun, and remember, Smudge is pretty good at hiding.

To keep this from being all about me, here are some of the books my friends have released lately.  ‘Cause I have awesomely skilled friends :-)  And I’m sure I’m forgetting some, so I apologize in advance for that.

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*You’re looking for Smudge as he appears in this post, so the images on various goblin covers don’t count.
**No, this blog post doesn’t count either, smartass.