Post-VCON and post-deadline-crunch ebook roundup post

[annathepiper]

Bought from B&N:

• The Reluctant Amazon, by Sandy James. This is book one of an urban fantasy series by a fellow Carina author, and I’d been meaning to get it for some time. Normally I’d have grabbed this right off the Carina site, but it was FREE last week by way of celebrating Sandy’s latest release in the series. I like free! So I scarfed it. (Also note: she is up to book four in the series, so DO go check her out. The latest one is up on Carina’s site right over here. Note the PoC heroine!)
• How Green This Land, How Blue This Sea, by Mira Grant. A novella set in the Newsflesh universe, which I’d ALSO been meaning to grab for some time!
• A Race to Splendor by Ciji Ware. Historical fiction, probably romance, but that’s a little fuzzy in the description. I saw this in a roundup on the Bitchery about books on sale, and thought it sounded interesting, and I think we’ve established by now that “sounds interesting” equals “SOLD” when it comes to me and buying books. The Goodreads page for the book is here. (Be warned: the book is no longer on sale and the ebook price is steep, so if you find that this one sounds interesting, you might want to go the library route or wait until the ebook price comes down.)

Bought from Kobo:

• What Happens in Scotland and Summer is For Lovers, by Jennifer McQuiston. Historical romances. Got both of these because the latter was well-reviewed on the Bitchery over here. And since What Happens in Scotland was available for only .99 (still is, as of this writing), I thought I’d give ‘em a go.

Bought from Smashwords, basically because I saw both of these in the dealers’ room at VCON and thought they sounded interesting–but because my shelves are overflowing right now with physical books I opted to get the ebooks instead (and also woo! Supporting Canadian SF/F!):

• Tranquility’s Blaze, by Krista D. Ball. Fantasy. Goodreads page for it here.
• Blightcross, by C.A. Lang. Fantasy/steampunk/dieselpunk. Goodreads page here.

163 for the year. And this count will be going up again REAL SOON as Cherie Priest is about to drop another one and this is HIGHLY RELEVANT TO MY INTERESTS.

Also, srs bznz Pro Tip: if you’re interested in romance AT ALL, and you’re not already, go read Smart Bitches. Hell, if you’re as ravenous an ebook devourer as me, the “Books on Sale” posts SB Sarah does alone are a valuable public service to the community of readers!

Mirrored from angelahighland.com.

Comments

[mmegaera]

You know about Dear Author, don't you? A certain amount of cross-pollination with SBTB, but they, too, list sales and freebies and do reviews.

http://dearauthor.com

[annathepiper]

I do indeed. I follow @dearauthor on Twitter but haven't been directly following the blog mostly because fewer of their reviews line up with my particular tastes. (I figure if I spot them tweeting something interesting I'll click over to it though!)

[mmegaera]

Huh. My experience with DA/SBTB is exactly the opposite of yours.

Although I don't do Twitter -- never could figure out how to make it work for me, since I don't do anything but actually make calls on my cell phone [g] (yes, I know I can access it from my computer, too).

[annathepiper]

*giggle* Perhaps you and I are like SB Sarah and Jane! ;) (I'm listening to their podcast RIGHT NOW actually and they often talk about how their tastes are rather opposed, which is why they have such lively discussions on books.)

Facebook and Twitter are the two social sites I pay any attention to at all; I'm on G+ too but I mostly use that as a write-only medium. Twitter I scan periodically, but that's MOSTLY write-only for me too unless we're doing Carina promo.

ETA: Dara likes to think of Twitter as a great big constant chat session, though, and that's valuable for me too. I like to scan Twitter periodically just for that so I can see what other folks are saying and to see if there are fun things I want to read, reply to, or RT. :)

[mmegaera]

[g] Maybe we are. Although I've read some of your recommendations and liked them...

I don't really do Facebook, either, although I have an account strictly as an author, and once I got the account a lot of friends that I've met in other places were all, "Oh, you've got a Facebook account finally! Friend me!" So I've got a bunch of friends on a Facebook account that I basically only cross-post to from my blog [wry g]. Facebook's interface makes me very uncomfortable, and I find it extremely difficult to navigate, which is why I don't use it. I stay in contact with those friends in other ways, so it's not like I'm ignoring them. I have a G+ account, but I've never used it -- for most social media sites I basically sign up on them to snag my preferred username just in case, and if it's easy I do the crossposting thing, but I don't respond to comments on the crossposts or anything.

Same with Twitter, actually. Twitter always strikes me as scooping a few drops out of the Columbia River and trying to figure out where the fish are from those drops and no other information. I wouldn't mind meeting some of the salmon there, but I have no idea how to go about it. The whole hashtag thing just makes it worse, from my POV. Then I'm searching the Snake or the Willamette with my few drops. There doesn't seem to be a way to just pick what I'm interested in that isn't completely overwhelming.

I'm old-fashioned. Give me LJ/DW and a good RSS reader for blogs and I'm in business [wry g].

[annathepiper]

A lot of my family are on Facebook, so that's my primary way of keeping in touch with them these days. And now that I've dived headlong into Quebec trad fandom, a lot of THAT is on Facebook, too. A lot of my presence there is personal rather than author-based, though now I do finally have a page there too.

Re: Twitter... I never use hashtags honestly except for humor. (Which is a LOT of how I see them used.) That said, if there's an amusing meme going on or a specific themed chat, they become more actively useful.

Though yeah, I totally get how it's overwhelming! Social network overload is a legitimate problem, which is why I tend to focus mostly on Facebook. I can handle really only one social network at a time, I think.

[mmegaera]

So you don't consider LJ/DW to be a social network? I consider it to be my primary one.

[annathepiper]

Not in the same way that Facebook and Twitter and G+ are, no. I consider LJ/DW blogging platforms first and foremost, although there is certainly social-network-like functionality involved. Like communities, the ability to Friend somebody's journal, the ability to filter your posts to specific groups and/or people, etc.