I just enrolled St. Peter’s Brewery in Amazon’s Kindle Match program. If you purchased the book in paperback from Amazon.com, you’ll be able to download the book for free on your Kindle in a couple days.

You can visit Amazon.com to find out more and find any other books you might have that are eligible.

Or if you haven’t ordered your copy of the book – definitely do so!

Order St. Peter’s Brewery in paperback
Order St. Peter’s Brewery for Kindle

Just in time for this year’s #nanowrimo, I just received an email confirming that Apple gave the initial approval for adding St Peter’s Brewery to iBooks. (I should have initiated that sooner.)

Hope to have it available within a week or so.

I’d love to update the book and correct a number of typos before publishing to iBooks, so if you’re interested in helping me proof the book, I’ll be glad to send you a PDF of the book if you can have it proofed by the end of the week. Drop me an email and let me know where to send it.

But until the book appears in iBooks then you can always read St Peter’s Brewery on your iOS or Android devices with Kindle’s FREE apps and the Kindle version of St. Peter’s Brewery – available for only $4.99!

And yes, I’ll be glad to autograph your Kindle or iPhone or iPad with a Sharpie if you’d like.

UPDATE: St. Peter’s Brewery is NOW AVAILABLE for iOS and iBooks. You can purchase the book in iTunes on your computer or in iBooks on your iOS device.

I found several GREAT deals on books for Kindle today — all of them $.99 or less!

And rest assured, that while these may be “cheap Kindle books” – the content is anything but.

Not sure how long they’ll be on sale – so grab them while you can.

…And for those of you saying, “But I don’t have a Kindle!”

That’s fine… if you can read this blog post – it’s pretty certain you can read Kindle books. Simply download the FREE app for your phone, iPad, PC or Mac and read away.

And if you decide to buy a Kindle later — they’ll be ready and waiting to download to your device.

The Teaching of the Twelve by Tony Jones (with Trucker Frank)

The Orthodox Heretic by Peter Rollins

The Wisdom of Stability by Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove

Orthodoxy by GK Chesterton

The Pilgrim’s Progress by John Bunyan

Five books for $3? Yes, please.

What great finds have you found for your Kindle? Got any sites (other than Amazon) you get your e-books from?

It was one year ago (Dec 2, 2009) that I launched my first novel, St. Peter’s Brewery, into the wild.

I will admit I had high-hopes for the book (I’m sure every author does) but at the end of the day only a “select few” will ever sell more than 100 copies (where’s that stat on Kevin’s website when I need it?). Kevin Hendricks points out that only 79% of all books will sell more than 100 copies.

Along the way, I’ve cemented the idea in my mind that there’s a thin line between great marketing and spamming folks (especially your friends and family) and I have a tendency to stay far away from that line when it comes to promoting my own projects.

I seem to have no problem promoting the great things others are doing, but I’m always leery of pushing my own stuff on others.

I’ve also realized a couple things along the way… there are gonna be those who are thrilled about your projects and buy them regardless, simply because of who you are… there are going to be those who tell you they’re thrilled and never buy a copy… and then there will be the random folks who don’t know a think about you or the project and will purchase a copy out of curiosity…

Moral of the story — pitch/sale your product to anyone and everyone. You never know who’s gonna buy the next copy (it could be YOU!).

While the majority of sales have slowed to a small trickle, I’m still selling copies of the book here and there and word continues to trickle out here and there as well.

In fact, a good friend just told me two weeks go that she finally borrowed a copy of the book, read it and really loved it. Adding that she didn’t know why it took her so long to read it.

I also know of at least two people who purchased copies for Christmas gifts this year (hint, hint!).

Which is the great thing about published works… they can have a longer shelf life than you’d ever imagine.

And if you’re wondering how many diapers I’ve been able to purchase with my royalty checks – here’s the latest break down…

10 copies sold via Amazon.com = $57.40
4 copies sold via Extended distribution (meaning ordered through a brick and mortar or other online source) = $10.96
26 copies sold via my E-Store = $157.16
8 copies sold for Amazon’s Kindle = $25.90

That brings total sales to 40 print copies and 8 digital copies for a grand total of $251.42. That’s only 960 print copies away from reaching my initial goal!

