Your FREE month of Amazon PRIME Membership

. Amazon Prime Membership FREE Trial: You will receive free two-day shipping year-round, including right before the holidays.  Not a member?  You can still reap the benefits of the deal when you sign up for a free one-month trial.  At the end of the Amazon Prime free trial or your chosen membership period, your card will be charged automatically for the next membership period.  Which means, as long as you order by December 22, your gifts should arrive in time.  Here are all the benefits of the membership:

• Free Two-Day Shipping
• No-Rush Shipping Credit
• Guaranteed Delivery (Which Can Result in Free Prime)
• Same-Day Delivery (in certain areas)
• Restaurant Delivery: Get FREE one-hour delivery
• Prime Video: unlimited streaming of movies and TV episodes
• Kindle Owners’ Lending Library: access to members in the U.S.
• Free Audible Channels for Prime
• Music and Video add-on Subscription
• Streaming Music, Movies, and Television Shows
• Unlimited Cloud Photo Storage
• Free Kindle eBooks
• Early Access to Deals
• Prime-Only Prices and Coupons
• Prime Pantry
• Amazon Family
• Amazon Household

Best of all about Prime is that you can share nearly all the perks with another member of your household. Read also: Christmas Gift Shopping in 15 Minutes?
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Today Nov 25 only - HARRY POTTER 8-Film Series

Today only, save on "Harry Potter" film collections
while supplies last and ends at 11:59 PM (PT) 
on Friday, November 25, 2016

Run Time for these bestsellers: 1180 minutes (almost 20 hours)

See more offers:

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Book Sales Numbers in the USA by AuthorEarnings

AuthorEarnings.com  commented in their October 2016 report: "This October surprise flat-out blindsided us… What had happened was that after two and a half years of quarter-over-quarter growth, Indie eBook market share shrinks significantly."  

The reasons for this change to the 2-year climb can only be speculative.  Maybe Amazon promotes more legacy publishers to offset their gradually reduction in print book discounts?  
Another reason could be that Amazon Prime and KU customers are  buying less e-books, as they can read them for free.  And the amount of Prime members is constantly climbing... 

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Here are the findings of AuthorEarnings.com in a nutshell:

• Indie ebook market share drops all the way back to early 2015 levels.
• Traditional publishers regain a little lost ebook ground.
• Amazon publishing imprints grow a lot.

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Another important clarification of Nielsen's BookScan Reports:

• print book sales at mass merchandisers like Walmart, Target, Costco, and Sam’s Club, which collectively make up a far larger share of US book sales than the ABA’s independent bookstores do, shrank almost 9% in 2015. And in 2016, those mass merchandiser sales have thus far fallen a further 4%.

"With print sales at independent ABA bookstores up a tiny bit, but book sales at all major US bookstore chains and mass merchandisers down by almost an order of magnitude more, then why does Nielsen Bookscan’s “Retail & Club” sector still report that US print book sales are up 5% overall?"

AuthorEarnings: "The answer’s pretty simple.

• Nielsen Bookscan’s “Retail & Club” sector doesn’t primarily track US physical bookstore sales anymore–it also includes online print sales, including Amazon’s.
• Nowadays, more than 50% of the total sales reported in Bookscan’s “Retail & Club” category are Amazon.com online print sales; US physical bookstore sales now make up the minority.
• In the past 12 months, fueled by deeper Amazon print discounts,Amazon’s online print sales have exploded–growing by a double digit percentage year-on-year.
• Those fast-growing Amazon online print sales have more than offset the collapsing sales at physical bookstores, leaving us with a 5%overall net print-sales gain for the US.
• When Bookscan lumps both together into one reporting category, it completely obscures this rapid shift in where those books are being bought, letting us see only the net 5% overall print-sales gain (including Amazon)."
  
  
  "The media mistakenly reports that net 5% gain
   as a nationwide increase in sales at “bookstores.”

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111 Tips to Get FREE Book Reviews

COMING SOON:
111 Tips to Get FREE Book Reviews
e-Book, covering the best strategies for getting lots of great reviews - including over 1,200 direct links (clickable links to each website!) to reviewers and book bloggers.

