Thursday, October 29, 2009

Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your iTunes Apps Here

A few of my ebooks just went live on iTunes. If you have an iPhone or iPod touch, you can download them for between 99 cents and $1.99.

You don't need to download a separate ebook reader onto your iPhone to read these. These ebooks come with a built-in ebook reader. They exist as applications on your iPhone. Just press the icon and the ebook opens up.

By clicking "Get App" on this page you will open up iTunes on your computer, allowing you to buy it and download it.



$0.99

For a limited time, only 99 cents.

Before the events of Jack Kilborn's epic horror novel AFRAID...

Before the events of J.A. Konrath's critically acclaimed thrillers FUZZY NAVEL and CHERRY BOMB...

Before the events of Jack Kilborn's and Blake Crouch's #1 Amazon Kindle bestseller SERIAL...

Three hunters of humans meet for the ultimate showdown at the TRUCK STOP.

Taylor is a recreational killer, with dozens of gristly murders under his belt. He pulls into a busy Wisconsin truck stop at midnight, trolling for the next to die.

Chicago Homicide cop Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels is a long way from home, driving to meet her boyfriend for a well-earned vacation. She pulls into the truck stop for a quick cup of coffee and stumbles into her worst nightmare.

Jack's no stranger to dealing with psychos, but she's got her hands full trying to stop Taylor. Especially since he's getting help from someone just as deadly; a portly serial maniac named Donaldson...

TRUCK STOP is a 15,000 word thriller novella that ties together Konrath's and Kilborn's works, with terrifying results.

A prequel to SERIAL, which has been downloaded more than 70,000 times, TRUCK STOP is an eighteen-wheeled ride straight into hell. Not for the faint of heart. Let the reader beware.

This ebook also includes an exclusive interview: JA Konrath talks with Jack Kilborn, plus excerpts from their latest books, CHERRY BOMB and AFRAID.



$1.99
1906 - Something is discovered by workers digging the Panama Canal. Something dormant. Sinister. Very much alive.

2009 - Project Samhain. The best minds in the world have been recruited to study the most amazing discovery in the history of mankind. But the century of peaceful research is about to end.

BECAUSE IT JUST WOKE UP.

All hell is about the break loose. For real.



$0.99
Masters of the comedy thriller genre, J.A. Konrath and Jeff Strand, team up for the humorous horror novella Suckers.

Featuring horrific violence, bad jokes, and lots of name calling.

Originally, published as a very expensive limited-edition hardcover, Suckers is now available as a super cheap ebook.

But the fun doesn't stop there.

Also included in this ebook are six other stories, many of them rare and long out of print.



$1.99
A medical investigator tormented by secret guilt.

A beautiful doctor with an illicit desire.

A millionaire businessman indulging a passion for murder.

And a human guinea pig who has been awake for seven straight weeks.

You’ll never sleep well again...

Disclaimer: This novel is filled with extortion, conspiracy, taboo sex, hidden secrets, shocking violence, and murderous betrayal. Not recommended for the faint of heart.

This ebook version also includes the bonus horror short story, "Dear Diary," about a very special pom pon girl.



$0.99
When a dead body turns up in the Chicago River, newspaper reporter Alex Chapa and Police Lieutenant Jacqueline “Jack” Daniels reluctantly join forces.

Thriller writers J.A. Konrath and Henry Perez have teamed up to create FLOATERS, a mystery tale that combines humor with thrills.

Included in this 30,000 word collection are the shorts LAST REQUEST and FAMILIAR PLACES.

It also includes a conversation between the authors and excerpts from each of their new novels, CHERRY BOMB and KILLING RED.



$1.99
A billionaire Senator with money to burn...

A thirty year old science experiment, about to be revealed...

Seven people, marked for death, not for what they know, but for what they are...

History is about to repeat itself

THE LIST is a technothriller about a group of ten people who each have tattoos of numbers on the bottoms their feet, and don't know why.

