ANNOUNCING THE KINDLE RELEASE OF
BY CAT JOHNSON
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In this modern day tale of forbidden romance, can love conquer all?
Carrie Armstrong joined the Air Force seeking education, experience, and travel. What she didn’t expect to find was the one thing military rules clearly state she can’t have, Staff Sergeant Beau Adams.
Throughout the 14 years of his life that Beau has dedicated to the Marine Corps, he’s never had reason to regret his decision to make the military his career, until now, when loving Carrie, the only woman he can picture growing old with, could cost him his future.
As the tension between them increases to the breaking point, their ability to resist temptation weakens. Forced to make a choice, do they willingly risk everything they’ve worked so hard to gain by crossing the line?
This book has been previously published and has been revised from its original release.
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Authors, at least this author, sometimes have a love/hate relationship with Amazon. #Amazonfail, the Agency Model, the ironic removal of George Orwell’s 1984, etc, all lead to mixed feelings for the company, but for better or worse, they are here to stay. We can’t ignore the elephant in the room and facts have proven if you can’t beat them, join them. That is what I have done. I have joined forces with the behemoth. Only time will tell if I made the right choice. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and I have ventured, spurred on by pioneers such as JA Konrath, and on a slightly smaller scale Moira Rogers, before me.
So what am I blathering about? I, Cat Johnson, am now listed as a publisher on Amazon.
Quietly I’ve been reworking an out-of-print title from my backlist. It’s no secret when Linden Bay Romance was purchased by Samhain Publishing, my backlist went off sale. I love Samhain and I’ve had great success re-releasing my cowboy and military series with them, as well as my newly written, never before published works. But getting a two dozen story backlist out again takes time and we are all subject to publishing schedules and editorial staff workloads. While I worked with the Samhain staff to get my series out, I realized I had one book that is not connected to any series. That I could easily pluck this book out and release it on Kindle almost immediately.
Crossing the Line is a military romance I worked on with my USMC consultant while he was in Djibouti. It isn’t connected to any series. Rather than let it sit on my hard drive untouched, or try to release it with Samhain when I’d rather have those limited release slots used to get my Task Force Zeta (now the Red, Hot & Blue) series re-released, I decided to throw it up on Kindle and see what happens.
It’s a kind of experiment really. You see I started in the ePub world back in 2006 when self-publishing was a dirty word. Suddenly, Kindles and iPads have opened up untapped reader dollars and it seems every author wants in on the self-pub gig. Big authors, small authors, and all those in between. Self-publishing is the new black. The stigma has been removed, or at least it has become less visible, coincidentally about the time Amazon raised its Kindle royalty rate for US sales to 70%.
I wouldn’t really call Crossing the Line a true self-publishing effort. After all, it was previously contracted with a publisher, and released by them in both eBook and trade paperback. It’s been through edits with a “real” editor. And now I’ve gone through it again and reworked it myself, changing things I didn’t like first time around. There’s even still a few used paper copies from the original release for sale by used booksellers on Amazon for between $49 and about $150. (Don’t buy those please. Way overpriced and I get none of it.)
Anyway, I thought why not give this Kindle self-pub thing a try? From what I’ve read, I’m a pretty good candidate. I’m still releasing new works and have a good following with Samhain. I have books out with Tease, Phaze and Sapphire Blue as well. Every new release increases sales of my backlist, so why wouldn’t it also spread to sales of my self-pubbed Crossing the Line? I’m not sure my readers could tell you who some of my books are published by, so that shouldn’t stop them. After all, a Cat Johnson book is a Cat Johnson book. It will have my voice, my typical witty dialogue and my usual Alpha males, regardless of what name is listed under “publisher”.
We’ll see, I suppose. Meanwhile, Amazon made it easy. Once I got the proofreading done, and the document formatting down, the upload process was simple. Amazon did email me for proof that all rights had reverted to me before they would approve it for release. I’m happy they did that. It instills confidence that someone wouldn’t be able to just claim to be me and release one of my old books.
Oh, and I had to redesign a new cover. Being cheap, and since this is an experiment, I decided to give it a shot myself. I’m pretty happy with it, actually. My Photoshop skills are pitiful but I’m pretty proud of the result. What do you think? Not bad for an amateur.
So now after a 3 day wait, Crossing the Line is finally up there. Things are not perfect. There is no blurb, even though I sent them one to upload. I’ll have to work on that. And I’m not listed as the publisher, Amazon is. Oh well. I can live with that.
Take a trip to Amazon and look at my page for MY book, which for the first time in my writing career is truly all mine. And if you happen to read it, please leave a comment, either good or bad. The dirty little secret is that Amazon will only recommend a book to readers if it has 20 or more reader comments/reviews. (A LITTLE HINT: I don’t read my Amazon comments, I’m no longer allowed to for my own sanity, so I won’t know what you write anyway.)
Coming next-a Kindle tutorial AKA You don’t need a Kindle device to read a Kindle book. But more on that later…
Cat
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Even in my caffeine deprived state, certain words from the newscaster captured my attention. Pirates/Navy Seals/Rescue. I knew without hearing more that in this day and age if there were pirates involved we were talking about Somalia. And if there was a rescue involving helicopters in that region of the world, that helo would be going to Djibouti. How was I so certain of this before I’d even heard, or read, the entire story? Because through my book research, through the contacts I’ve made in the active military world, I’ve had what is nearly, but not quite, an insider’s view of the Joint Task Force’s Camp Lemonier on the Horn of Africa in Djibouti, just miles from the Somalian border.
I know what the hangers look like, the Cantina where the troops relax with a beer after a hard day, and the racks where they crash for a few hours of sleep at night. I’ve seen what the NCO’s offices look like, as well as the chow hall. I could picture it all as I listened to the news report and that, to me at least, is really cool.
