More from the "if anyone cares" files:

I never put my ebooks into KDP Select before, intending to publish them with Barnes and Noble, iBooks, and eventually Kobo and other platforms, but I just don't seem to find the time to learn the formatting skills I need to go through those channels. So instead, I am finally listing some of them in KDP Select, and because of that, they will also be available through Kindle Unlimited.

If someone has Amazon Prime, as I understand it (I don't have it myself), the person not only gets free two day shipping on any sized order, they get to download one book a month for free. Now if I were that person, I probably wouldn't download MY short stories. Why? Because they've always been cheap ($0.99) and because they're SHORT. I'd rather download a full length novel, preferably one that was expensive to begin with. I'd want to get my money's worth out of it.

That's part of why I never listed them. But now, with the advent of the Kindle Unlimited subscription service, you have to be in KDP to be have your books available for KU. What is KU, you might ask? Well, the way I understand it is that you pay a monthly fee to download ANY book in the KU lending library. You can borrow up to 10 ebooks at a time. You keep them on your device until you download another book, then one of them will disappear (the oldest one, presumably).

The authors whose books you borrow through the program get paid some small amount from the subscription fees paid. Is it a good program? Maybe, from the reader's perspective. They can download whatever they want to read and sample an author's works for no additional fee, and with no limits. Don't like it? Don't read whatever else you downloaded by that author, and even if he gets paid for that first one you read, he doesn't get paid if you don't read it. (Amazon knows how much you've read on your Kindle. I already knew that they got this information because it seems like a couple days after I finish a book, I get a request to review the book from Amazon.)

I thought it made total sense for me to put all of my short stories into it. First, they only make me a few cents if someone buys them, and that buying thing just doesn't happen very often for them. (Or for any of my ebooks, but that's neither here nor there.) Maybe, just maybe, someone will find them, download them through KU, then go on to buy something that's NOT in KU. Which is my DIE 6 collection. Those stories are not published individually, only in the collection. Or maybe they'll find me through QUANTUM ZOO, and try another story or two, and when I finally get around to getting my longer fiction edited and published, they'll buy those and...

Oh, I'm going off on a fantasy/tangent there. Let's get back on track. The other nice thing about KDP Select is that I can set "free" days for my short stories, one every 90 days, I think. So I will be doing that periodically. I'll announce it here, and on my Scott Dyson website, and on Facebook, and anywhere else I can think of, when they are offered for free. But you'll have to have an Amazon account to get them for free. Sorry.

Anyway, the long and short of it is that the following stories are now in KDP Select and Kindle Unlimited:

• SOLE OCCUPANT (and THE ONLY SOLUTION)


• ODD MAN OUT (and THE HOUSE AT THE BEND IN THE ROAD)


• JACK'O'LANTERN (and THE MOMENT and SARAH'S PUPPY)


• THE GATEWAY (and AMERICA'S PASTIME and HOT SPOT)


• DEAD OR ALIVE


• NIGHT FAMILY


• RICK'S RULES

So, there ya go. If you have KU, please consider downloading one or more of them at some point. And reading them, of course. Thank you!

*****