Laughable from a traditional publishing standpoint — but decent for a self-published book — especially considering my upfront costs were only $40 or so and I don’t have a box of 1000 copies of my book sitting in my garage somewhere.

So, would I do it again? Absolutely!

I think I’d organize my promotions and marketing a bit better from the start but I have a couple book ideas (fiction and non-fiction) rolling around in my head so hopefully I’ll have a chance to publish again.

I’m also almost 75% done with a couple e-book projects I’m working on for We Live Simply — so it will be interesting to see how they stack up against my novel.

If you’re still holding out on whether or not you should buy a copy of the book for yourself and the rest of your circle of friends…

Read what Stewart Cutler, Thomas Mathie, LC and John M. Blundell said.

Or you can read my interviews with Johnny Laird and Kevin Hendricks or listen to my interview with Chad Crawford and my mates from the something beautiful podcast.

Thanks again to everyone who’s purchased a copy and/or told someone about the book either online or offline. You’re greatly appreciated.

Last week, I told you about Kevin Hendrick’s latest publication – Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness.

The book officially releases today but I ordered an “advance” copy and loved reading it over the weekend.

Kevin and the other collaborators did a great job to help share the message Mark Horvath has been sharing at invisiblepeople.tv since 2008 — and all the proceeds from the book go straight to helping Mark continue his great work.

Plus – I believe it’s the first book (other than my own) to make mention of our podcast… so that makes it cool in it’s own right :-).

Kevin graciously agreed to take time away from writing his next novel to do a short interview with me via e-mail. Here’s what he had to say…

First off, can you tell us a little bit about this book? What’s it about? What can readers expect?

It’s a collaborative book. We have more than two dozen social media experts, nonprofit heroes, technology executives and more reflecting on homelessness and the impact Mark Horvath has had with InvisiblePeople.tv. But the backbone of the book is really the 35 stories of homeless people retold from InvisiblePeople.tv videos. It’s a chance to read their stories and see what homelessness is really like. The book is also full of action points and dispelling myths. I’ve started calling it a manual to motivate action.

I launched the book because I thought it was just dumb that Mark Horvath was doing all this incredible work to help homeless people, yet he’s been on the brink of homelessness himself–for the second time in his life–for two straight years now. I wanted to write Mark a big fat check. But then the bank would have laughed at him and his bouncing check. So I thought maybe we could put a book together and raise some money for him. That sounds kind of funny now because books don’t make any money, but maybe with all the amazing people involved we can earn a few bucks for Mark and InvisiblePeople.tv.

This is your third book to publish this year. Wow! One a post-apocalyptic novel, one book that shared your story of adopting your son Milo and now this one — telling the story of homelessness through the eyes of Mark Horvath. I imagine you had to approach each project differently. Can you share how you worked through some of that?

Yes, this is my third published book of 2010. My name is Kevin and I have a problem…

Each project did come together differently. Addition by Adoption had been on my mind for a while and the actual editing and writing came together pretty quickly–it was mainly the process of curating tweets. I had to figure out how to string a story together with those pre-existing Twitter posts.

The Least, my novel, was the easiest of the three. I just cleaned up an old Word doc and hit publish. Honestly, that one was more of an experiment to try out self-publishing again (I experimented with it back in 2004 and my first novel, but I hadn’t published anything since). It’s kind of cool how easy and cheap it is to create your own book. Actually selling copies and making money is an entirely different matter.

Open Our Eyes came together because I wanted to help Mark. I finally stopped dreaming about it and wishing someone would do it and just started it myself. Mark put me in touch with a whole bunch of his supporters and we started pulling content together. I started the project in January and ridiculously thought we could have it out by March, maybe April. I wanted to rush it and get it out there quickly, but it just didn’t work that way.

How has Mark and his work shaped your view of homelessness?