Book Bloggers and Reviewer contact addresses can be found at the end of each chapter.  And if you send us an email, using our contact form at 111Publishing.com, you will receive twice a year the latest reviewer contacts.
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Even More Benefits for REVIEWERS:
Send us a link to your review at Amazon or Goodreads of this upcoming book 111 Tips to Get FREE Book Reviews  o r  for the already launched:  111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free and we will refund you an Amazon gift card for two book purchases.
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Table of Contents

• WHY ARE REVIEWS SO IMPORTANT
• HOW TO GET FREE REVIEWS?
• THE IMPORTANT LAST PAGES
• WHERE ELSE TO FIND REVIEWERS
• VIRTUAL BLOG TOURS TO GET REVIEWERS
• WHAT BOOK REVIEWERS LIKE
• EXAMPLES OF REVIEWER SUBMISSION GUIDELINES
• HOW TO CONNECT WITH INFLUENTIAL BOOK BLOGGERS
• HOW TO PITCH TO BOOK BLOGGERS / REVIEWERS
• PLANING YOUR PITCH TO BLOGGERS / REVIEWERS
• PAID BOOK REVIEWS
• EXAMPLES OF PAID REVIEW SITES
• NEWSLETTER MAILING PROMOTION SERVICES
• PAID BOOK REVIEW CONNECTING SERVICES
• PAID REVIEWS FOR TRADE PUBLISHERS
• GOODREADS REVIEWS
• AIM FOR AMAZON TOP REVIEWERS
• EDITORIAL REVIEWS
• AMAZON READER REVIEWS
• UNCOVERING FAKE REVIEWS
• APPLE iBOOK REVIEWS
• AUDIO BOOK REVIEWS
• HOW TO PREPARE YOUR BOOK FOR REVIEWS
• ADVANCE REVIEW COPIES (ARC)
• REVIEWS READ BY LIBRARIANS
• WHY STAMP YOUR BOOK “REVIEW COPY”?
• IMPORTANCE OF PRESS KITS / MEDIA KITS
• ENDORSEMENTS FOR YOUR BOOK
• MEDIA BOOK REVIEWS
• TIPS ON HOW TO GET MEDIA BOOK REVIEWS
• READER WEBSITES / FORUMS / COMMUNITIES
• BOOK GIVEAWAYS at READER COMMUNITIES
• JOIN GOOGLE+ REVIEWER COMMUNITIES
• JOIN THESE GROUPS TOO
• HOW TO WRITE BOOK REVIEWS
• HOW TO DEAL WITH NEGATIVE BOOK REVIEWS
• WHY READERS - YOU - SHOULD WRITE REVIEWS
• CAUTION: DON’T LOSE YOUR REVIEWS
• HOW TO LEVERAGE YOUR BOOK REVIEWS

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Getting your book reviewed is the direct outcome of these three factors combined: 
Preparation - Presentation - Luck of the Draw. 
You can at least totally influence the first two! For the last one, I cross fingers for you!

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Publishing Consultation via Phone or Skype

It’s a budget-friendly way (only $79) to get started with your publishing process, building your platform and marketing your book(s).  Consider discussing your book with an experienced (30+ years) publishing and book marketing professional, in a personalized conversation.

This package includes a meeting of up to 3 hours – or two meetings of 1,5 hours via phone in North America or Skype (worldwide).  And if 3 consultation sessions, each an hour, is more convenient for you, that’s fine too.

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Great Benefit for Your Publishing Ambitions, if :

• You are you thinking about publishing your own book?
• Do you have a book you think will sell but don’t know how to market it?
• Do you want to start seriously publishing in POD (Print-on-Demand)?
• Do you want to learn all the in-and-outs of navigating Social Media?
• Do you want to avoid costly mistakes and time-consuming “trial and errors”?
• Do you want to do it right from the beginning, publishing in a professional way?

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How it Works:
As better you are prepared as more you will get out of our “meeting”.  Write down all your questions you might have in regards of publishing and book marketing.  Prior to our conversation, you’ll fill out a comprehensive questionnaire, designed to familiarize us with your opportunities and audience.  We will buy and read your e-book or go through parts of your manuscript if it is a print book only and study / evaluate the questionnaire, once it is filled out and returned to us.
After the consultation session you will get an analysis of your book and/or your publishing concept.

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Practical, Results-Driven Steps.
Your consultation will focus on your most effective strategies for your book marketing and will help you prioritize practical, results-driven steps to best promote you and your book.  If you haven’t published before we will help you to become familiar with all the possibilities available and their pro’s and con’s, so that you can make an informed decision and avoid the many traps that are out there.

