A step-by-step guide on how to find and order my book on Amazon.com
My novel is now online! Congratulations to me.
If you're sure you want to buy it, go to the "Buy Now!" page to find out your purchasing options. But if you're not sure, and you want to help me out a bit further, keep reading.
Only Half the Battle
Writing a novel is only the first half. Now the hard part is ahead. I have to get that novel in front of the eyes of as many people as I can, because I love writing and I want to keep doing it as a career. That takes money, your money, so I have to do what I have to do in order to reach as many people as I can.
I could buy a bunch of copies myself and stand on the street corner asking people to buy it, but putting in online is much easier, even if that means making Jeff even richer.
So here's how to buy my book online that'll help me reach more people.
Step One: Make sure you have 99 cents.
Step Two: Make sure you really are going to buy my book before you go to this page, my Amazon page.
The reason I don't want you to buy it just yet, and the reason I'm sending people to his blog post is because Amazon keeps track of my "conversion" rate which is the number of people who view the above page divided by the number of people who view my page and then buy the book. The more people who buy it as soon as they view it the better for me. Amazon assumes that my page is great at making them money, and the higher they're likely to rank me, which means I can get in front of more people willing to buy. But conversely, the more people who view my page AND DON'T BUY, the worse it is for me. Amazon assumes my book cover or description or the writing inside (You can view sample chapters by clicking on the "Look Inside" on the upper corner of the book cover image) is what turned off potential buyers and they'll rank me lower.
So before you go to my Amazon page to check out my book, make sure you want to buy. But if you've never purchased anything on Amazon before, keep reading and I'll show you everything you need to know.
How to Buy Something on Amazon
You've seen the cover (awesome, right? I made it myself) and here is the description that I have on Amazon:
THE INVADERS ARE COMING, AND THEY'RE US
A war-like medieval fantasy world is invaded by the people of a future dystopian Earth through a portal that appears between the two.
"Joel Fontaine" is a police officer for the Emergency Earth Union, trying to keep order in the city of New Paris. "Deelo Con" is a disgraced war commander in the Daylon Empire's struggle against the hordes from the East. When Deelo becomes the first to discover the Portal, his life is turned upside down. He loses his memory, gains odd and extraordinary magical powers, and can't remember who he is, or whose side he is on.
With his memories slowly coming back, and everyone pulling at his lost sense of loyalty, Deelo must decide whom he should lead to the Portal, because the Portal grants powers to those who encounter it, magical powers like the power to hurl stones, raise lava from the ground, see beyond your own eyes, and rain death and destruction down upon your enemies.
But the real invaders are coming to take over the Daylon Empire, and Deelo must remember who he is in time to stop them.
###
If you look inside, you'll be able to read the first three chapters. I've provided those here on this website so you can read the first three chapters of my book before going to my Amazon page. Go to this page or look at the top navigation panel of this website and read some chapters and a more detailed synopsis. Then come back.
Step Three: Buy my book
If you're comfortable buying a kindle version of my book on Amazon (I'll show you other buying options at the end) then go ahead and go to Amazon.com and buy it. But make sure you have time to create an account and input your credit card information. It shouldn't take more than 5 minutes. Here is what you can expect.
Type in "the portal malachi mata" or "malachi mata the portal" into the search bar. You don't even have to go to the kindle store or any other department in Amazon for it to work. My book should pop up.
Click on that and then click on the yellow "Buy now with 1-click" button on the right.
It'll prompt you to log in. If you already have an account, great. If not, make an account.
Remember your password and username because your purchase will be sent to your account. It isn't automatically downloaded to your computer right away. You can download the actual file, but that's a bit more involved. I haven't figured it out yet, (let me know if you've already figured it out) but when I do, I'll update this post and let you know. But for now, the file you purchased is in the cloud, on your Amazon account. Which is also great because you can read it on your phone by downloading the "Amazon kindle app" for free. Sign in on the app with your username and account and the book will be there.
So don't forget your password.
Next, you have to assign a credit card to your account.
After you enter your credit card information, you must select it.
Now you can buy the book.
Congratulations and thank you from the bottom of my heart. I love writing, but I don't like this part of the process, begging people to buy my work. I wish I could give it away for free AND do it for a living, but I need the money.
The final step is for you to read it. Now if you want to actually read the book it's a bit tricky (for some odd reason).
After you buy the book you'll get a thank you page like the one below. You can read it right away by clicking "read now in Kindle Cloud Reader" but it makes the book come out strange and ugly. I would suggest that you read it on your phone. That's the great thing about having the book stored on your account in the cloud is that you can do this easily. Just download the free app, "Amazon Kindle App", and sign into your account. But if you want to do other things with the file you just bought besides read it off the cloud, click on the "view a summary of your order" and it'll take you to your order summary.
From your order summary, go to the top and click on the "kindle" button under "Manage Your Digital Items" and it'll take your dashboard.
So now you have three tabs, "Your Content" "Your Devices" and "Settings". I haven't really explored the other tabs yet, but if you go to the "Your Content" tab, you'll be able to see my novel that you just bought. Click on the ellipsis next to the title of the book, the three dots "...", and you'll have more options like this:
I tried the "download & transfer via USB" but it didn't work for me. When I buy a book, I like to have the actual file on my computer so I can change the format and make an audio book with it. So if anyone can figure it out before I do, please let me know.
And if you do manage to download the actual kindle file to your computer, you can search for "Calibre" which is a free ebook management program. It's much better than the online Kindle Cloud reader, and with Calibre, you can convert the ebook file into other formats, including text documents allowing you to make an audio book out of it if you have programs on your computer for it.
Step Four: Read and enjoy my book.
If you're convinced, go to amazon and follow the steps to buy my book. If you're not convinced, don't go there just yet. Think about it, read some sample chapters and follow me. I'll collect some reviews and provide a more detailed synopsis later that I think will seal the deal.
If you haven't read a book in a while, they're kind of hard to get into, especially on a computer screen and not in front of you written on cream-colored paper in an actual novel.
Like I said, I don't recommend using the online "Kindle Cloud Reader" that they offer. Download the app, sign in, and read it on your phone. My book was written with you sitting on the subway, or on the toilet, in mind.
Leave a Review
Nothing, besides the percentage I make off your 99 cents, would help me become a full time author faster than if you left a review. And like it or not, Amazon has the largest market of readers willing to fork over money to authors than any other platform. So leaving a review on my Amazon page would be the most wonderful thing you could do for me. A review doesn't have to be a professional, Siskel and Ebert type analysis. It can be, and often is, just a comment, like a Facebook comment.
Step Five: Keep in touch
Follow me on Facebook and Twitter or give me your email address by writing me at matamalachi@gmail.com
I will put you on my list and notify you when and where and how to get my future books for free, including the second and third one of this trilogy. I'll also notify you of contests and giveaways.
Alternatives to Amazon
If you don't want to buy my book off of Amazon, I understand. Personally, I don't like the idea of them cornering the market, their low royalty payments, or their KDP Select program, which is them forcing authors to sign an exclusivity contract for 90 days, which means they can't publish their books on any other platforms. And they promise to make your book more visible if you do, which implies that if you don't go exclusive with them, they'll bury your book. But I didn't sign up, and I won't. In fact, I've published with another platform called Smashwords.
If you want, you can go there and buy my book, AND download it in any format you want, for 99 cents. But if you don't mind, please buy my book on Amazon. They are the largest market and your help in buying and reviewing my book from there will make me visible to a lot more people.
I will be publishing on more platforms soon, and if you follow me, I will let you know. Go here and keep checking back to find our which platforms I've put my book on.
Thank you.