

The neatest thing about self-publishing is that I get to make all the important decisions about the ebooks I publish. I can decide what the books look like, what they contain, where to sell them—and for how much. The hardest part of self-publishing is actually getting things done.
Some months ago, I promised that there would soon be an iBook version of Inn Sight, the Malice Domestic Award-winning mystery written by my late wife, Elizabeth, and an iBook of my own Mommie Dearest, too. An easy promise to make. Not so easy to keep. I had figured I would use Apple’s then-brand-new iBooks Author program—a free download from Apple—to produce the books. And indeed I did.
Dumb move. The powerful iBooks Author program is a marvelous text-book production tool, once you become accustomed to its somewhat counter-intuitive interface. And I’m convinced that iBooks Author will become the program of choice for folks who produce textbooks that contain lots of multi-media content, built-in tests, easy-access glossaries, and comprehensively linked indexes.
But I don’t publish textbooks. I’ll never know enough about any subject to publish a textbook. I publish novels like Inn Sight and Mommie Dearest—straightforward books that need only a pretty cover, a table of contents that works and, of course, a story worth reading.
Nonetheless, I used iBooks Author to produce both books, then proofed them on my iPad. They looked okay, but not great. A particular annoyance was that neither book seemed to support that nifty page-turning animation you see in all the iPad TV commercials. But I uploaded them to Apple anyway, and after I corrected some “Error Tickets,” Apple made both books available in the iBookstore. They also sent me a message that if I wanted the books to include that page-turning animation, I’d have to use a different program to produce epubs—like Apple’s Pages program.
So I did that—reformatted book books once again, using Pages. Now, finally, I’m inordinately pleased to announce that both books are available—with the page-turning animation feature intact.
In fact, I’m SO pleased that I’m giving both books away FREE through the month of August. On September 1st, they’ll go back to their normal price: $3.99. So if you’ve got an iPad, get both books now, while they’re free. And tell your friends, too. I love giving away books!
Get ’em here:
Inn Sight iBook
Mommie Dearest iBook
Supposedly, Amazon will make the Kindle version of both books free as well, under their “Price Match” policy. So if you don’t have an iPad, you can order the Kindle version of the books here—and if they’re not free, please blame Amazon, not me, okay?
Inn Sight KIndle ebook
Mommie Dearest Kindle ebook
And PLEASE. Do let me know what you think of the books—and post reviews at Apple and/or Kindle, if you’re so moved.
Thanks!