The Bunnies Have Arrived!

I know the big “cover reveal” was only yesterday, but I’m happy to announce that my very first independent ebook publication is now available That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, the bunnies have finally arrived, marching from my doorstep to an ereader near you!

Bowful of Bunnies: Short Stories by L.S. Engler, available now on Amazon.

I owe a hefty round of thanks to so many people who helped make this book possible. Shannon Perry provided the fabulous artwork, and my awesome crew of beta readers (C. Michael Hubbard, Mike Young, Angela Misri, and Sharon Howard) saved me from making a lot of silly mistakes. Without them, this book could not be nearly as good as it is, and, with them, I’m sure it could be even better, too.

I also want to thank everyone in the A Round of Words in 80 Days community; this might not have ever happened if it weren’t for the encouragement and community built up with this fantastic group. I haven’t been around much this RoWnd, due to getting this thing ready, but it has opened so many doors for me.

A special acknowledgment also goes out to Lauralynn Elliott, Kait Nolan and Catherine Ryan Howard, simply for being three amazing women that really helped show me the ropes on how to do self-publishing thing and really inspire me to take this big step forward into a fascinating new world filled with opportunities.

Formatting the book for publication was made delightfully easy thanks to Cameron Chapman’s excellent guide. Assuming the formatting did turn out as all the gazillion previews I looked at suggested it would, I was actually incredibly impressed and pleased by how simple it was. I took all day to do it, because I was working on other stuff at the same time, but to think that it only takes about an hour to get a book formatted (assuming you’ve done most of the heavy-duty editing and what not already) kind of blows my mind. I wasn’t expecting to have this done until Saturday, but I just went all out yesterday.

As mentioned above, the book is available through Amazon, priced at just 99 cents. I wanted to do a special free day for all my bloggers, but it turns out that independent publishers can’t do free unless they’re a part of the KDP Select thing, which I don’t want to mess with (not yet). I know Smashwords offers a free pricing, but Smashwords and I continue to be unable to get along despite my best efforts. I’m working on it, though, so there might be a day in the future when you can snag Bowlful of Bunnies for free. I’m also working on getting it onto Barnes & Noble, but I have a weird address and they’re having some issues validating it.

So, there you have it! There’s a book. I’d be absolutely tickled if anyone would feel so inclined to mention it, reblog it, tweet about it, do whatever you will. Since it’s my first book and I’m testing the waters a little, I’m not doing a promotion contest or anything like that. I’m keeping it simple, but it’s always nice to have a little bit of a boost in audience. I also know I’d be eternally grateful towards anyone who might like to read it over and provide reviews.

It’s not the end-of-May release I was hoping for, but middle-of-June’s not too shabby, either, giving me right around half a year to get to that second book I wanted to publish by the end of 2012. So now it’s onto that one, as I release the bunnies out into the wilderness, where they’ll hopefully hop their way into someone’s heart.

Awwwww. Enjoy!