A Blog of Timely Persuasion

eBook Evolution

In honor of the annual Read an eBook Week celebration I’m offering free copies of Timely Persuasion via Smashwords.com through 3/13/10.

Enter coupon code “RFREE” at checkout on the Smashwords site to pick up your copy in a variety of formats including Kindle, Sony Reader, Palm, etc.

Timely Persuasion @ Smashwords.com

If you do check it out, I’d love to hear your comments (good or bad) via a review, by email, or in the comments of this post.

(And since I’m letting Smashwords handle the promo this time, hopefully we’ll avoid the incident that occurred in my first foray into eBook week back in 2008.  Bob Zonis, this one’s for you…)

Enjoy!

Lulu.com is running a holiday promotion.  Use coupon code HUMBUG at checkout to get 10% off your order on anything, including the Timely Persuasion paperback.  Valid through December 30th.

Not only do you get to go back in time, but you can also go back in price!

(Yup.  That was a terrible joke.  But I liked it…)

Bonus fun fact:  I didn’t make up the coupon code, but it’s interesting that it quotes Ebenezer Scrooge from A Christmas Carol, considered by some to be the first published time travel story in 1843.  This classic gets a minor nod in Chapter 9 of TP, one of many hat tips to other time travel tales.

After realizing that my eBook prices were starting to be all over the map, I decided to do something about it.  Now all eBook editions of Timely Persuasion share the same $1.99 price tag.

(My future self tells me this is a great deal.  He also says thank you for buying one and he’s glad you liked it.)

Check them out in your preferred eReader format below:

PDF*
Amazon Kindle
Barnes & Noble Nook
Smashwords (Sony, Palm, ePub, RTF, etc.)

*Note that due to eBook formatting variations, only the PDF includes Mike Doughty’s handwriting.

And for those who prefer good old fashioned paper for $15 (+/-):

Amazon.com
IndieBound
Lulu.com

Last but not least…

There’s still the free online edition at reader.timelypersuasion.com.

Please enjoy!

Last weekend I was the guest contestant for the premiere episode of Coverville: Musically Challenged, the quiz show style spin-off to Brian Ibbott’s popular Coverville cover song podcast.   We gave away copies of Timely Persuasion to lucky winners, did a brief interview, and then I was challenged with a special trivia category called “Everyday I Write the Book.”

Being a huge fan of Coverville (as well as a proud Citizen), it was both an honor and a thrill to be a part of this.  Despite a few nervous jitters I had a lot of fun.  Held my own on the question round too aside from a couple of brain freezes.  Let’s just say I’m more into time travel than vampires…

Listen to the show here:

Musically Challenged 001: Crackermic

Thanks to Brian for inviting me!

And one last note that didn’t make it into the interview:

Coverville gets a brief mention in Chapter 17 of Timely Persuasion as the working title of an album from the 1970s, which leads to an age old time travel causation puzzle.  Was the album named after the podcast, or was the podcast named after the album?

Hmmm…

Seems my first try at posting the Quantum Leap fanfic story ran into a little bit of a technical snafu.  iWeb was converting the text to an image, and the image was so large that some browsers were choking on it.  I did some tweaking and now it should be showing up in good old fashioned HTML text.  Check it out here:

“Just Like Starting Over”
a Quantum Leap story for LEAP BACK 2009
by Jacob LaCivita

(This might also be the straw that drives me away from iWeb and over to Sandvox for a website redo — something I’ve been considering for awhile.  Stay tuned…)

Timely Persuasion is now available on the Amazon Kindle for the low price of $1.99.  (I figure if you shelled out $359 for a Kindle you like to read and deserve cheap content.)

Don’t have a Kindle?  Kindle books can also be read on the iPhone & iPod Touch.

No new bonus lyrical references this time around, though I am kicking myself for not quoting “I never did like it all that much and one day the axe just fell” when the narrator refers to his recent layoff from a dead-end job in Chapter 1.

Even if you already own the paperback it’s still worth checking out to show off to your friends while out and about.  There’s a slick image of the LBDG 8 Track in Chapter 18.  Plus it might help me justify the way too many hours I spent on Kindle specific formatting.  (Props to KreelanWarrior.com for the helpful post on adding a cover image and table of contents.)

