Question from Virginia Winters

by Virginia Winters

Dangerous Journeys Series, Vol. 3

Genealogist-detective Anne McPhail is on holiday in Bermuda, visiting her sister. She stumbles upon a murder in progress and this time, she is more than just a witness, she is a suspect, dealing with a police officer who decides Anne is guilty, and sticks to it in face of all the evidence, or lack of it. But more is going on than a random murder. Anne is caught in the middle a dangerous assassination plot. When she inadvertently upsets the killer’s plan, he turns his attention to her. The risk spreads to her family and friends and then Thomas Beauchamp arrives on Bermuda.

When his role is revealed, Anne’s life takes a dangerous turn.

Question from the e-mail from Virginia Winters: 

My critique group brought this website to my attention http://www.general-ebooks.com It has all my books listed and the content available. I think it is all for free. Would you have a look at the site? It has a link to Smashwords which allows the books to be read online. They are in copyright violation, I think and I know that at least one of the other members of my group has told them to take his books off, but I thought I would check with you first.

Answer: 

Dear Virginia:

This is only one of the new Outlets that SmashWords recently added. As a distributor site, SmashWords sells our authors' books on many other sites and in formats that will work on almost any  brand of reader device, phone, and tablet.  SW lists our books for sale on their own website, and also -- if the files are correctly prepared for their "meatgrinder" distribution system -- distributes them to be listed at many other sales sites, like the one you mentioned, www.general-ebooks.com 

I have checked out the web site as you suggested and the Free Download gives them only a few sample chapters. That is all the customer can see, whether they read it on line, or ask for the "free download."  Then if they want to finish the book, they must come back and pay...

I chose one of my own books to try, the one I'm giving away free on our own web site right now,  and actually downloaded the 20% sample, and the sample ended at the same place as the screen sample, right in the middle of a sentence!

Most sites, including our own at www.writewordsinc.com are set up to show a sample of the work to the reader. This one is a bit longer than most, but at 20 %, it's certainly not enough to give away everything that happens.

As you know, Shelley and I are working very hard to make your books available to more and more customers, and so we have been concentrating on distributor sites that share titles with still more sites, such as SmashWords, and Kobo.com.

Happy New Year  and the best hopes for better returns for all of us in 2014!