Bargain: From Unbridled Books - 25 ebooks for $0.25 (June 9-11)

[apesmom]

From the publishers blog:

Throughout the weekend of June 9, 10, and 11, Unbridled Books will be offering 25 of their titles as eBooks for only 25 cents apiece. Those of you who have eReaders such as the Apple iPad and the Sony Reader (to name only a couple), can take advantage of an unprecedented offer. The folks at Unbridled believe that it’s a great way to give the independent booksellers an opportunity to help them build their customers’ attention and loyalty.

The 25 book titles being offered are as follows:

Vanishing by Candida Lawrence
Shimmer by Eric Barnes
The Distance Between Us by Masha Hamilton
Wolf Point by Edward Falco
Small Acts of Sex and Electricity by Lisa Haines
The Unnatural History of Cypress Parish by Elise Blackwell
The Green Age of Asher Witherow by M. Allen Cunningham
Breath and Bones by Susann Cokal
Conscience Point by Erica Abeel
The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego
The Wonder Singer by George Rabasa
Hick by Andrea Portes
The Phantom Limbs of the Rollow Sisters by Timothy Schaffert
Sometimes We’re Always Real Same-Same by Mattox Roesch
The Evolution of Shadows by Jason Quinn Malott
The Good Doctor Guillotin by Marc Estrin
The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel
Captivity by Deborah Noyes
Taroko Gorge by Jacob Ritari
Rain Village by Carolyn Turgeon
Song of the Crow by Layne Maheu
The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson
Panopticon by David Bajo
Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld
The Journal of Antonio Montoya by Rick Collignon

Indie bookstores that offer Google ebooks.

[SteveK]

Well, I don't know how good any of the books are, but I ordered all 25 of them. I figured for 25 cents each or a total of $6.25, I couldn't lose. Even if I only like or read one of them, it's still a bargain!

I did have to go through one of the independent booksellers listed as I didn't see where to order them directly on the Unbridled website.

Guess my TBR list has just grown a bit longer!

SteveK

[birdbrainbb]

This was kind of neat! (And it's a great price, of course.) I found a local indie store that was selling the ebooks and bought four through them. Now I'm kind of staring at the others and wondering if I can resist buying the rest of them as well...

[stonetools]

Yeah, how do you take advantage of this. Do you need to instal Google Books , then find an indie bookstore... What's the procedure?

[SteveK]

stonetools - I just accessed one of the independent bookstores listed (I happened to select the one closest to me, but I'm sure that's not necessary). After adding all my titles to a cart, I first had to enter my g-mail address, but to open my account at the bookstore I used my regular email address since that's what my Adobe account is linked to. When you download, you first download the ascm file to access the actual book, typical of epub downloads. So it's a fairly straightforward procedure and only takes a few minutes.

At 25 cents each, I didn't pay much attention to the brief description that most books had, as I wasn't overly concerned about how much I might enjoy a book priced so cheaply, so I just purchased them all. I probably would have purchased all offered titles even if they offered 100 rather than just 25.

Hopefully unbridledbooks will have a spectacularly successful sale and offer something like this again in the future with even more titles available.

Enjoy!
SteveK

[stonetools]

Originally Posted by SteveK

stonetools - I just accessed one of the independent bookstores listed (I happened to select the one closest to me, but I'm sure that's not necessary). After adding all my titles to a cart, I first had to enter my g-mail address, but to open my account at the bookstore I used my regular email address since that's what my Adobe account is linked to. When you download, you first download the ascm file to access the actual book, typical of epub downloads. So it's a fairly straightforward procedure and only takes a few minutes.

At 25 cents each, I didn't pay much attention to the brief description that most books had, as I wasn't overly concerned about how much I might enjoy a book priced so cheaply, so I just purchased them all. I probably would have purchased all offered titles even if they offered 100 rather than just 25.

Hopefully unbridledbooks will have a spectacularly successful sale and offer something like this again in the future with even more titles available.

Enjoy!
SteveK

Hey, thanks!

[sufue]

Originally Posted by SteveK

After adding all my titles to a cart, I first had to enter my g-mail address, but to open my account at the bookstore I used my regular email address since that's what my Adobe account is linked to. When you download, you first download the ascm file to access the actual book, typical of epub downloads. So it's a fairly straightforward procedure and only takes a few minutes.

