Today I learnt that the average Kindle (whatever an average Kindle is) can hold between 3,000 and 6,000 books. Depends on the size of said books I suppose. But also, wow, those are big book numbers!
Today I also learned that you can remove a downloaded book from your Kindle (for whatever reason, but saying you need the space seems kind of absurd). And you can, at any time, redownload a book you have removed, and you’ll get it free of charge. And when you redownload it, you will automatically get the updated book (if the publisher has pushed out a new version in the meantime). That’s kind of cute, really.
Howevs, should you permanently delete a book from your Kindle and should you ever want to read it again at some stage in the future, you will have to buy a new copy. You’ll also get the updated version if you buy anew, but you’re paying for it twice anyway.
So the message here is if you need to thin out your Kindle library (why would you?), you should remove (but not permanently delete because that’s somehow different) the book, and that way you get to own it (and any updated versions) in perpetuity. Look at me with the big worms words!
In other news, my publisher has indeed uploaded an updated version of Tempest to Kindle. Why? Well I’m glad you asked that question, grasshopper. I was having a read through a passage with the voice actor who is bringing Tempest to life as an audiobook, when I noticed a punctuation niggle. So, bitterly disappointed that I, my editor, and the draft readers hadn’t flagged up a missing full stop, I flipped to Chapter 1 and started reading afresh. I found several really minor niggles, but seized the opportunity of a good and thorough read-through to update, improve, and then republish the Kindle version. I may update the paperback version and get that republished as a second edition, but first I am waiting for the latest news from the voice actor.
The second interesting thing to flag up is that (as far as Tempest goes) Kindle sales are neck and neck with paperback sales. I don’t know why (probably because I’d never really sat down and thought about it) but I hadn’t considered Kindle to be such a big mover and shaker in the book world. I guess I thought that paperback sales would be the default medium. Huh.
I bumped into a neighbour a couple of days ago and we had a natter (as is my thing when I’m out walking the dogs). He happened to mention that his wife was currently reading Tempest. You could have knocked me down with a feather. I sort of know her (in a ‘stopping to chat with the neighbours’ kind of way) and hadn’t identified her as a potential reader. Maybe it’s the violence and the lesbian sex that caught her interest?
Anyway. Physical copies of Tempest are still flying off the shelves in paperback.
And for those cool with the digital revolution, you can buy a virtual copy of the adventure/conspiracy/thriller/sci-fi edge-of-the-seat, five-star rated, *book of the year* (it’s the only one I’ve written so far this year) here.
