All Three of Rollo's Misadventures Now in Kindle for a Buck

My holiday gift to fans of Rollo. Priced at 99 cents through the holidays, ALL THREE comic novels combined in one Kindle. (No paper, think green.)

So if you have a Kindle and are taking a trip, load it up! If you get a new Kindle, let this one be your first download! Buying three ebooks separately would cost almost 15 bucks. So for just one buck, you get My Inflatable Friend, Rubber Babes, and Farnsworth's Revenge. 

And you get to find out how failing upward can be so painful it's funny. It's boychik lit - a story about a young man with more chutzpah than brains. Young men identify, mature men sympathize, and woman of any age just love to see this guy go splat. 

Grab it now, because in January the list price goes back up! http://amzn.to/1zNdAZJ

Discount Coupon Codes for Last-Minute Ebook Gifting

From now until mid-January, go to Smashwords.com and use the codes below to get three bucks credit toward one of Rollo Hemphill's zany adventures. That's $3.99 a copy for a gift that says, despite everything that's happened, you still have a "unique" sense of humor. These little books are about an airplane-read long, and you can read a chapter while you take a coffee break, wait your turn at the dentist (!), or would otherwise fret because your food order is still in the kitchen.

Smashwords links:

My Inflatable Friend code BY75K

Rubber Babes code AS78F

Many ebook formats available, including B&N Nook and Apple (EPUB), Sony (LRF), Palm (PDB), HTML, and several online formats you can simply read on a computer, SmartPhone, or tablet.

Kindle format is available on Amazon, but I don't control that price. Available here.

Same with Diesel PDF available here.

So if you're not yet a fan of Rollo or simply want to spread the itch, here's an inexpensive gift that says you care enough to mess with his mind.

Enjoy your holiday and why don't you stop back after your shopping's done to post on the blog?

P.S. Paperback editions also available on Amazon (ads below) if you're hopelessly stuck in the 20th century and still have some bookshelf space left.

 Paperback  edition

 Paperback edition

Read an eBook Week March 7 - 13

In this new Smashwords.com promotion, you'll find Rollo Hemphill's misadventures My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes in popular formats, including EPUB (Nook), HTML, and Sony Reader.

(Also available in Kindle from Amazon, and PDF at Diesel eBooks.)

Don't give a blank e-book reader!

A friend asked me today whether the Rollo Hemphill comic novels are available in ebook versions. Decidedly yes, for both titles. Just make sure you get the right digital format:

Amazon Kindle My Inflatable Friend Rubber Babes

Adobe PDF (read it on your laptop, even) both titles available from Diesel E-Books

Smashwords (EPUB for Nook, also Sony Reader format, others): My Inflatable Friend (free) Rubber Babes (1.99) Also see "Rollo Will Do You for Free" post on the Boychik Lit blog.

Audio MP3 (excerpts) click here (all free downloads) for iPod and such.

So upload the devilish little device with laughter, why doncha. These are mercifully short, amusing books, just the right length for an airplane read, with bite-sized chapters easy to ingest while you're waiting for some cute elf to bring your holiday lunch.

Remember, too, there are at least three books in Rollo's unfortunate saga. The third comes out in 2010--Farnworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. (Spoiler alert: It's not necessarily the demise of Rollo, more like the target of the old man's ire?)

Of course, Amazon or Barnes & Noble will be happy to ship you paperbacks in case, like me, you're so bewildered by the profusion of ebook formats you don't know which to buy.

Gerald Everett Jones

Author of the Rollo Hemphill novels
- in paperback and ebook -
www.boychiklit.com

Pre-Christmas E-Reader Wars Heat Up

See also: It's Going To Be an E-Reader Christmas



Sony Reader is now (finally) running a consumer-oriented TV ad, and the NY Times reported yesterday on the iRex launch. You can bet Amazon will hype Kindle to the max in the coming weeks, along with its promotion of the Kindle 3 large format in the college textbook market.

Apple is conspicuously absent, although you can use apps like Stanza to read ebooks on your iPhone. But that's hardly a competitive strategy for Apple. I'm betting they come out with a docking screen for some or all of the iPod models.

