Mobipocket: Service Unavailable

It's been impossible for regular Mobipocket users to deny that Mobipocket has had more short term difficulties lately.

I believe some of the problems stem from a mass cleanup they've been doing of their public domain titles. [More on that here]

I'm assuming for now that these problems are temporary. It happens, especially when a major service has to remove thousands of files at a time.

Sadly, the vast majority of my readers are Blackberry owners and Mobipocket regulars, which would normally leave me in a very awkward position. Not this time.

This time I'm prepared. If you have Mobipocket Reader you can still get my books at Smashwords DRM free. They even have work there that isn't available anywhere else, like the Strange Horizons and Close Encounters Living Anthology.

There's better news. Until September 21 my books will be available for $3.95 or less at Smashwords, some will even be free. Why? It's simple: I realize some people are panicking about their Mobipocket bookshelves going away, and I'd rather you didn't. This is also a good opportunity to tell your friends about the series. Smashwords has all my books in every eBook format you could imagine. The First Light Chronicles Omnibus is now free.

The above sale isn't a sign that Amazon is shutting Mobipocket down, in fact, I don't know what's going on over there. It could just be a public domain duplicate cleanup. I hope Mobipocket will be around forever, but I'd rather play it safe.

Thank you very much for being loyal readers, I'll do everything I can to ensure that my work remains available at reasonable prices. I'll update this post when Mobipocket reappears.

[UPDATE: Mobipocket is up again after two hours of downtime (by my rough estimation). The notification that they're still working on eliminating poor quality PD books is still up. My migration sale will continue.]

RL

[Here's the link to my books at Smashwords, the list begins beneath my profile.]

Mobipocket: Aaaaand We're Back...

I'm just not used to a major website disappearing for the weekend without warning. Neither are other eBook publishers I spoke to. We're all happy to have Mobipocket back up and running again though, and I hope they don't have this kind of difficulty again.

I half expected Mobipocket to be back to work on Monday morning, and I'm glad to see it back up, especially since Spinward Fringe Triton will be released with Mobipocket before any other retailer. I know there are Mobipocket users watching for it and I'd hate to let them down just because their servers are having issues.

Anyway, it's back to business as ussual as they say. This weekend I worked on the Spinward Fringe book following Triton, and I have to say I'm quite happy with it so far. Things keep moving on my end uninterrupted for the most part, so there's a lot to look forward to.

More to come on Triton and the book following it soon!

RL

Mobipocket's Site Is Down! Day 2

First two of my books disappear from the top 400 only to reappear as one of their customer service reps simply say; "Look, there they are, you must have been viewing our site in the wrong language or something," the next morning. (Trust me, I would have noticed), and now their eBook servers, back end and retail sites are all down.

This happened before in 2007 according to many well known eBook forums and news sites, and I hope it's just a hiccup that will be corrected by the end of the weekend.

I'm surprised though, Mobipocket has been a fantastic partner for months now, this last week just seems like one issue after another, at one time I thought that was unusual for a site owned by Amazon.com. Sadly, I've had serious issues with another subsidiary of Amazon.com over the last few weeks, so I'm starting to get the impression that when Amazon buys another company that entity's quality of service takes a dive.

Suppositions aside, I apologize to any of my readers who find themselves inconvenienced by this down time. If you're in the middle of the Spinward Fringe series or were looking for something else to read, be aware that I offer all my books through Lulu.com as well (check the links to the right), DRM free and in eBook or print format. The shipping is actually quite reasonable if you live in the US.

Here's hoping that Amazon and Mobipocket get their act together and we're back to normal by the end of the weekend. I have a book realease coming up and a few hundred people who have been waiting for it...

RL