So I’m thinking about a kindle book promotion tying it to a donation to a charity…

So I was sitting here.  I’ve done a bunch of shameless self promotion in trying to get book sales. Remember, at the moment you must have the amazon kindle or a device that has the amazon kindle software (iphone/ipad/ipodtouch, pc, mac or android phone)  I’ve had several, nothing that’ll help me buy that writing grotto on Martha’s Vineyard, but I am much appreciative of the support.   I was thinking of doing something different, and I am looking for some opinions before I embark on this.   Here’s the plan:

From August 1, 2010 to Aug, 31 2010 I would tie sales of my books to a donation to a charity.  So for every copy I sold, I’d donate 1 dollar to a charity.   I also to generate some traffic and ideas, I’d use a PollDaddy poll with a set of potential charities (3-5 let’s say) and see what the general consensus was to whom I should donate the money to.

Oh and just for the sake of full disclosure, I’m currently on the 35% plan for Amazon, and my book is $7.  So a dollar a book is about 40% of my take but a dollar is easy to tie to the number of books sold.  500 copies, $5oo for example.  I’d obviously publish the results on this blog.

So just out of curiousity I’m going to take a poll of all of you out there:

So, I am writing a book…

So being this quirky, religious, technology, semi-musical, monty python, star trek, Patrick McGoohan prisoner, minority ethnic type, I’m trying to write that 1 book that everybody has in them.

In my particular case, it’s a book that throws together most of those things (I leave the Monty Python out).   Actually it’s supposed to be the first book in a trilogy.   I based it roughly on the stories that my father told me about my grandfather who made his way through the Middle East and eventually to the US.    It’s a science fiction novel that roughly pits the the space equivalent of the Russian, Persian and Turkish Empires, with a planet roughly equivalent to Armenia in the middle.  The first book takes my grandfather’s character through a James Bond-esque set of situations with a “gates of vienna” type siege broken by something like jan sobieski and knights templar kind of mashup.  There’s a certain eschatological 3 generation prophecy and a couple of religions.  Yeah I’m doing a brain dump.  I do have 1 fan, a friend who waits pensively for each chapter to come out.  The funny thing is that he argues against me about where the main character’s growth is leading him.  I am turning him more cynical by the end of the story, and he argues against that.  I figure that in a 3 book trilogy, that’s the equivalent of ending the 1st movement in a 3 part musical work on a minor key.  

I have my ideas about the second and third book.  280 pages has taken me roughly 1.5 years of typing away so those are way off.  I still have to write the climactic battle scene and then the confrontation between the main character and his rival.

Wish me luck…