Two 99¢ specials this week

Kindle editions for two of my novels are on sale this week for 99¢:

Bridge Daughter now enjoys over 129 reviews on Amazon with an average rating of 4.1. It’s the first in the series, and followed by Hagar’s Mother and Stranger Son. All three are now available in a Kindle boxed set edition.

Bridge Daughter will be on sale for 99¢ October 7th.

Bridge Daughter by Jim Nelson

In My Memory Locked is my latest novel, a cyber-noir mystery thriller set in near-future San Francisco. Early reviews call it “first rate cyberpunk” with an “ingenious plot.”

This page-turner will be on sale for 99¢ October 11th.

In My Memory Locked by Jim Nelson

And remember—Kindle Unlimited subscribers are free to read these books (and the rest of the Bridge Daughter Cycle) any time.

All three Bridge Daughter books in a Kindle box set edition

The Bridge Daughter Cycle: Books One to Three by Jim Nelson

All the books of the Bridge Daughter Cycle are now available in a Kindle box set. That means for a single reduced price you’ll get:

  • Bridge Daughter
  • Hagar’s Mother
  • and Stranger Son

The Bridge Daughter Cycle: Books One to Three is over 770 pages, perfect binge reading for these quarantined times. It’s also available for Kindle Unlimited subscribers, meaning all three books are available to read for free.

Enjoy!

The Bridge Daughter Cycle

IN MY MEMORY LOCKED now available

In My Memory Locked by Jim Nelson

My latest is now available in Kindle and paperback!

IN MY MEMORY LOCKED is a modern detective story set in near-future San Francisco. The Internet has been decommissioned and replaced with the Nexternet, a worldwide network allowing people to transmit thoughts, emotions, and memories like text messages. The Old Internet has been stored on Alcatraz Island unchanging and in stasis, preserved as an artifact of history.

The detective—computer security consultant C.F. Naroy—is hired to located a piece of the Internet’s history stolen from its repository on Alcatraz. Naroy’s search for the stolen goods leads him to uncover blackmail, political intrigue, and murder. He also discovers his own past is connected to the theft.

More so than any novel I’ve written so far, IN MY MEMORY LOCKED was a labor of love. Heavy on the labor, though, as it took me far longer to complete than I anticipated due to the intricacies of the book’s execution. When I finally set the novel aside, exhausted, I found myself ready for a change of pace, which led to a surprisingly quick turnaround writing Stranger Son (released in April).

I hope you’ll pick up a copy of IN MY MEMORY LOCKED and give it a read. Even though it sounds like far-flung science fiction, it’s far more pertinent to today’s world than the story’s time and place suggests.

IN MY MEMORY LOCKED, a new cyber-noir thriller

This June 15th, take a journey to a future where emotions are sent like text messages and others’ memories are streamed like movies. IN MY MEMORY LOCKED is my latest, a futuristic detective novel set in San Francisco, 2038.

C.F. Naroy is a computer security consultant hired to stop hackers from destroying the only remaining preserved copy of the Old Internet—”Old” because the Internet has been replaced by the Nexternet, a technology that allows anyone anywhere to transmit instantly love, hate, outrage, joy…their very thoughts.

Naroy’s investigation uncovers blackmail, political intrigue, dark family secrets, and more than a few dead bodies. The stolen data is so explosive, someone is willing to kill for it.

Then Naroy discovers his own painful past is the key to the entire affair. He must choose between solving the crime…or burying it for good.

Pre-order a Kindle edition of
IN MY MEMORY LOCKED
today for only 99¢

(A paperback edition will be available on Amazon the day of its release, June 15th.)

STRANGER SON on sale now

On sale now—STRANGER SON, the third book in the Bridge Daughter Cycle!

STRANGER SON picks up sixteen years after the events of Hagar’s Mother. Ruby Driscoll is now a Hagar living on the streets and halfway homes of Southern California. When she was thirteen, her mother was sent to prison while her younger brother was put up for adoption. Now twenty-nine and facing her biological mortality, she wants to right a wrong.

