No strings attached, but do me a favour, OK? If you like your free book, write a quick review of it at Amazon. That’s easy too, and just a single line saying you liked it will really help me sell copies of the book after the free offer is over.

I hope you’ll pick up your free copy of Sisters in Crime and I hope you’ll enjoy reading it half as much as I enjoyed writing it.

And don’t say I never give you anything

(PS If you don’t have a Kindle and still want to read the stories, they are available in other ereader formats on Smashwords – but they’re not free and they aren’t collected together, you’ll need to buy the three titles, Sisters, Manhunt, and The Thirteenth Egg - total cost $5.97.)

Get yours from:

Amazon.com

Amazon.co.uk

Amazon.de

So, if you’d like all your Alexandra Bertolissio stories in one place – on your Kindle – ‘Sisters in Crime’ is on its way. Watch this space.

And it looks like the 2011 Read an eBook Week is going to be enormous. In five days, so far, I have had more downloads of my books than in the previous five months! Its a sign of a growing audience for ebooks (hands up everyone who got an ebook reader for Christmas) and a brilliant example of how these events can work to get a writer’s name ‘out there’. So a great big THANK YOU to everybody who downloaded a copy.

Of course, I hope that you’ll enjoy the books you downloaded and that you’ll come back for more – especially if I’ve convinced you they’re worth spending your hard-earned dollar on. Remember too that ebooks make great gifts for birthdays, anniversaries, or just as little thank yous to the people in your life. So spread the message that ebooks are the new way to enjoy good writing, and spread the love to everyone you know.

Sisters - a collection of crime stories by Jack Holbrook

I’ve just published a collection of short stories featuring Detective Alexandra Bertolissio and her beatiful sister, Mel. The collection, called “Sisters“, goes deeper into their relationship than previous stories. But, don’t worry, there are plenty of homicides to be solved as Alexandra grapples with her difficult personal life. The last story in the collection, by the way, (called “Together”) follows on directly from the events in “The Thirteenth Egg” as the two sisters attempt to get away from it all – and the fallout from that disastrous case.

You can find “Sisters” on Smashwords (although, if you’re patient, it will eventually find its way to many other online bookstores). All three of my Alexandra Bertolissio books are available on my Smashwords author page. You can treat yourself to the set for less than $3.00!

So, for the whole of July, you can get both Jack Holbrook ebooks absolutely free from Smashwords. Just enter the code SW100 at the checkout and they are both yours for the asking.

Follow this link to get your free copy of “The Thirteenth Egg” Detective Alexandra Bertolissio’s own sister is in the frame for robbery and murder after a priceless jewelled egg is stolen – yet her own department is keeping her at arms length while the investigation is bungled.

Follow this link to get your free copy of “Manhunt”. A serial killer is on the loose and Detective Alexandra Bertolissio is close on his trail, but getting the evidence she needs to put him away means risking everything.

Now I want to try selling these crime novellas at just $0.99 to see what the response is. Hopefully, a great many more people will buy at this new price than at the higher price. If it was more than twice as many, it would mean I’d make more money by selling at the low price! And that would be a win for everybody.

So, if you have been thinking about picking up one or two of my crime thrillers, or if you just want to keep the price of ebooks low, there has never been such a good time to try them out. At less than a dollar each, they have got to be good value!

To help the event along, my two novellas Manhunt and The Thirteenth Egg will be available for free for the whole week on Smashwords - the world’s leading independent book publisher. Just use the coupon RFREE at checkout for both books between the 7th and the 13th March (incl.)

There will be plenty of other free ebooks about during that week so happy hunting! If you pick up my books, I hope you enjoy them.

Nevertheless, we vote for the governments who send soldiers out to fight and perhaps to die in our name. If we do that, we need to take responsibility of our actions. Until we stop voting for war, we should get behind our troops 100%. We can’t have it both ways. Anything less than full support would be completely morally bankrupt.

So when I was invited to participate in the eBook Drop Project, I was happy to help out. As Ed Patterson, who organises the project, put it.  “Troops overseas are hard up for good reading material, and one author had a simple idea that’s catching on nicely: have willing authors send books by email to anyone interested.”

The project is described here: http://blog.smashwords.com/search?q=operation. If you’re an author of an ebook and you’d like to help out, send an email to Ed Patterson at edwpat@att.net and ask to be placed on his list.

And to all the soldiers who have read ‘Manhunt’ and ‘The Thirteenth Egg’ so far, I hope you enjoyed them and you’ll get all your friends involved in the scheme. And a Merry Christmas, wherever you find yourselves this holiday season.

Los Gatos, Calif. — November 23, 2009 — Smashwords, a global publisher and distributor of independently published ebooks, today announced it will supply ebooks to the Amazon.com Kindle Store. Kindle is Amazon’s wireless reading device that allows customers to downloads books, blogs, magazines and newspapers to a crisp, high-resolution electronic paper display that looks and reads like real paper.

Smashwords’ decision to distribute ebooks to the Kindle Store follows recent Smashwords agreements with Barnes & Noble, Sony and Shortcovers.  The relationships further democratize access to distribution for the world’s independent authors and publishers.

Let’s hear it, two cheers for democracy! And congratulations to Mark Coker at Smashwords who is turning that company into something of an indie publishing sensation. I’m very happy to be associated with this exciting and dynamic organisation.

Coming soon to a Kindle near you!