One of them, a Chicago Homicide cop, has had one of these strange tattoos since birth. When he investigates a violent murder and discovers the victim also has a tattooed number, it sets the ball rolling for an adventure of historic proportions.


$1.99
A GUTSY ROBBERY
Several million bucks, stolen from the mob...

A PERFECT FRAME
All caught on video, with no chance of redemption...

A RED HOT RECIPE FOR RAMPAGING REVENGE
Now one man must face the entire Chicago Outfit, a group of hardened Mafia enforcers, a psychotic bookie, the most dangerous hitman on earth, and Detective Jacqueline Daniels...

His name is Tequila. And he likes those odds.

SHOT OF TEQUILA by JA Konrath

JA Konrath is the author of the Lt. Jacqueline "Jack" Daniels thrillers (Whiskey Sour, Bloody Mary, Rusty Nail, Dirty Martini, Fuzzy Navel, Cherry Bomb.)

If you'd like to see the actual order page, you can visit: http://www.apptism.com/apps?query=konrath&x=0&y=0, where you can still get SERIAL for free.

This requires iPhone OS 2.2 or later. And the apps are really cool and simple to use.

Welcome to the future.

If anyone is interested in doing the same thing, you can contact the company that created my apps at http://www.indianicinfo.com. Apple takes 30% of the list price, IndiaNIC takes 35%, and the author takes 35%. So I'm earning between 35 cents and 70 cents per download.


19 comments:

  1. Joe, that is so cool! Thanks for sharing. Guess I'll finally have something good to read...instead of the crazy books I have to read for school.

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  2. My inner geek is beaming.

    There are about three thousand ebooks currently on iTunes as apps, mostly bestsellers. Unfortunately, the pricing structure is following the Kindle route, with iTunes charging $6.99 to $29.99 per book.

    Anyone who has an iPhone knows that the impulse buy sweet spot is under three bucks...

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  3. Anonymous5:23 PM

    Thanks for the link. This is fantastic. I am having a hard time keeping up with all the new technology! By next year, we'll all just be downloading right into our brains like the Matrix.

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  4. Are they on Installous yet? Just kidding. I already bought all the Kindle versions anyway.

    This is really cool, though. As always, you are doing the right thing by keeping the prices low and expanding. I remember seeing The Strain (The Guillermo Del Toro co-author thingy) on iTunes for $24.99 and I bet it is still that high. Not even the pirates think that is worth it to pool together cash to get it out into the "other app store."

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  5. I'm waiting for Installous so I can get them myself. :)

    You know you've made it when someone hacks you...

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  6. Good luck on that. The Appulous community apparently hates books. Unless you want 100+ year old books, useless quotes, comics, or twilight (yeah, I'm going out of my way to point out that I intentionally did not use caps), you're SOL.

    Oddly, I don't even use my iPod Touch for much anymore besides Kindle (you know, secretly reading on the job) and using the internet when I am in another town. I will check Installous every once in a while, though to see if you make it on there. And I can only see that as a good thing for it would lead many people to your other works. That's how I found you, Serial (which, btw, I found on iTunes searching "Konrath" and has been there since June) for free on Kindle and have probably bought more than half of the rest of your books since.

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  7. That's why we released SERIAL for free.

    There are many different scenes hacking iTunes apps. It's opnly a matter of time until someone does books and posts them on AppScene or 4Shared.

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  8. Anonymous7:39 PM

    Congratulations.

    I'm sure you are already keeping up with Macmillan's new e-royalty contract information, but I thought you might be interested in this posting, if you have not already seen it.

    Kristin posted the link on her PubRants blog to Richard Curtis' blog: Publishing in 21st Century

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  9. Making Serial free was a wise move, I would likely have never found you if it weren't for that, along with so many others.

    The book section of Installous is pretty bare when it comes to anything recent besides comics (and that horrid pseudo-vampire series). It may actually not be a bad idea to crack the free Serial on iTunes and throw it on there for some exposure. People actually crack Kindle (which, of course, is free) and throw it on there.