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Topics We Will Discuss:
We will provide a comprehensive introduction to book marketing as well as more targeted feedback on specific concerns and questions, including but not limited to:

• Evaluating your cover art, cover copy, author bio, and pricing strategy
• Ensuring that your book looks professional, not self-published
• Having your book in print, e-book and audio format
• Building your platform and author brand
• Social media opportunities such as Google+, Goodreads, Twitter, FB, Pinterest etc.)
• Working with a traditional publisher or POD
• Where to get an ISBN, find editors, e-book formatters, lay-outers, cover artists
• Selling through Amazon and other online retailers
• How to get book reviews – before and after your book launch
• Book Distribution and direct book sales
• Public Relation and media campaigns
• Possibilities of translations or foreign right sales
• Getting bookstores and libraries to carry your book – worldwide
• How to avoid traps at “self publishing” and “vanity publishers”

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After your consultation, we will send you a follow-up guide with hundreds of tips and links that will help you with your future publishing and book marketing activities. This way you don’t have to get distracted by taking notes while we are talking, and you will always have a “blueprint” for future book publishing.

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Our publishing and book marketing consultation and coaching is appropriate for and can be tailored to writers who are going the traditionally or the self-publishing route.

A very affordable fee of only ***US $79*** allows every author to get professional advice and help.  Order secure and conveniently via PayPal.

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Key West for Writers

Key West Literary Seminar

Every year in January this literary seminar takes place, and several writing contests are running.  Key West was always popular with writers.  Key West was to have been just a stopping-off point for Hemingway when he arrived on the ferry from Havana in 1928. 

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Hemingway Did Not Plan to Stay Long.
But the Ford automobile that should have been waiting at the docks was delayed, so the embarrassed car merchant offered the author accommodations at the Trevor and Morris Apartments located above the dealership.  Soon after, Hemingway moved into a Spanish colonial villa at 907 Whitehead St., which was his home through December 1939.  Now a registered National Historic Landmark, the home is open to the public as a museum honoring the island's most famous literary resident.

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Tennessee Williams Worked in Key West Too.
During the years Tennessee Williams lived in Key West, FL, he swam at South Beach every morning before sitting down to write.  “I work everywhere,” Williams said of Key West, “but I work best here.”
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EMERGING WRITER AWARDS:
Poets and writers living in the United States who have not yet published a book with a major publisher are eligible to apply.  Three Emerging Writer Awards are presented each year:
- Poetry
- Short Story
- Novel-in-progress

Winners receive full tuition support for the January Seminar and Workshop Program, round-trip airfare, lodging, a $500 honorarium, and the opportunity to appear on stage during the Seminar.   Runners-up for each award will also be offered financial assistance packages.  http://www.kwls.org/awards/emerging-writer-awards/  

NO ENTRY FEE.

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Help to STOP Monsanto - Organic Consumers Assoc.

Reblogged from https://action.organicconsumers.org/content_item/oca-email?email_blast_KEY=1356594

