Boxed sets have become the rage. Oh stop it, those of you who roll your eyes! Readers love them. And as authors, we can get so into our writing caves, we forget how to be social, play fair, play nice and have a community other than our best buds to get drunk with or gossip with. Not every author does this, thank god.I've been blessed to work with some incredible authors over the past six months. Marliss Melton has been my oldest and dearest military writer friend, and I was so excited to do the SEALed With A Kiss Anthology, the only all-SEAL Anthology, with her and the other wonderful writers in that boxed set. As someone who has admired her for years, it was truly an honor to get to actually work with her, and to be included in something she has done.
What readers get in these anthologies is variety. A
blending of voices and writing styles. I think readers like to be entertained by reading DIFFERENT things. While this may be the exception for some, most readers now cross genres, and even read from eBooks to print books to Audio books. In fact, at the Tucson Festival of Books, where I braved the crowd of 125,000 book lovers attending, I asked readers how they read books. In 2013 it was split between eReaders and print books. This year, people told me they did all three. If they liked the book, they bought the print book, and then bought the audio. Wow. I didn't near that comment last year at the festival or anywhere. Good. To. Know.So, boxed sets are our way of inexpensively getting the word out to new readers, by pooling our reader base and cross polinating them. And, while I love miitary romance and it is my biggest in terms of sales, now I am seeing readers go from the military romance to paranormal and back again. Readers are following an author's voice across different genres. We used to have it hammered into our heads that we had to stick to one genre, and if we switched, we'd better change our pen names. Perhaps it was the old publishing model that made us all think this was so.
This is good news for readers. Now they have that variety that was always desired. They have that blending of genres and worlds, at the same time loving the voices of their favorite authors. How cool is that?
Having participated in 5 boxed sets, plus 3 others in the works, I decided perhaps it was time to put my own SEALs in a box. So, that's what I've done.
The Ultimate SEAL Collection is books 1-4 of the SEAL Brotherhood Series, along with two novellas written as prequels to the first two books. I placed it for sale at $9.99, but today, and for the next few days, it will be .99.
And you, dear reader, are the winner. It is for you that I write these stories of my heart. Where the men are brave, and the women are a match to them in honor and moral strength. Where our gentlemen of the Trident come home safe and whole. Where good always triumphs over evil and true love heals every ill. It's my way of playing the Wizard. My fantasy. Because in my world everyone finds their true love, eventually and heals with the love of their life.How about you? Do you find new authors by reading anthologies? And do you like reading one author anthologies?
I will pick one winner today (at random) from everyone making a comment. That person will have their choice of a free audio book, or print book, or Kindle version of any of my books. Good luck, and thanks for going on the journey with me.
Sharon Hamilton
Life is one fool thing after another.
Love is two fool things after each other.