It worked pretty much the same for me, but in the other order - I had to use my regular e-mail address first, and then enter my gmail address to link my Google Books account to the bookstore account. The process is probably slightly different depending on the indie bookstore you choose. But, it walked me through it, and was just as easy as SteveK describes. And, exactly the same as SteveK, once purchased, I just clicked on the download links, and they automatically downloaded to Digital Editions.

It was sort of fun for me - I found a link in the list to an indie bookstore I used to HAUNT many years ago when I lived in another city, so I used that one. And, I'm going to keep an eye on their selections and buy from them whenever it makes sense (or even close to makes sense) - so I guess the promotion did its job of making me aware that the indie bookstore had e-books.

Originally Posted by SteveK

Hopefully unbridledbooks will have a spectacularly successful sale and offer something like this again in the future with even more titles available.
SteveK

I also bought all of them - with the same hope of encouraging this type of sale in the future!

[kbieb]

I am guessing that since it uses ADE it has DRM? I am really trying my best to avoid DRM in the hopes that it will go away.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kbieb

I am guessing that since it uses ADE it has DRM? I am really trying my best to avoid DRM in the hopes that it will go away.

Avoiding DRM won't make it go away. It will just mean less books for you to choose from.

[koland]

I ordered all 25, but only received 24.

Did anyone else actually get (including downloading):

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego

[CWatkinsNash]

Originally Posted by koland

I ordered all 25, but only received 24.

Did anyone else actually get (including downloading):

The Islands of Divine Music by John Addiego

Yes, I got it, and downloaded it and already put it in calibre. I used the second store on the list.

[arcadata]

The Pirate's Daughter by Margartet Cezair-Thompson is also $0.25 for the Kindle - the others seem to be full priced though

[SteveK]

Koland - I also only got 24, but I did receive the title you apparently didn't. I'm missing "The Journal of Antonio Montoya". I'm working with the book vendor I purchased it from to resolve the problem, and so far they've been very helpful. Apparently there was (is?) a problem on the Google end of the transaction which Google is supposedly working to resolve. I notified the vendor last night and received two replies today to update me on status - I appreciate that kind of service!

SteveK

[koland]

I've also contacted the store I used (the first on the list, I think, in Palmer, AK, since I thought I might get there, someday ... I have friends in the immediate area I keep meaning to visit).

[apesmom]

For those of you who are interested, here's a few paragraphs posted on Publishers Weekly regarding the success of this sale. We can hope similar events will follow. . .

Unbridled Books’ “25 for 25” e-book sale, in which 25 titles were offered for a 25 cents each, has been deemed an “unparalleled success,” according to the American Booksellers Association. “While we recognize that selling books for a quarter is not only unsustainable, but is fraught with other issues,” the ABA’s COO, Len Vlahos, said, “This experiment did demonstrate that consumers are interested in buying e-books from independent bookstores.” Vlahos reported that 145 independent bookstores across the country sold a total of 15,807 Unbridled e-books through the ABA’s platform during the three-day sale last weekend. The bestselling title was The Singer’s Gun by Emily St. John Mandel, which recently won an Indie Booksellers Choice Award. Both the ABA and Unbridled, however, declined to provide a breakdown of sales per title.

Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C. sold 919 Unbridled e-books to 95 customers during the sale. Communications manager Andrew Getman noted that not only did customers buy Unbridled e-books during the sale, they bought other e-books that were not discounted, and that most of these customers were new registrants to P&P’s web site as well. The store sold 64 copies of The Singer’s Gun and 56 copies of The Pirate’s Daughter by Margaret Cezair-Thompson during the sale.

The number of Unbridled e-books sold during the three-day sale is even higher than the total provided PW by the ABA, as some independents sold the titles through their own sites and aren’t included in the ABA’s sales figures, like Powell’s Books in Portland, Oregon. While Powell’s declined to provide PW with a total of the number of Unbridled e-books sold during the sale, director of strategic projects for the site Darin Sennett said they’d sold a “tremendous amount of e-books,” while marketing manager Michael Dannen added that more than half of their customers took advantage of an option to buy all 25 titles at once.