Sherlock Sales, book covers, Dead Road

I have the cover with St.Materiana's Church seen through the lower gate, and the Dead Path, on the Smashwords version. The Litch Gate is the other name for this gate, because bodies were carried along this route. Traditionally, these Dead roads were left unobstructed so the souls of the dead could fly directly to hallowed ground. So very appropriate for a story involving a zombie. This is quite an eye-catching image, even if you don't know exactly what it shows.
Saint Materianas is in Tintagel, Cornwall, and is a very old church.
I have the anonymous cemetery on the Amazon version. Tumbled gravestones in hues of grey and green, fairly spooky.
Whether the cover influences sales (much) is very hard to judge.
I know, I know, big yawn, who cares about the miniscule sales of a very short ebook? Obviously I do, and so --
As of yesterday, Friday 3rd there'd been 6 sold by Amazon.com during June, which would be 2 per day. Since it went 'live'during the evening on May 18th, there were 10 sold on .com & 2 on .UK, so a bit less than 1 per day.
Forget about Smashwords, nobody goes there to buy, it seems. Fellow writers, certainly, and there've been 14 'sold' there, 13 with use of the coupon. Now, the other retailers they supply might be different, but it'll be a while before it gets out to them.

Another endorsement for novellas

Amazon called on writers and publishers on Tuesday to submit short works to a new section of the US online retail giant's electronic bookstore called "Kindle Singles.


Amazon said Kindle Singles will showcase works that are "twice the length of a New Yorker feature or as much as a few chapters of a typical book."

"Today's announcement is a call to serious writers, thinkers, scientists, business leaders, historians, politicians and publishers to join Amazon in making such works available to readers around the world," Amazon said.

The Seattle, Washington-based company said writers have traditionally been faced with a choice of "less than 10,000 words or more than 50,000."

"Works either had to be short enough for a magazine article or long enough to deliver the 'heft' required for book marketing and distribution," it said.

"But in many cases, 10,000 to 30,000 words (roughly 30 to 90 pages) might be the perfect, natural length to lay out a single killer idea, well researched, well argued and well illustrated," Amazon said in a statement.

As examples, it cited a "business lesson, a political point of view, a scientific argument, or a beautifully crafted essay on a current event."

Kindle Singles will have their own section in the online Kindle Store and be "priced much less than a typical book," Amazon said.

"Ideas and the words to deliver them should be crafted to their natural length, not to an artificial marketing length that justifies a particular price or a certain format," said Russ Grandinetti, vice president of Kindle Content.

"With Kindle Singles, we're reaching out to publishers and accomplished writers and we're excited to see what they create."

Amazon pricing

When I put In the Valley stories up on Amazon for sale as a Kindle e-book, I priced it at $1.99 US. However when I searched for it on Amazon.com it came up with a price of $3.99; I contacted them to ask about this large price jump, and this morning received this reply

Hello Philip,

Your Kindle book is listed at a price of $1.99. Please note, all items available in the Kindle store are listed in U.S. dollars (USD), and the availability and pricing of titles from the Kindle Store varies by your home country or region.

If you're browsing in the Kindle store from a location outside of the US, you may see a price higher than what you listed on the DTP web site.

There are a number of reasons why prices for Kindle titles may vary from region to region, including taxes and other operating costs. We understand your concern about prices, and we share that concern -- we will continue our efforts to reduce costs and offer the best possible prices to customers in every region. We hope you will continue to use our platform for sales in the US and internationally. Also, note that the royalties will be based on the list price you provide on your DTP dashboard.

I hope this information is helpful. If you have any further question, please feel free to send an e-mail to dtp-support@amazon.com.

Thank you for using Amazon DTP.

Did I answer your question?

The question is answered, but I can't believe that with the Canadian Dollar almost equal to the US Dollar, a doubling in price can be legitimately explained as they have. Probably the answer is that they see an opportunity to make money on a very flimsy excuse - notice that 'royalties will be based on the list price you provide on your DTP dashboard.'
In other words, they will pay me 35% of $1.99, and keep the remaining $3.29 for themselves. Wow!

Now published on Amazon

Just finished uploading 'In the Valley Stories' to Amazon, for sale on their Kindle reader. Have also removed Amazon as a sales channel from Smashwords, so they will sell on all their other outlets and I will sell directly on Amazon. Same price -$1.99- just a slightly bigger cut this way.
It will take about 48 hrs for approval, and then it will be available there as well. Amazon has about 170 times as many customers as Smashwords apparently.
Have also registered with the Canadian authorities as a Publisher, and will be getting ISBNs to use - about 5 business days, so late next week.

The ad is still running on Face Book; at 12.40 am Friday they record 59,000 impressions, and 11 clicks, for a cost of $11.+

published on Smashwords

I have put a 20,000 word short story collection on Smashwords; title 'In the Valley'; They convert works into all current e-reader formats, including for Kindle (Amazon) and for phones.
Priced at $1.99 which is the minimum Amazon will sell anything for.
All those stories have just been sitting in my computer, doing very little, not being read, so there's little to lose.