You be the judge. If you could be “judge for a day,” which of Monsanto’s crimes would you take the most satisfaction in prosecuting? Would you hold the world’s most famous corporate criminal accountable for poisoning the people of Monte Maíz, Argentina—the “City of Death”—where glyphosate has caused a huge spike in miscarriages and cancer? Would you bring down the hammer of justice on Monsanto for making the lives of India’s farmers so desperate that nearly 300,000 of them have committed suicide? Or would you look closer to home, where here in the U.S. Monsanto's calculated infiltration of regulatory agencies resulted in the unleashing of cancer-causing GMO's into our food system without safety testing? Where non-GMO farmers whose crops are contaminated by nearby GMO crops are sued by Monsanto for “illegally growing” the company’s patented seeds? Where Monsanto's attacks on independent scientists and journalists have ruined careers? And most recently, where the Biotech Bully’s big spending corrupted our democracy to the point where Congress ignored the will of 90 percent of American citizens and instead, at Monsanto’s bidding, stripped Americans of the most basic right to know if our food has been contaminated with toxic pesticide-drenched GMOs? Monsanto’s crimes against human health and the environment, on a global scale, are well-documented. And yet, with great arrogance, diabolical planning and riches acquired at the expense of human suffering and irreparable harm to the environment, Monsanto carries on with business as usual, even as it looks to merge with yet another corporate criminal, Bayer. With less than a week to go, we are far short of our fall online fundraising goal. Fortunately, corporate heroes like Mercola.com and Dr. Bronner’s have stepped up with a matching funds offer—but we need your help to raise $85,000 by midnight Friday, September 16. If like us, you believe Monsanto has to be stopped, please make a contribution today.  You can donate online, by phone or by mail, details here. On October 15-16, in The Hague, Netherlands, a panel of five distinguished international judges and numerous lawyers will hear testimony from 29 witnesses representing five continents. OCA will pay for many of these witnesses to fly to The Hague, so they can tell the world how Monsanto has devastated their lives, their farms, their careers, their countries. The International Monsanto Tribunal is a citizens’ initiative. It is being organized by the people, to give Monsanto’s victims a voice, on an international stage. While the opinions that will be issued by the judges are non-binding, this tribunal, as has historically been the case with citizens’ tribunals, will create grassroots pressure on governments and the United Nations to hold Monsanto legally liable for its criminal activity. I am on the Monsanto Tribunal organizing committee, and OCA is making a substantial financial commitment to the tribunal, because we believe this initiative is a necessary step in bringing down what is arguably one of the worst multinational corporations in history. But the Monsanto Tribunal is just one example of our ongoing work to expose Monsanto and its allies. We have much more work to do. In 2017, OCA will work tirelessly to expose the health hazards of glyphosate and other poisons peddled by Monsanto, Bayer, Syngenta and the rest. We will test as many food products as we can, for as many toxic chemicals as we can find—and pressure the mainstream media to publish our results. We will go after the food companies that mislead consumers with blatantly false product labels. We will continue to provide financial support to US Right to Know, a nonprofit dedicated to exposing the lies behind slick PR campaigns by biotech, food and pharmaceutical companies, and attacks on scientists and journalists. We will launch a massive education and media campaign exposing the link between Monsanto and a factory farm system that produces toxic food, pollutes more water and air than any other industry, treats workers unfairly and inflicts unconscionable suffering on animals. It would be easy to give up this fight—especially after Monsanto’s masterful manipulation of Congress, which led to passage of the DARK Act. But giving up is exactly what Monsanto wants you, all of us, to do.

Why Staying in Hostels in Europe?

Take a quick view at the world's best hostels, and you'll see they've not only got bars, restaurants, cosy beds, pristine showers, and gorgeous wooden interiors, but they've got a slew of activities to suit a variation of travellers, and they're starting to have more of the extras you never knew you wanted, too... The bunk beds have dividers and curtains, and each bed in Lisbon's Home Hostel gives the sleeper a little ledge near their head with two outlets, so you can doze off while charging your phone or your iPad, and you don't have to worry about it getting stolen from the corner of the room.

At Lisbon's Home Hostel, the bar sells small and large beers for 2 Euros, and happy hour cuts those prices in half. You can buy a whole bottle of wine for 6 Euros, and the hostel's home-cooked three-course dinner comes with unlimited wine and beer... for 10 Euros total.

Cities like Lisbon, Porto, Budapest, Berlin, Corfu, Madrid, and Krakow have turned to hosting clean, beautiful, stylish hostels to entice frugal, under-30 backpackers and partiers.

In turn, the classics – cities like London, Paris, and Rome, where hostels can be great but aren't yet as established, common, or uniformly excellent – are getting stale.  They're not bringing in anyone new, because they've never had to.  Their appeal is historically documented and obvious. They're not creative and are lazy.  Why not try something new.

The "Hoscars" The Best Hostels in the World

Best Small Hostels:
1. Soul Kitchen (St. Petersburg, Russia)
2. Budapest Bubble (Budapest, Hungary)
3. Adventure Queenstown Hostel (Queenstown, New Zealand)
4. Hostel One Paralelo (Barcelona, Spain)
5. Mosquito Hostel (Krakow, Poland)

Best Medium Hostels:
1. Home Lisbon Hostel (Lisbon, Portugal)
2. Travellers House (Lisbon, Portugal)
3. Yes! Porto Hostel (Porto, Portugal)
4. Goodmorning Lisbon Hostel (Lisbon, Portugal)
5. Living Lounge Hostel (Lisbon, Portugal)

