What I Want For Christmas (Bookwise)

For Charlie (Dream Horse) to be where he is today

• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #13,105 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
  • #1 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Children's eBooks > Animals > Horses
  • #2 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Lifestyle & Home > Home & Garden > Animal Care & Pets > Horses > Riding
  • #3 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Sports > Individual Sports > Horses > Equestrian

Charlie was a real horse, most of the events in the book actually happened.  I bought him from a lovely young woman, Sindy, who was going to college to be a vet. 

Horses, sorry to say, aren't like dogs.  I'm not even sure dogs are like dogs.  But horses don't care about people.  Any movie that portrays affection between horse and human is a load of horse manure.  Some horses will treat you like another horse which is great and all you should expect. 

What a horse is very capable of is preference.  A horse will prefer one human to another because they've come to trust they will not treat them in a way that makes them uncomfortable. 

The horse on the cover of Dream Horse is my horse, Sparky.  He definitely preferred me above all humans but he didn't like humans, that included me.   Charlie had a very similar relationship with Sindy.  He really preferred her and no one else could get the same results or cooperation from him that she did.

Rumor has it that Amazon will  open up the Kindle lending program to indie publishers the first week of Dec.  The specifics are unknown but Joe Konrath hinted they are very  good.  The stumbling block might be that you must be exclusive to Kindle.  Pull your book from all other sites.  If you were selling well elsewhere this could be a major hit.  I remember seeing Amanda Hocking's sales figures from last year.  She was selling thousands of books a month at BN.  How is Amazon going to compensate for that loss?  Of course, few of us sell the way she does.

I have a Nook.  The reviews at BN have generally been very nice for my books unlike Amazon where I've had my share of drunk trolls.  Do I want to abandon those readers?  What is Amazon going to do for me?  What if 50,000 writers sign up the first week.  A very small marketplace is flooded with a whole lot of material.

The lending library is only for Amazon Prime members.  That's great for everyone who gets a Kindle Fire for Christmas since it comes with a free trial.  That's great for Amazon since they will have a ton of books to lure more people in and more people to stay after the free trial.  How is it good for a book like Dream Horse?  We know it's good for Konrath and his circle of friends.  They're all self-referencing at this point.  Others of us not so much, I suspect.

If you can decide what to make available to the program, I'm good with it.  If you have to make all your books available, it's a more difficult decision to make.  YMMV.