Guest Post - Colby Marshall, Author of "Chain of Command"

I've got a special guest today--Colby Marshall. Her debut novel, Chain of Command, is an exciting political thriller. Here's Colby:

Have you ever noticed that sometimes, the people who love books the most and devour them faster than a cat can down a bowl of gravy…oh, wait.  That’s only my cat?  Sorry about that.  Backtracking.  Have you ever noticed that often those who can and will zip through several books a month or even a week are—gasp—the people who don’t want to buy books?

Yes, I’m talking about the new trend of cheap or free books.  These days, it’s a controversial issue.  While some authors claim they’ll never give away a book for free, many people both in the industry and out profess that you simply can’t afford not to give away free e-books today.  It’s hard to know what the answer to the dilemma is, however.  It’s understandable for writers to want to be paid for their work, and it’s vital to the book industry that money continue to flow into it for the books readers read.  After all, the bigger the free e-book industry booms, it seems, the further the brick and mortar stores and paper books fall.  I don’t think anyone wants to see paper books go away, and neither do they want to no longer be able to browse their favorite bookstore and smell the fresh pages of a print book.

That said, free and cheap e-books may be here to stay, so what is the answer to this conundrum?  While I can’t speak for the industry and what they should do to help bridge the gaps created by the new trends in publishing, what I can tell you is the best way to “pay” for a book you got free: review it.

Whether you loved it, hated it, or somewhere in between, if you don’t have the cash to shell out for a paper copy of a book to support authors, the single best thing you can do to help the industry stay objective, legitimate, and respected AS WELL AS to support the author you’ve read is to post a review to the website you downloaded the book from.  It can be as long as a page or as short as a sentence, but every review matters.  And if you think you won’t be supporting the author by reviewing it because you think it stunk, think again.  Every review a book garners helps boost its viewership on the website on which it’s listed.  Plus, many potential readers skip straight to the negative reviews to see the book’s pitfalls.  Often, pitfalls can be as intriguing to a consumer as brilliance!  

So, the next time you download that free book to your Kindle, remember to thank the author for the months or years they spent readying the book to entertain you by taking a couple of minutes to say you read their work and what you thought.  Believe me—they’ll be grateful.

About CHAIN OF COMMAND:

The road to the Oval Office is paved in blood...

The simultaneous assassinations of the President and Vice President catapults the Speaker of the House into the White House as the first female President of the United States. Evidence points to a former Navy SEAL as one of the assassins.

Relegated to writing sidebar stories instead of headlines, journalist McKenzie McClendon composes a scathing story about the Navy training killers.

Former Navy SEAL Noah Hutchins doesn't believe his partner could have committed the heinous crime. They'd endured the horrors of Afghanistan together. His buddy was a hero, not a murderer.

No one who knows the truth is safe...

Thrown together in a search for the truth--and a career-making story--McKenzie and Noah must unravel a dangerous web of lies that includes a radical foreign faction, a violent ultra-feminist group, and corrupt politicians willing to kill to keep their secrets.

And an assassin who is still on the loose.

His next targets are already in his crosshairs...

Warning for those looking for a "clean" read--

this book has a little steam to the romance and lots of things blowing up.

BIO:  Writer by day, ballroom dancer and choreographer by night, Colby has a tendency to turn every hobby she has into a job, thus ensuring that she is a perpetual workaholic.  In addition to her 9,502 regular jobs, she is also a contributing columnist for M Food and Culture magazine and is a proud member of International Thriller Writers and Sisters in Crime.  She is actively involved in local theatres as a choreographer as well as sometimes indulges her prima donna side by taking the stage as an actress.  She lives in Georgia with her family, two mutts, and an array of cats that, if she were a bit older, would qualify her immediately for crazy cat lady status.  Her debut thriller, Chain of Command is about a reporter who discovers the simultaneous assassinations of the President and Vice President may have been a plot to rocket the very first woman—the Speaker of the House—into the presidency.  Chain of Command is now available, and the second book in her McKenzie McClendon series, The Trade, is due for publication by Stairway Press June 11, 2013.

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