Holidays and Bookstores

I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving. We spent it with our son, daughter-in-law, and several of her family members. Thanksgiving also marked the fifth week since Mom moved on in her journey.

I’m adjusting to my new normal without Mom. I find comfort in knowing she was ready to move on and now free from dementia. In my heart of hearts, I sincerely believe she is spending the holidays with those who moved on before her, like Dad, Grandma Hilda, my Aunt Margaret, and others we both loved and missed.

As you can see, we are putting up the Christmas decorations. Once again our tree is placed by the front door. We don’t have a big house, and it is the only place it fits! Plus we never use that door. As you can see, we have a “back” door on the other side of the room that leads to the back yard. We now need to decorate the tree.

I am also focusing my energy on a project I started almost a year ago, building my own online bookstore. I took a class on how to build the online store, and I hired an expert to help me. It took much longer than I originally anticipated, but when I started, I didn’t take into consideration the books I was scheduled to write, time I wanted to spend with Mom, and other realities of daily life.

But I finally did it! I officially opened my online bookstore without any fanfare. 

Currently the only books available in the store, aside from two Havasu books, are Haunting Danielle and Anna J. McIntyre books in eBook format.  We are working on the print books, and they will be available in the near future, including hardback books. 

Since Tantor Media owns the audiobook rights to the Haunting Danielle series, and Dreamscape Media has the audiobook rights to The Coulson Family Saga, I won’t be selling audiobooks from my online bookstore. However, I will have links at my store helping you find where you can find the audiobooks.

This doesn’t mean Haunting Danielle or McIntyre eBooks will no longer be available at sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google, iTunes, or Smashwords. They will still be there. But at my store, I will be able to offer specials, discounts on bundles, and autographed copies.  

Having my own store gives me both flexibility and independence.  Authors have no real control over how major online bookstores do business, which may help or hinder book sales.  For example, I know of authors who decided to put their eBooks exclusive on Amazon’s Unlimited program, only to have their accounts shut down because their books showed up (no fault to the author) on a pirate site, thus violating Amazon’s TOS. While many of those authors were eventually able to get reinstated, their stream of income stopped abruptly for days or weeks.  

One time Barnes & Noble abruptly closed my account because they thought I was selling spicy books—I wasn’t. It took a while to work it out, and I often wonder if they would have reopened my account so quickly if it hadn’t been for all my loyal readers who sent them angry emails.

As an author, we have no control if someone else’s online bookstore suddenly closes down or decides not to list our books. Having my own online bookstore gives me a sense of security.

I urge you to stop by the store—its official name is Bobbi Holmes Books at the domain store, instead of dot com. Here is the link:  https://bobbiholmesbooks.store

Like I said, it is a work in progress, and we still have a lot to do on the store. So stop by periodically and see what we’ve added!