Swagbucks = Free books!

   
     I'm going to post a short one today since I'm suffering some substantial internet fatigue this week. This may read like a commercial and you may think I'm getting compensated in some way but I'm not. It's just super cool (especially as a way to get free ebooks) and I wish someone had told me about it sooner.
     I'm talking about Swagbucks. You can buy Amazon and Paypal gift cards with Swagbucks, among other things. In less than 3 months I've gotten 2 ebooks, the new Snow Patrol album Fallen Empires (I won 25 Swagbucks just now as I was linking to Amazon!) and the first season of Designing Women all for free. Next on my list are some awesome coffee mugs from Anthropologie.
     Basically, you go to Swagbucks, sign up and start searching using the toolbar. You can easily earn 20 Swagbucks per day and more if you want to work at it a bit more. 450 swagbucks will get you a $5 Amazon giftcard and 700 will get you a $5 Paypal gift card (Anthropologie accepts payments via Paypal). The bucks add up faster than you might think.
     In addition to being awarded bucks for searching you can earn them by using coupons (10 bucks each) printed from coupons.com (as long as you link there through Swagbucks), doing surveys, catching up on entertainment gossip by watching videos from E! via SBTV, playing games, doing surveys, etc. For those of you with piles of books you need to pass on, they even have a trade-in service that will award swagbucks for books.
     I share this information because I honestly think it's a great program. It's fun and a fab way to keep up with your book addiction and those impulse Kindle/Nook purchases without going broke. So, what are you waiting for?

Is There Enough Pie to Go Around?

         
     I just finished watching Amanda Hocking on Anderson Cooper's talk show. I felt a rising tide of panic as I listened to the 42 year old stay at home mom who was also on talking about how Amanda inspired her. It's ridiculous, I know. And yet, it will not leave me.
      All the articles I've been reading about the rising tsunami of self-publishing and the surge of ebook purchases since the holidays lead me to the conclusion that the iron is hot and it's time to strike. Sadly, I don't have an iron of my own yet. My iron is at about room temperature and holding. Am I missing out because I don't have a MS to publish? Is there enough of the ebook pie to go around? I can't help but imagine legions of stay at home moms watching Anderson and deciding to become the next Amanda Hocking. My fear is this, once people see the quality of some of these slap-dash, self-published ebooks there will be a backlash against self-published works which will effectively kill the market by the time I'm ready to self-publish my own work (which will, of course, be the best thing since Harry Potter).
     I'm sure I'm being silly but surely people will only buy so many $0.99 ebooks that suck before they stop buying them at all. If I were a betting woman I'd put my money on an end to the self-publishing free for all. I'm not saying the publishing world will revert to traditional publishing again but I can certainly foresee the proliferation of small "publishing houses" specializing in ebooks. If the quality of self-published ebooks doesn't improve, readers will turn to a gatekeeper of some sort to protect them from the shitstorm outside. That's my two cents anyway. I may well be missing the perfect time to self-publish before people outside the writing community get wise to the lack of quality control in self-published books.
     What are your thoughts? Am I crazy?(None of this is a reflection upon Ms. Hocking's work. I have not read her books. I am referring to other self-published books I stumbled upon unwittingly long before I knew anything about self-publishing ebooks.)