And since I don’t like watching anybody make the same mistakes I made, here’s a little tip:  Images resized using the “Preview” application in Mac OS X 10.5 won’t render at all on a Kindle for some reason.  You need to reopen and re-save the file using a different image editing program (I eventually used Seashore) for it to work.  Only took me 3 days to figure that out…

Yesterday marked the one year anniversary of the release of Timely Persuasion.  (Technically it was released on February 29th, so this pseudo anniversary date will have to do until 2012.)  Crazy how time flies.

Some stats from year one:

• 24,414 Pageviews from 110 countries
• 4,116 readers of the online edition
• 75 blog posts
• 29 online mentions
• 5 reviews (4 positive, 1 in progress with a promised update)
• 2 appearances on Coverville
• 1 live reading in Hollywood

And a (roughly) chronological list of highlights:

• LB-DG.com predated the official release as a teaser, with sporadic posts using the narrator’s voice starting in May of 2007.  (Plus one time travel jaunt a little further back…)
• A Blog of Timely Persuasion debuted on launch day and has turned into a bit of a novel in its own right.  I’m most proud of the chapter by chapter commentaries and the series about the novel Replay by Ken Grimwood.
• TP earned its first review in April courtesy of Devon Kappa at None May Say, followed just over a week later with a review by Mrs. Giggles.
• The first TP related Musically Challenged segment on Coverville aired one day after my birthday in May.  A second appearance came a couple of weeks ago in episode 551.  It’s both weird and fun to hear myself unexpectedly on my favorite podcast.
• June brought us the “Remastered” edition thanks to the generous talents of my college friend Bryan.  He did me proud with a fine looking layout that featured (among other tweaks) Mike Doughty’s handwriting.  I’m still amazed at the difference it makes when you look at the original and the new versions side by side.
• July had a minor snafu with a printed copy leading to a temporarily shunned reader, but it all worked out in the end and sparked an ongoing conversation with Scott Schnaars.  Scott’s a great guy who heard about the book on Coverville, eventually wrote his own review, and really confirmed why doing this blog and interacting with readers is so worthwhile and fulfilling.
• The only (partial) negative review thus far came in October and also sparked some healthy author reader interaction in the comments section.  I value all opinions and take them seriously, though I am still waiting for Gavin to give the rest of the book a try to see if it sways his feelings any…
• November found me confessing to my well-intentioned cybersquatting adventure, catching the attention of cross-media expert Christy Dena.
• The new year found me reading from TP aloud at the Hotel Cafe with Conrad Romo’s Tongue & Groove.  The fact that I’d been attending the event for years as a spectator plus the knowledge that some of my favorite musicians had stood on the same stage put me oddly at ease during my first public reading.
• And finally we’ve arrived in the present, where wider distribution finds Timely Persuasion available from numerous fine online retailers such as Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Powells in addition to Lulu where it got started.  Plus there’s still the free online edition that I hope to keep up in perpetuity.  So if you still haven’t read it yet, you’re running out of excuses.

I’m sure I’m leaving a lot of events and acquaintances out, so please don’t be offended if you aren’t listed in the above.  (But feel free to remind me to drop your name next time…)

My thanks goes out to everyone who bought, read, reviewed, emailed or otherwise got in touch with me at some point during the last year in regards to Timely Persuasion.  I hope you’ve enjoyed the ride as much as I have, and I invite you to stick around for more musical and/or time travel fun both here on the blog and in my future writing endeavors.

Best,

JL

PS: Guess who I just recently realized I have the same initials as?

Just a quick post to announce that Timely Persuasion is now available on Amazon.com, Powells.com, and BarnesAndNoble.com. (Though only Amazon correctly capitalized the ‘C’ in my last name, earning them top billing in this blog post.)

Now that the ISBN is officially approved other websites should be just around the corner.  Brick & mortar stores should also be able to special order it by title or author under the ISBN of 9780615188829.

Special thanks to Bryan Davidson for his tweaks that helped get this final edition greenlit.

For any early adopters out there, the changes this time around were minor compared to the remastered edition.  A couple of typo fixes and a few more lyrical allusions that I couldn’t resist.  I’m pretty sure I’m done meddling — though I am working on a reformatted file to submit for an Amazon Kindle eBook edition, so you never know…

If anyone has a gift certificate burning a hole in their pocket, now you have something good to spend it on!