Best Large Hostels:
1. Tattva Design Hostel (Porto, Portugal)
2. Yes! Lisbon Hostel (Lisbon, Portugal)
3. M Montreal (Montreal, Canada)
4. The Cat's Pajamas Hostel (Berlin, Germany)


Best Extra-Large Hostels:
1. Wombats City Hostel Budapest (Budapest, Hungary)
2. HI – Boston Hostel (Boston, United States)
3. PLUS Berlin (Berlin, Germany)
4. Wombats City Hostel Vienna – at the Naschmarkt (Vienna, Austria)
5. Abraham Hostel Jerusalem (Jerusalem, Israel)

Follow here the yearly HOSCARS, the best hostels worldwide.

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Surprising Facts About Your Mac Computer

After a year, using my MacBook Air, got slower and slower, and the browser even froze. I checked out "All my files" and found out that most of my images where double, triple and some were even seven times stored! For hours and hours, I deleted images and files. Learning about your Mac computer, and using these tips from CleanMyMac will save you time and space on your Apple device - that I had wasted. Learn here about your Mac:
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Your Mac computer has huge “ghost” folders
System files on your Mac’s hard drive take up easily 60 gigabytes on average, according to MacPaw engineers. These files are mostly useless — logs, caches, and application leftovers (like iTunes junk). And what’s even sadder, you can’t access them even if you have admin rights. Due to system errors OS X may sometimes lose permission and needs a cleaning.
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Mac stores just everything
Every picture you viewed on Facebook or elsewhere on the web may stay on your Mac forever. Until you clean it manually. For instance, Twitter alone stores an image cache of many gigabytes within the depths of your Mac.  Even the most innocent websites store their cache in virtual memory, which means your Mac eventually gets slower.  And, the longer your apps work in the background, the more cache it generates.
Browsers are meant to collect cache data to give you a quicker access to the websites you’ve already visited. But very often this turns into real mess, resulting in browser freezing, persistent notifications, and pop-ups. Your Mac remembers everything you clicked, watched or even typed to your friends. Think of the chat history in your messengers. Some of them store data remotely on their cloud servers. To sum it up, a regular browser cleaning is a practice worth thinking about.
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Some Apps Drain the Battery
Junk applications or a stealthy malware running in the background can drain your Mac’s battery faster. Surprised? Yes, Macs do get infected with junkware and there’s no easy way to get rid of it. Ironically, this may happen after you’ve downloaded an antivirus software (some free antiviruses can be a nightmare to delete).
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Battery Issues:
Every application which heavily exchanges data with an online server is a potential battery-drainer. The same goes for numerous opened tabs in browser.  But if your battery dies too fast you shouldn't immediately rush to a store to buy a new one, there's still something you can do. First, go to Activity Monitor app and check which programs are using more power. Quit and uninstall all the unused vampire applications.
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Your Mac Loves Copies.
iTunes and Photos being generally superb tools, but have a strange habit of creating excess copies of files whenever they can. For example, if you keep your photos in the iCloud library, all your images are stored in the cloud.  But when you view these images on your Mac, Photos creates cached copies locally.  So even if you keep all your photos in iCloud, their local copies are still wasting space on your Mac.
iTunes has long-established reputation of a tricky application because of the Library issues.  After many years of use and back-uping, it may be out of order.  The music folders you deleted years ago may still be indexed and contain useless artwork and playlist files.  And, if your music collection is big enough, these junk files may result in gigabytes taken from your memory.
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Your Mac Stores Too Many Extra Languages.
Your Mac can speak nearly all Earth’s languages, but all those hundreds of localizations are taking a whole lot of space. Why keep these 150 language versions forever in your system?
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To keep your Mac cleaner and faster, consider using CleanMyMac 3  
Everyday it cleans 1 million Macs worldwide being installed on every 3rd Mac on the planet.  It helps you clean your entire Mac, runs basic Mac maintenance, monitors its hardware health, frees up gigabytes of memory on your drive by going through hidden system folders.  It wipes away large and old files, fixes errors and makes Mac work faster.  MacPaw offers free download for trial which gives users only one free scan and one free cleanup rather.  This means you can clean your Mac for one time, then you’d have to buy the license key for further using.
Some cautions however:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5672608?tstart=0

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