A couple reviews of The Art Kids can be found on the blogs Offbeat YA and Joana in the Sky with Books!  If you are a big fan of Christopher Pike, definitely check out Offbeat YA – she’s reviewed a bunch of his books.

You may have noticed that I finally got Hitchhikers up on Smashwords (link via the cover on the right).  I decided to go with Smashwords this time around because I wanted to offer the book for free, and also to offer more than just the Kindle format.  Looks like I’ll have to upload the book to Kindle Direct Publishing if I want it to be available on Amazon itself, but you can download a kindle-compatible format (.mobi) via Smashwords for now.

I published Bethany Caleb and The Art Kids back in May via Kindle Direct Publishing.  I enrolled in KDP Select, which allows you to offer your book for free for 5 days during the 3-month exclusive enrollment period.  Formatting and uploading the book was super easy.

I published Hitchhikers a few days ago via Smashwords, which allows total freedom in setting the price and also offers multiple ebook formats and will also will distribute to multiple online retailers, including Apple’s iBooks and Barnes & Noble.  The formatting process was a little more difficult, but it does seem like it would be easier to then use this Smashwords-formatted document for the Kindle format.

There have been 89 total downloads of Hitchhikers already.  Of course, it’s free, so that helps, but to compare: during my first free promotion of Bethany Caleb & The Art Kids (1 day), there were 18 & 34 downloads respectively.  I had promoted this free download as an event on Goodreads as well.  During my second free promotion (2 days), there were 13 & 45 downloads.  I’ve officially “sold” a handful of each title.

So far, I’m liking Smashwords a lot.  I like being able to control the price, and it certainly helped publicize the book at first because their front page shows the newest uploads.  Now I can just hope that some of those 89 people will review the book…