I decided to join the club and beefed up my membership and presence on ebook distribution service Smashwords.com, which supports open-source EPUB and Sony LRF, as well as lots of the other formats.

And then of course there's the proliferation of more general-purpose netbooks, palmtops, PDAs, and tablets. (See Maggie Ball's previously posted article on this blog.)

I'm thinking a big consideration for ebook buyers should be the long-term cost of buying content. Prices of ebooks vary widely, but many Amazon Kindle versions are advertised at just under ten bucks. Lots of Smashwords EPUB versions range from free to a buck or two, although bestsellers typically cost more. Then too, there's the public domain library offered by Project Gutenberg, where everything is both free and about a hundred years old. But if you're looking for Charles Dickens rather than Dan Brown, you can find him and thousands of other famous authors there in EPUB, HTML, and "plain-text" formats.

My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes, the first two books in the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels, have been available in Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket (PDA), and Adobe PDF (Ingram) formats since the day they came out in paperback.

I'm jumping into the other formats now on Smashwords by offering Rubber Babes for $1.99 in EPUB, Sony LRF, and a variety of other non-DRM versions.

Ebook sales (and free downloads) seem to be taking off. For example, I just read today that a healthy percentage, if not a huge one, of The Lost Symbol sales have been ebooks. Perhaps the dominant business models. platforms, and formats in this new marketplace will now emerge, and quite soon.

Ms. Oprah Obama Kindle

$50 off Kindle! Enter OPRAHWINFREY as coupon code on checkout (until Nov. 1).

She's endorsed the candidate, now the Amazon e-book platform (link to article in Information Week).

And just in time for the holiday shopping season. Yeah, everybody is saying that the device is pricey, but so is iPhone. If you figure the per-copy cost savings on books is around $15, the Kindle will have paid for itself when you've bought 20 books.

I'm not objective on this, of course, because both of Rollo's misadventures are available on Kindle.

Speaking of the commercial silly season, recent developments in the global financial community bear out the wisdom of Rollo's quip, "Paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness."

Steve Jobs Disappoints Me

I had assumed that Apple was just holding back from entering the e-book market. Its competitor Sony, after all, has been taking the cautious road by marketing its Reader device in a grass-roots campaign that seems to be aimed at librarians and academics. Then along comes Amazon with Kindle, which perhaps rightly emphasizes convenience and instant gratification via wireless distribution.

And of course I'm pleased that My Inflatable Friend is available not only in softcover, but also in Kindle e-format.

But if Steve Jobs is to be believed, he just doesn't want to play the game. At all. There will be no iPod for books (unless you credit the little-publicized ability of the iPhone to display PDFs). Here's what he said recently in the NY Times.

Perhaps he should pop over to Goodreads, where librarians and other book junkies flock to await the End of Print As We Know It!

Kindle the Yule Log and Ignite Rollo's e-Life!

I notice that Amazon.com has released a Kindle version of My Inflatable Friend, something that I did not expect but am thrilled to see. It's lonely on the bleeding edge, but hey. I have often said (and written in various blog posts) that an iPod for books is long overdue. And I don't mean as a replacement for the sweet smell of paper and ink, either. But it's sure to be a real boon to students or travelers who hate lugging backpacks full of textbooks or guidebooks. So that's ease of storage, for starters, something iPod users now take for granted.

Not to mention that e-books are also much cheaper and easier to obtain than traditional books. Many is the time I've departed for a business trip and searched in vain at the airport bookstore (or not had the time to browse) for something to read. With that Kindle wi-fi link (Whispernet, they call it), I stand to be instantly gratified (at least, to the extent that any reading material can satisfy my longings).

However, I don't own a Kindle yet (are you listening, Santa?). So I'm really curious how my product looks, displayed on theirs.

So I will offer a NOT INCONSIDERABLE PRIZE of Rollo Hemphill memorabilia -- personalized and shipped to you promptly at my expense -- to the first person who e-mails me at mailto:inflatable@lapuerta.tv that you've downloaded Rollo's adventure onto your new Kindle.

Come now -- you don't want him to unwrap his new Kindle only to find Merriam Webster inside!



Kindle Version ASIN:B000NY14KI My Inflatable Friend: The Confessions of Rollo Hemphill