So, first, my short story The Bearer is free on Amazon at the moment.  Should be in all markets, so if you’re interested, pick up a copy. This is the story that almost almost almost sold to Tor.com back when they were taking open short story submissions and a few years later I still, surprisingly, like it.

I don’t know why, but I figured I’d look back at those stories I wrote in 2013 and wince, thinking how horrible they were given my older, wiser perspective.  But actually…I didn’t.  I went through all of the short stories I have published to Amazon and tweaked them before moving them over to Pronoun but they really held up pretty well.  The Price We Pay made me a little teary even.  (It’s based off my father…)

Anyway.  For you author/publisher folks, if you haven’t looked into Pronoun, it might be worth checking out, especially if you have a title you want to list for free on Amazon.  Because, unlike the convoluted hoops you have to jump through to get a title matched to free if you list your books directly with Amazon, on Pronoun you can just put the price to free and it works.  Just like that.  In all markets, I do believe.

Which is pretty darned convenient for a title you want to leave at free.  (I hadn’t been planning on listing The Bearer as free and then I thought, why not?  I like the story, I want people to read it, and I’m not going to spend a lot of time or effort promoing it to bring in those readers.  So, let’s set it to free and see what folks think.)

Listing through Pronoun does reset a book and give it a new ASIN so I wouldn’t recommend that for a title with a good ranking.  (I have one of my romance shorts that’s free that I won’t move for that reason.  But another one I just set to free is sitting at 3K or 4K on the free list since I moved it over which is nice for a title that’s been out a couple years and had lost visibility.)

You can also get your reviews on Amazon to transfer over so you won’t lose those. (But you might have to email Amazon to make that happen.  Just ask them to link the two editions and give them both ASINs.)

They also have access to Google for those who don’t have an account there and want to list wide.

Right now I won’t use them for more expensive titles because of the lack of granular price control.  Not that I think I can get a Bookbub on every title, but you never know.  And I’m not a fan of their reporting from what I’ve seen so far.  It’s not detailed at all.  Hopefully the reports they send when they send payment will give more granular detail.

But another nice little perk that they’re offering at least for now is a better payout on books outside of Amazon’s sweet spot of $2.99 to $9.99.  If you’re direct with Amazon you get 35 cents for a sale of a 99 cent title.  But if you go through Pronoun you might get as much as 70 cents.  (I’ve had a few that paid 50 cents so far probably because they were UK sales, but I can’t see that because of their crappy reporting…)

And they’ll email you to let you know what categories you could be in to get on a top 100 list, but I’m not too impressed with that either.  It suggested I list my short stories in a translations category.  Sure, I’d get on a list, but what’s the point on being on a list when my book isn’t that type of book so those readers won’t want it?

Anyway.  Something to look into if you weren’t aware of it already.  Oh, and the formatting they offer is much nicer than the basic formatting I normally get by uploading a Word file everywhere.  (But I think I’m about to take the plunge and move to Vellum so I have more control over that.  Only took me three and a half years to get there.  Haha…)