When Dawn hears a voice calling for help from a creepy old haunted house, she knows she shouldn’t go in, but she has to try to help. the ramshackle old mansion holds a lot of secrets and it’s up to the readers to determine whether Dawn gets home for trick-or-treating safely.
Meant for kids in the 7-12 age range.
This is the secret project Mini and I have been working on. As you know by now, she’s quite the writer. we decided to write a Choose-Your-Own-Path book for her class for Halloween, but why limit it just to her class?
I originally wanted (I still want) to release it free, specially licensed to pass on for use in classrooms and libraries. however, the Amazon Terms of Service severely limit me. (I’m putting the technicals on that restriction under the cut for the other writers out there.)
So, we are putting it up here for free until November 15th. On November 15, 2011 I will remove it from this page and put it on Amazon & B&N.com for $.99, the lowest price I can set. (Why it won’t be on Smashwords is also under the cut.)
So feel free to download it, tell your kids’ teachers and librarians about it, integrate it into lesson plans and pass it on. Teachers/educators have full rights to reproduce it for use in the classroom or other teaching settings. if you’re a teacher and you do make a lesson plan from it please send it to me and I will include the lesson plan with the download (if that’s okay with you).
EPub file (suitable for most machines, including Nook, Aldiko Apps, Calibre, etc)
Other formats (If you are a teacher please email me and I can send you a MS Word file which might be more convenient for printing at school.)
1. why I can’t set it as free on Amazon et al.
Amazon does not allow you to set anything as free because they charge a storage/delivery fee on each download. they do demand that you agree not to sell your books lower on any other site than on theirs, so I *could* set it free on B&N but they would be within their rights to not only set it free on their site, but to also keep it free for an undefined amount of time and use my formerly giving it as free as an excuse not to have to pay me anything. which is also why I have to remove it from my website for free before putting on Amazon.
The unfortunate fact is that being on Amazon will make it reach far more readers, which is the point, than being on my website so not ever putting it on Amazon would defeat the whole intended purpose of this project more than charging a nominal amount for it will.
2) why can’t I just put it on Smashwords, they let you give it away for free?
First, see that bit earlier about it being on any other site being all the excuse amazon needs to not ever charge for it/pay me for it.
Second, I HATE Smashwords’ meatgrinder. Because of the nature of the formatting in this book the “jumps” to different sections are embedded in-the-text links. I had a devil of a time getting the formatting right to begin with I just cannot take the chance that Shashwords’ meatgrinde will screw that all up and put out a very poor ebook. (Ereaders adjust formatting meaning not only would the “jumps” lead to different pages on different machines, but some ebook programs don’t even keep track of page counts, making it really hard and not-fun to read this book.)
Third, Smashwords has counted for a grand total of FOUR sales for two books in two years. It’s just not worth it, so why fight it?