Desperate to locate her brother and reunite her family, Ruby begins an arduous journey into the heart of her family’s deepest secrets. The search takes her from Los Angeles to the wealthy enclaves of California’s Central Coast to the rugged heart of Jefferson, America’s fifty-first state.

The Kindle edition is priced at 99¢ for only a short time, so order now. Kindle Unlimited subscribers can read STRANGER SON immediately. Paperback edition now available as well!

Pre-order STRANGER SON now

Stranger Son by Jim Nelson

STRANGER SON, the newest book of the Bridge Daughter Cycle, is now available for pre-order on Amazon! The official release day is April 15th.

STRANGER SON picks up sixteen years after the events of Hagar’s Mother. Ruby Driscoll is now a Hagar living on the streets and halfway homes of Southern California. When she was thirteen, her mother was sent to prison while her younger brother was put up for adoption. Now twenty-nine and facing her biological mortality, she wants to right a wrong.

Desperate to locate her brother and reunite her family, Ruby begins an arduous journey into the heart of her family’s deepest secrets. The search takes her from Los Angeles to the wealthy enclaves of California’s Central Coast to the rugged heart of Jefferson, America’s fifty-first state.

Click here to order a Kindle edition NOW for only 99¢ and receive your copy April 15th

(Prices will go up after April 15th, so order now. A paperback edition will be released the same day, however, the paperback edition is not available for pre-order.)

Kindle Scout in Memoriam

Originally published at Hidden Gems Books.

At the end of May Amazon’s e-publishing venture Kindle Scout was put to rest after a run of three-plus years. Amazon announced the winding down in an email sent to all of the program’s registered users (“Scouts” in Amazon’s parlance) on April 2. The email was cool and understated considering the subject matter: “[W]e wanted to let you know of some upcoming changes being made to the Kindle Scout program” followed by businesslike details of the program’s orderly shutdown. Amazon’s Kindle Scout was an innovative approach to publishing never before tried, yet it died with neither a bang nor a whimper, but with the clearing of a throat.

Reader-powered publishing

Let’s rewind and look at what made Kindle Scout so different in the publishing world. Rather than the traditional process of publishing—unknown authors cold-submitting into a mountainous slush-pile while well-known authors are courted by editors—Kindle Scout tacked a direction both democratic and meritocratic in nature, a process it dubbed “reader-powered publishing.”

It worked like this: Writers submitted their novels to Kindle Scout for consideration. Kindle Scout posted the first three chapters on their Amazon.com web site along with the book’s cover, author’s bio, and so forth. Readers perused these novels much like bookstore patrons sample paperbacks from a rotating wire rack. Readers—”Scouts”—could then vote on which novels they wanted to see published. (Scouts were rewarded for participating by receiving free ebooks of accepted work, which in turn drove reviews and ratings on Amazon.) Each books’ nomination campaign lasted thirty days, giving authors ample motivation to promote their work via the social networks, word-of-mouth, message boards—some even purchased online click-through advertising for their campaigns.

If an author earned enough attention from Scouts (and the approval of the Amazon editors) they could secure a contract with Kindle Press, the e-publishing arm of Amazon that administered Kindle Scout. The contract included publication in Kindle format (sorry, no paperback), a $1,500 advance, fifty-fifty ebook royalties, and marketing backed by Amazon’s muscle power. Not shabby for any struggling writer attempting to break into the publishing world.

Kindle Scout’s first round of winners were announced on November 27, 2014. Over the next three and half years, Kindle Scout would select for publication nearly 300 titles of all genres and styles. Books ranged from the straightforward to the bizarre, from romance to science-fiction to historical dramas to novels of literary intent. Kindle Press was not a publisher of genre fiction—it published everything.

Royal Date by Sariah Wison is one of Kindle Scout’s biggest success stories.

Kindle Scout’s semi-open approach to publication was bolder than it sounds. An unspoken belief in the traditional publishing world is that book editors have reached their position because they’re fit to judge a novel on its artistic merits and profit possibilities—editors are the professionals, the gatekeepers, the tastemakers, the adults in the room. Granting Scouts that responsibility and power sounds absurd on the face of it. After all, anyone with an Amazon account could sign-up and start voting—who do you know without an Amazon account? And yet—it worked.

