Win A Kindle 3!

Buy the 65 Below eBook in between January 1st and March 31st 2011 and be entered to win a new Kindle WiFi reader! For every thousand initial entries I'll be giving away a brand new Kindle 3 eReader! No limit on how many I will give away!

To enter the contest email a copy of your Amazon, Smashwords or B&N order number to kindle@basilsands.com.

Want more entries?
Get up to 10 extra entries in the drawing. After the initial entry do the following:

4 extra entries: Go to www.basilsands.com and from the comment page send a comment with the answer to this question:

“What military organization was Temebe a veteran of?”

4 extra entries:

Get four extra entries for leaving a review or comment at the purchase pages:

Amazon.com

Smashwords.com

BarnesAndNoble.com

And three more for leaving a comment at my website

Basilsands.com

That makes for up to 11 entries in the contest to win a free Kindle 3 eReader! What are you waiting for?

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Happy Christmas and Merry New Year to you.

May Santa be nice to you and may Viking Raiders not invade your suburbs and smash your favourite china or rape your chickens and steal your lawn gnomes or eat your dog's food and drink the cat's milk or sing ancient Viking drinking songs while hefting their mighty battle axes and legendary war blades to carve your nicely trimmed shrubberies into the shape of little goats and ponies frollicking about to the tunes of the Warrior Poet "Hlefrundthendun The Rather Interesting and Fearsome Yet Somewhat Effeminate and mostly Inappropriately Behaved of the North."
After Christmas I'm going on a week vacation with a hundred and fifty teens and college kids in the mountains of South-Central Alaska. It's the perfect place to be in January rather than joining those wimpy throngs in "hot" and "sunny" places, playing on the "beach" and "surfing", and "drinking" things with umbrellas" that get "stuck" in one's "nostrils". That's simply not for us Alaskan's, because we know how to have "fun"... at thirty below.

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Basil Needs a Blog Tour for his Books

Got a blog? Want a great guest to interview or to do a guest host article? Then you need to contact me ASAP!  ;-)

As you may know I have posted my entire collection of thriller novels on the Kindle Mothership and on Smashwords. The ship is sailing and I am on board, but now I need to steer into the wind. If you are a blog host, or know of someone who is and would like to host me as either a guest blogger or for a written interview, or if you are a podcaster and would like to do an audio interview let me know. I would like to dedicate the month of October to doing as many blog appearances as possible each day. Drop me a line and lets schedule it.

Or as Kharzai Ghiassi would say… Yeehaaa! Buckle you seatbelt baby!

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Are Libraries Dead or Dying? … uh… not as far as I can tell

There’s a lot of talk these days about the death of libraries. EBooks are killing libraries. Online dealers are killing libraries, etc. But is there really evidence of this? Not from my perspective.

 

Our libraries here in Alaska are doing fairly well as far as I can tell. While the internal hours at the main branch have been reduced slightly I think, everything is available online as well. And during normal business hours (10am-8pm) one can go to the four story building, have a coffee and sandwich at the cafe, enjoy free wifi, and sit in one of the massive reading areas and either read or stare at the surrounding mountain vistas. One of the reading rooms is designed to look like a 1920's library with highbacked leather chairs and books (which are available for reading) from the libraries original 1920's collection lining the tall shelves along the walls. Whenever I go to that room I feel like I should be wearing a red velvet jacket and be sipping a glass of very expensive Cognac.

Honestly though, my primary use of the library is online these days. I download numerous audiobooks, and reserve any paper books I want to be sent to my local branch for pickup. The local branch is located in a shopping mall three miles from my house and looks more like a school library than a muni library. Likewise there are numerous local branches all over the city of Anchorage in pretty much every community. No one in this city of 350,000 is more than 5 miles from a library, or if they are on the computer they’re never more than a click away. Even people in the libraryless bush areas outside of the cities are able to reserve books online and have them sent to their local school for pickup.

 

Libraries aren’t going anywhere as far as I can tell, at least not in Alaska.

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Basil on Kindle! Now, make it work people!

Alright. You’ve been asking for a print version of my books. You can be at least partially happy to know that I am finally available on Kindle and Smashwords. And the best part is that because they are ebooks, the PRICE IS VERY GOOD!!!! 65 Below and Faithful Warrior are only $2.99 and Karl’s Last Flight, my very first book, is only 99 cents! I know you can afford all three so get in there!

It was a long and hard thought out decision on my part because there are a lot of risks involved. Primarily doing badly on Kindle and ending up not getting a print deal because of that fact. So, that being said, and knowing that there are several thousands of listeners to my podcast out there who would love to be able to read the full version of my books on their e-readers or PC’s it’s now up to you to see me make it to print. 

If enough people get out there and buy the e-books, then post comments and reviews then Amazon takes notice and magic can happen. That magic has happened already for several people I know such as Boyd Morrison, Karen McQuestion, and Joe Konrath. And I have faith that it can mine as well.

So make it happen! Raise my ranking to the top and get the word out to all your friends, family, co-workers, neighbors, acquaintances, and strangers you meet on the street! If I get into the top 100 Kindle E-Books ranking there will be prizes…real prizes, the more books I sell the better the prizes will be. If I make the top 10 well lets just say that someone (or someone’s) will be my new best friends.

Make it happen people!

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