FLIPPIN' GREAT -- NEW BEWRITE BOOKS FREE MINI-EBOOKS

BUT BEWRITE BOOKS MINI-EBOOKS ARE FULL-SIZE!

BeWrite Books’ exclusive idea of free mini-ebooks covering all its titles is proving a huge success with browsers, readers and authors ... after just four weeks of the mass launch of well over 100 on New Year’s Day.

The feedback has been flippin’ amazing. And everyone’s a winner.

Each of these wee productions of between thirty and seventy pages carries full-colour cover and includes book notes, reviews, author biography and picture, and a generous extract from the book itself.

They make browsing a pleasure, reader selection foolproof, and are proving a wonderful, easy-to-use promotional tool for authors to boot. It’s the ‘good old days’, 2012-style.

Each title in the BeWrite Books catalogue is now covered by its mini-ebook. They can be read on our website’s bookstore HERE and freely downloaded, printed out or shared on other websites, other blogs, and even in emails by hitting the buttons at the bottom of the displays or simply by copying and pasting their individual URL/s.

Pages can be quickly turned by clicking on the little arrows at either side; but so far, folks -- even died-in-the-wool ebook readers -- tell us they enjoy the special thrill of seeing an ebook look and perform like the old treebooks they used to love. Using a finger or thumb to turn the pages on a touch screen or your cursor on a PC or laptop, the pages curl over like those of a traditional treebook and display two pages at a time like a paperback or hardback.

Just for fun, turn on your sound and you can even hear the cracking ‘paper’ pages as they flip ... hence the name of the special software BB Editorial and Design Director Tony Szmuk used to create them over the closing months of last year, ready for their launch: ‘Flipping Books’.

(I guess the smart US developers of this marvelous, but darned expensive, software were unaware of the fact that ‘flipping’ is a UK euphemism for the other F-word. That’s OK. We’re grown-ups.)

Browsers and readers tell us the mini-ebooks remind them of the unhurried experience and warmth of the old local brick-and-mortar bookshop ... in days of yore when they still had one.

After coming-up six decades as an avid reader and forty-seven as a pro-writer and editor, I no longer have a love affair with print, but if you still feel nostalgic, I just read of an app that actually allows you to smell paper as you read an ebook. Potty but true! No doubt there'll be an app for paper mold stinks and virtual book worm (the insect variety) disintegration of ebook volumes soon.

My IT-pro son, Alex, told me when we were discussing the legitimacy of 1960s and 1970s novels as historical fiction: ‘Get real, Dad; these days youngsters feel nostalgic before lunch about what they had for breakfast.’

If you visit the BEWRITE BOOKS BOOKSTORE, click on any title. That will take you to that book’s individual page. Scroll down to ‘Brochure’, click on that and – voila – you have your free mini-ebook. (Please allow five seconds or so for upload because these are real ebooks in their own right and not mere extra website pages).  For a shortcut, HERE'S AN EXAMPLE.

You’ll notice on the left of the screen display a table-of-contents panel to easily skip to the portion of the mini-ebook you want to see. But if you close this, you will have the book presented at full size and can flip through its pages at leisure. And if you click on ‘full screen’, it’s even more impressive.

By the way, these mini-ebooks are now to be created ahead of a new title’s release. As soon as a book is prepared for publication and a release date is set in stone, the mini-ebook will be created. So you’ll notice a new feature at the foot of our bookstore’s front page: ‘Coming Soon’.

Currently featured is Cemetery Ridge, to be fully released in paperback and all digital editions on February 10. But click on it now and you can read its covering mini-ebook to see if it’s one for you. (It’s HERE if you’d prefer to go direct.)

Have fun with your free mini reads, folks. And happy weekend. Neil, Tony, Hugh, Sam et al at BB