In addition to the manuscript itself, Kindle Scout expected writers to provide a submission package: a 45-character tag line (harder than it sounds!), a book description, a thank-you note for Scouts, and even the book’s cover. Off-loading these tasks on the author meant the writer was wearing shoes normally reserved for book agents and front-line editors. Kindle Press sometimes released the author’s submission package as-is with no editorial or artistic revisions. (Unfortunately, this led to an early reputation of publishing “trash” novels fostered in part by a snarky write-up in Slate magazine.) Later on, editorial services were offered to accepted writers. Some books received new covers after publication gratis Kindle Press.

Kindle Scout was one-part bold experiment, one-part do-it-yourself publishing, and one-part partnering with Amazon’s marketing might. Another way to put it: Kindle Scout was turn-key independent publishing for the small-time author ready to step up their game.

My experience

When I submitted my novel Bridge Daughter to Kindle Scout, that’s pretty much how I viewed the program: An experiment in independent publishing with potential big returns. I’d shopped my book around to a handful of agents with the usual discouraging results and form-letter responses. Curious, I studied Kindle Scout’s FAQ and legal boilerplate and thought it was worth a go. If nothing else, I knew I’d kick myself later if I didn’t at least try.

My attraction to Kindle Scout was not merely its web-savvy nomination process. Kindle Scout’s winners list boasted publisher-friendly genres like romance and epic fantasy as well as quiet and quirky work. I found myself drawn to novels like Katie O’Rourke’s family drama Finding Charlie, Erik Therme’s chilling Resthaven, and Bradley Wind’s wonderfully personal A Whole Lot.

With my novel prepped and submission package assembled, I filled in Kindle Scout’s online form, clicked a mouse button, and sent my book into the aether. Four days later, my book was on the Kindle Scout web site and accepting votes. If you’ve submitted work to agents or literary magazines and waited months for a response, four days probably sounds like sheer fantasy. It was another example of Kindle Scout ignoring accepted norms in the publishing world.

Plenty of people (including myself) pondered the skeleton key leading to publication. Was it page views of your book’s Scout page during the nomination period? The number of reader nominations? Kindle Scout’s secret sauce was its mysterious “Hot & Trending” badge which signified growing interest in your book. Speculation surrounding the algorithm was so rampant, disreputable “services” arose on the Internet purporting to guarantee thirty days of Hot & Trending for a modest nonrefundable fee.

It may sound naive, but I suspect Kindle Press editors tended to publish based on content and marketability—in other words, using criteria much like their traditional publishing counterparts. The number of nominations a book received was never revealed to a winner so far as I know. (There’s a reason Scouts “nominated” books rather than “voted” for them. It was not a purely democratic process.) It seems to me the coveted Hot & Trending badge kept authors busy promoting their book during the 30-day campaign, doing the legwork a tech-shrewd publicist would normally perform.

And perhaps that was the best reason for an independent author to try Kindle Scout: Promotion. Putting sample chapters of your latest book on amazon.com before tens of thousands of potential readers is a fine way to generate pre-release buzz. The Kindle Scout platform was custom-built to kick-start ebook sales.

Alas, the good times hit a road bump in the first quarter of 2017. A change in editorial staff was announced via private channels to Kindle Press authors. Although not obvious at first, as the months wore on the pace of accepted manuscripts slowed to a trickle. The diversity I’d so admired also narrowed. A Kindle Press editor admitted to me earlier this year they were seeking work for the “Kindle Reader:” accessible fiction for an adult readership. Nothing wrong with that, merely unfortunate that Kindle Press couldn’t keep the door open for writers striking out on a different trail.

What’s next?

With Kindle Scout’s funky little experiment shuttered for good, I find myself strangely nostalgic. There really was something exhilarating about joining the experiment and seeing where it would take me. It strikes me that Amazon charted a map showing a new way of doing business in the publishing world. Kindle Scout’s formula could be replicated by an ambitious and web-savvy small publisher, or even an established house’s imprint seeking to shake things up. Yes, the book closes on Kindle Scout with the clearing of a throat. Let’s see if there’s a sequel.