B. Justin Shier's Blog, page 7

How Far We've Come
Just got back from B&N. A kind reader recommended I pick up copies of David Grossman's  On Killing and On Combat to better understand the psyche of a warrior. Problem was, the e-book for On Killing was (IMHO) overpriced—and no e-book version of On Combat was even available.

To say that my experience at B&N was poor would be an understatement. I came to find a book, and I ended up struggling to find a bookstand. The changes to my local big-box-book retailer had been extensive. ...

The holidays have been good to Kindle authors. Very good. I'd like to thank everyone that forced their grandmother to download my novels. It's been an amazing ride.

In return, I wanted to point out a great deal. Fresh off the cusp of selling nearly ten thousand e-books in the past week, Joe Konrath (and his friend Blake Crouch) are offering up dozens of their Kindle novels as a way of saying thank you. Both of these guys are renowned bestselling thriller authors. There's some SF and contempora...

Here's the thing. I know that most of you only want to read some good books. You don't care much about how the sausage is made. You just want it to be free of typos. I understand that. Your lives are complicated enough. Kicking back with a cup of coffee and a novel is supposed to offer an escape from the chaos. It's supposed to be a bastion from the madness. But there is a running street battle going on behind your e-reader's screen, and everyone's involved, from e-retailing giant Amazon to n...

First off, holy cow:

And the first page of the YA Bestseller List:

So, yea, those are two Perry Jackson books above and below  Zero Sum . You know, the series with those movies? That would mean that Zero Sum is on the front page of YA Science Fiction & Fantasy. Zounds!

My thanks go out to everyone that wrote a review, told a friend, or featured the book on their blog. This adventure has been a pure word-of-mouth production.

For me, this is one to savor. The YA SFF page was the one I was shooting...

So, I was buried in hospital fun-time when I got an excited phone call from a friend. A review of Zero Sum appeared on Fantasy Book Critic yesterday, and, wow, just wow. I'm still picking my jaw up off the floor.

Zero Sum by B. Justin Shier (Reviewed by Mihir Wanchoo)
The reviews for Zero Sum  on Amazon have also been encouraging. The sequel to Zero Sight is now rated in the Top 20 of Contemporary Fantasy. It may even surpass it's predecessor.

I'd like to extend my thanks to everyone who has offe...

An interesting article by Terri Giuliano Long showed up on The Huffington Post of all places. They seem to have picked up a new column dedicated to the indie author movement. The content is being provided by another site called www.indieReader.com, of which Ms. Long is a columnist. All this is new to me, but the topic is most familiar:

Love it or hate it, this is an exciting time in the publishing world. Technological advances have made the long, arduous process of publishing a book cheap...

Hungry for some free indie books?

The Indie Book Blog is giving away over 300 titles for the holidays.

Know of any more great giveaways? Post them in the comments section and I'll add them to this post. Oh, and if anyone has a line on a good GeForce GTX 560 Ti 2048 deal, please let me know about that too. I have needs...


^_^

Happy Bargain Hunting,

B.

I remain haunted by this song. It helped build a book in my brain which I'd love to put to paper. Too bad I'll have no time to do that. Stupid Dieter and his Top 10 Book In Contemporary Fantasy are to blame.




I'm plain staggered by the crazy surge Zero Sum is having right now—and I cannot thank you all for your kind reviews. There can be no doubt that your strong endorsement of the characters and the plot are what is driving new readers to the series. For that, I owe you some more books.

Only a ...

Robert Bidinotto's Hunter just broke into the Amazon Top 10.
He's ahead of the new Stephen KingHe's ahead of the new Robert PattersonHe's ahead of the new John Grishham
And he's a self-published author.
There are two reasons why Robert Bidinotto's book is on fire:It kicks asterisks Amazon agreedThey put Hunter on sale and featured it on a front page promo. And that's all they did. The rest was consumer driven. (Only us blokes get to decide what to 1-Click, after all.) Now Robert is kickin' it...

I had a few readers ask if I wanted corrections (typos, spelling errors, formatting funks, and the like) to Zero Sum. Of course I do. Any author that would refuse corrections is batty. Feel free to post them to the comments section of this post or Email them to me directly (bjustinshier at the G-mail's dot com). Please include a few surrounding words so that I can locate the error in the document. I'll be patching Zero Sum up with your fixes this month. You'll get an Email from Amazon/B&N whe...