To Shovel, Or Not To Shovel…

To Shovel, Or Not To Shovel….

Top 3 Weirdest Tanks of all time

Okay – so I absolutely LOVE tanks!

Starting Out as an Indie Author: Where to promote permafree books

A great article for all of you writer-types.

Ruth Nestvold - Indie Adventures

I’ve talked before about how permafree can be used as a marketing strategy for ebooks. Permafree is indie author shorthand for permanently free. Many sales venues allow you to set the price of your book to free; others do not, most notably Amazon. But it is still possible to make a book free there, either through price-matching, or by writing Amazon directly, listing the other sites where your book is free, and pointing out the promotional advantage of having the book free. As an example, here is the email I sent which finally resulted in Yseult: Two Women going free:

Hello,

I’ve been trying for some time to get my ebook “Yseult, Part I: Two Women” price-matched using the link “tell us about a lower price,” but until now I’ve had no luck, which is why I am contacting you directly. The ebook is free on Barnes & Noble…

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Is Nova Scotia in danger of extinction?

Okay…so we have had a LOT of snow fall on us this weekend here in Nova Scotia.

Just ask Rick Mercer.

I watched that clip and I thought to myself – “Yes, that’s me, a frozen woolly mammoth.”

Winter has hit hard, here in Nova Scotia.

The whole concept of Nova Scotia becoming extinct beneath the numbing blanket of winter doesn’t seem all that hard to believe to me. Why not? I’ve had walking pneumonia for the last couple of weeks. Yesterday, after the snow stopped falling I went out to shovel the sidewalk.

It had to be done.

I started at one end of the sidewalk. It was slushy and I pushed it off of our wooden deck easily enough. However – fifteen minutes later – by the time I reached the end of the sidewalk the temperature had plummeted so much that the slush had frozen solid.

I went back inside and lay on the couch and slept for about an hour, I was that tired. I am beginning to see the wisdom of these Nova Scotia snowbirds who head south every winter and find themselves a condo in Florida.

But that’s not all.

What about those Nova Scotians who work out west in the oil fields. I know of MANY folk who leave their family home and fly to Alberta and work for several months at a time before flying back home for a couple of weeks off.

Not to mention the young folk who graduate university and fly to Toronto or Texas or Vancouver to buy a home and settle down.

Is Nova Scotia becoming extinct?

Only time will tell.

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Perhaps it is the heavy duty antibiotics talking, but I started thinking about the extinction of Nova Scotia after I watched this 60 Minutes news special on the possible extinction of Italy – or at the very least many small Italian towns.

Watch it – it’s only thirteen minutes long – funny AND thoughtful.

(and thanks to the blog MARGIE IN ITALY for writing about this phenomenon in the first place!)

Watching that clip got me to thinking about this whole “Mamoni” phenomenon.

It really isn’t all that uncommon.

Think about all of the Nova Scotians who have moved back in with their family due to economic reasons. Or who have to move back home to take care of ailing parents. I know of many families in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland where two or three thirty to forty year old family members who have moved back in with their mothers and fathers for one reason or another.

Mamoni, eh?

It isn’t as uncommon as you might think it is.

yours in storytelling,

Steve Vernon

If you enjoyed this blog entry why don’t you do one of the very best things that you can do for an indie writer and pick up one of my e-books?

🙂

Steve Vernon on Kindle!

Steve Vernon on Kobo!

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