For some time now, I’ve been planning to make my older books available on ebook platforms not named after South American rainforests. After a couple of years of putting it off—I’m a notorious procrastinator—a friend and professional acquaintance in New Zealand asked why he couldn’t get my books from Kobo, his preferred platform. That set me in motion.

(It was not my first time hearing this suggestion. A reader from Canada asked me the same question a few years back.)

Previously, the only books of mine available on Kobo were my short story collection A Concordance of One’s Life, my San Francisco novella Everywhere Man, and my COVID-19 novel Man in the Middle. A few days ago I added my teenage growing-of-age debut Edward Teller Dreams of Barbecuing People to that list. You can expect the list to grow over the next couple of months, as I begin posting books from the Bridge Daughter series and In My Memory Locked.

What’s the hold up? Why not post all of them now?

The remaining novels are enrolled in an Amazon program called Kindle Select, which offers writers a number of nice features. For me, the most desirable benefit is that it places my books into Kindle Unlimited, which is a kind of Netflix-style book buffet, where subscribers can read as many books as they want for a monthly fee. KU was a great way for readers to be introduced to my work, and for awhile there I saw a lot of my books being read through that program.

Unfortunately, Kindle Unlimited readers have dwindled off for my back catalog (it tends to favor newer releases). So, as my older books fall out of Kindle Select, I’ll add them to Kobo. I’ll start moving my back catalog to Barnes & Noble and Apple Books as well. (This is called “going wide” in independent publishing circles.)

Aside from Kindle Unlimited, why did I wait so long to go wide? I’ll answer that question next time.