On exclusivity, and a cover reveal

Last November, I made the decision to re-enroll Bombay Bhel in Amazon's KDP Select. The program offers several benefits, in exchange for providing Amazon exclusive rights to sell the e-book version. While I generally don't like exclusivity, I had to face reality: sales of the book on other platforms (such as Kobo, Ibooks, and others) were insignificant over the 6 months that the book was available on those platforms.

The chief benefit of Select is that members of Amazon Prime can "borrow" the book for free. In one month, the number of readers who did so far outweighed my entire 6-month sales on the other platforms. If the situation changes in the future, I will certainly re-evaluate my decision.

Meanwhile, I'm finishing up a new short story that will be released first on Kobo and iBooks for free. I'd hoped to time the release date to coincide with the one-year anniversary of Bombay Bhel on February 6. The logistics of the publishing process, however, may introduce a delay of a few days.

Meanwhile, here's the cover: