New way to introduce a book....

From David Bishop:

GREAT NEWS! I am a semifinalist in Amazon.com's Breakthrough Novel Award competition. I entered some weeks ago by submitting the required first 5,000 words of a completed novel. Mine was The Third Coincidence.

Anyway, two days ago I got an email saying I was one of approximately 200 semifinalists (out of over 5,000 entrants). The final winner will be published by Penguin Books and Amazon will provide marketing space on their site. The next step in the competition is to become a finalist.

That judging will be done by Amazon in conjunction with Penguin Books. One of their considerations will be the reviews written by Amazon customers who have first read the excerpt on the Amazon site. Will you help me? To help you will need to follow these steps.

1. Go to Amazon.com

2. Scroll down the left margin and click on Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award.

3. Next: go to the end of the paragraph and click on mysteries/thrillers/suspense

4. Next: there will be a page of simulated book covers in brown. Scroll down to the fourth row where you will find my entry. The Third Coincidence. Click on that title

5. Next: This will get you to the page showing the title and my name as author. In the center of this page is a synopsis of the novel, much like what you might read on a book jacket. In the upper right corner of this page will be a blue bar that will allow you to download a free copy of the excerpt from my novel. Click on "Free Download."

NOTE: If you are not currently an Amazon account holder they will likely prompt you to enter your email and a password you choose. No other information is needed. If you are a current Amazon account holder this prompt will not appear.


6. The next page will then allow you to choose between: 1) view excerpt on screen for reading, 2) download to your computer, or 3) email it to yourself. Click on the choice you prefer.

7. This will get you the first 5,000 words of my novel, The Third Coincidence.

8. After you read it, please repeat the first few steps above until you find a prompt that will allow you to prepare a "review" of the excerpt. There are other reviews there that you can read if you would like to first get a feel for the what and how of a reader review.

IMPORTANT: It is the review itself, not the downloading and reading, that will help as those reviews will be considered by Amazon and Penguin in making their selections of the finalists. Every finalist will be considered for publication. So, this is the biggest opportunity I've had to get my fiction writing noticed. Thank you for your help.

Please let me know when you have read it. I'd love for you to email me your comments. As for your review itself, I take a look at and read the ones posted from time to time so I'll see yours after you post it.

Thanks again for helping with something that is so important to me,

--David

DAVID BISHOP

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