    I think you have somewhat a chance of being cracked because you are selling for more than reasonable prices, but I still wouldn't hold my breath. The book section is what I look at most and it is so rarely updated with anything new. Installous is mostly about apps and games.

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  10. Thanks for THAT tune stuck in my head Joe. I had to go watch it on youtube to get it out of my brain...

    :0)

    PS...very happy for your inner geek.

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  11. JoePike11:45 PM

    Wow, I was JUST singing 'Lolly lolly lolly get yer adverbs here!' to my daughter this morning on the way to school, trying to explain to her what Saturday morning cartoons and School House Rock were. Good times. That's a helluva coincidence Joe, after not hearing the song for years now.

    Love that your books are on iTunes now. The Marketing major that was me 15 years ago is just loving what you're doing lately!

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  12. Sorry for the stupid questions, but I have Verizon and I'm about to get a new phone. Can I use an Apple Iphone through Verizon?

    Also, I have an Ipod. If I download one of these books, will it be available on my ipod the way my music and music videos are?

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  13. Anonymous8:11 AM

    Interesting article, Anon 7:39.

    It looks like at least one big publisher is throwing down the gauntlet.

    The links in the article paint an interesting picture of the upcomming battle.

    If the publishers start to take back the retail side of publishing and circumvent B&N and Amazon by selling discounted books through their own online stores, the war would be all but over.

    Looks like all the talk about the death of traditional publishing was a wee bit premature.

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  14. @Gordon - Verizon doesn't have the iPhone yet, as far as I know. If you have an iPod Touch, you can read my apps on that.

    @Anon - If publishers want to survive, they need to lure readers with cost and convenience. They've already thumbed a nose at consumers by artificially inflating the cost of ebooks. Amazon, Sony, Apple, and now B&N make it very easy for readers to purchase ebooks.

    If a big publisher wants a piece of this pie, they'll have to lower their prices and make it easy to sync an ereader with their website. I'm guessing that involves licenses for proprietary formats, and seeing how big publishing has screwed Amazon from the very beginning of Kindle, I doubt Amazon will allow Penguin to sell Kindle titles on its homepage.

    In my last blog post, I mentioned the things I'd do as a publisher. Instead of continuing to charge twenty bucks for ebooks, I'd seriously look into giving away ebooks for free by finding advertising dollars. Free and legal would be something that could lure consumers away from the established etailers. Why pay $9.99 on Amazon when you can get the book for free at the publisher's website?

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  15. Reading a book on the iPhone would make me want to stomp my phone to death. I like to use it to read emails when I'm on the go, but even that kills me after a while.

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  16. Thanks JA, I just bought a new Ipod Touch and I was happy to add "Truck Stop" to my list. I'm sure it's great.

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  17. I find myself wishing I could download these just to read on my computer. Possible? Without buying some new technology device? I have neither 'smart' (ha!) phone nor e-book reader. Of course, there's always the liberry.

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  18. MinervaK, you can now download Kindle to your computer. Some people also have PDFs of books, I believe Joe has a few on his site of his books still.

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  19. Would you care to share more info on the development costs of getting these manuscripts into an app format? I saw on an earlier post that you said you were using IndiaNIC to develop the ebook apps, but they don't provide pricing.

    I'm curious, I guess, about the initial investment in putting these on the iTunes app store.

    You've already shared so much that I'm not sure if you'd be willing to disclose even more numbers, but I'd love to get a ballpark idea of what an author can expect to spend to create a standalone ebook app.

    Also, I was one of those customers who grabbed the free copy of Serial on my Kindle, then enjoyed it enough that I went ahead and bought the Kindle version of Afraid the same day. That was the first book of yours I ever read or bought--I only knew your name peripherally before reading Serial. Just thought you'd like to know.

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Thanks for the comment! Joe will get back to you eventually. :)