Homelessness first became real for me in 1999 when I spent a summer living in Chicago and working downtown on the weekends. As an idealistic college kid I just couldn’t ignore all the homeless people and befriended a guy named Leon who sat across the street from the Art Institute. Since then I’ve always had a heart for the homeless, but never found ways to get involved. Then my church took part in an event where you slept outside to raise money for homeless shelters and I dove in. We were supposed to raise our own support and when I asked folks to donate, Mark was one of the few who did. This was in the fall of 2008 when Mark had just been laid off and was facing homelessness. That got my attention. He started InvisiblePeople.tv at about the same time and I’ve been a big fan of his work since.

What’s so amazing about Mark is that he just gets out there and puts it all on the line for people. He’s one of these pushy people, like Shaun King in Atlanta, who just won’t let us ignore the real needs out there.

I wish I could say I do more to help the homeless, but I do pitifully little. I’m not in a place where I can make commitments like that (see: father of three). But I do try. This year I did finally volunteer when my church hosted the local overflow shelter, which we do one month a year. It’s an eye-opening experience to see families with kids–even babies–who are homeless.

How do you hope people respond to this book?

I hope people read Open Our Eyes and see the homeless for who they really are. They’re our moms and dads, sons and daughters, sisters and brothers. People say that the homeless should just get a job–almost everyone in this book talks about how badly they want a job. People think it can never happen to them–I lost count of how many people said this could happen to anyone. So many of us are just one tragedy away from being on the street. I hope people realize the reality of that and take action. And Mark’s a great example of how to get involved and do something.

You’re also working on another novel for NaNoWriMo this month. Can you share a little bit about it and the unique promotion you’re doing with Como park?

Yeah, I’m doing National Novel Writing Month for the fourth time. This time it’s a book called Lost & Found in Como Park and I’m trying to draw on my love and appreciation for this amazing park we have in St. Paul. So the story takes place there and I use a lot of the history of the park to delve into some of the book’s themes (or at least I’m trying).

I also set up a little Kickstarter project trying to raise a little support and connect fiction and reality. If the project succeeds (we need another $870 in pledges) we’ll publish the book (yes, book #4 of 2010) and place a commemorative brick in Como Park for a fictional character from the book. That’s my grand plan anyway, we’ll see what happens.

As of today I’m about 8,000 words into the novel (50,000 words is the goal) and I’m plagued with doubt. This is about the time in NaNoWriMo when the plot starts to take on a life of its own and changes get introduced that I didn’t envision. That’s starting to happen and it’s always a little scary. Honestly, part of me hopes we don’t make the Kickstarter goal because I’m afraid whatever I come up with won’t be worth publishing.

But we’ll see. I really do NaNoWriMo for fun. Hopefully the end result is fun as well, but that’s not really the point. If the Kickstarter project gets funded that’d be awesome, but if it doesn’t I’ll still have written a book and we’ll just move on.

Kevin D. Hendricks lives in St. Paul, Minn., with his wife, three kids and two dogs. He runs his own freelance writing and editing company, Monkey Outta Nowhere. He’s been blogging since 1998, tweeting since 2007 and generally enjoys being a web geek.

—

Huge thanks to Kevin for not only taking the time to do this interview, but for putting this book together.

It’s a great read and he did a great job taking the raw interviews that Mark has done and interspersing short entries from a great list of contributors as well as 6 short essays dispelling some of the many myths about homelessness.

I would say it’s a great entry point and/or companion book for those wanting to get a real feel for homelessness in America. And I would rank it right alongside Under the Overpass as two great books that offer a great insight into the invisible people that live all around us.

You can order your copy of the book from Kevin’s blog and also find out how you can help Kevin (and ultimately Mark) by promoting the project to your sphere of influence.

While my reading time has diminished quite a bit over the last two weeks, the books on my nightstand (and/or dresser) continue to grow in number.

I’m currently reading:

The Art of Non-Conformity – by Chris Guillebeau
While some of the ideas in this book aren’t new (if you read Chris’ blog), reading the nuggets from his own story have been great. Chris was actually in town on Oct. 22, the day after the boys were born, and I was sorry to miss his book signing/event. But this is a great book showing that “You don’t have to live your life the way other people expect you to.”

Lots of inspiring nuggets of truth throughout the book so far.

Eat This, Not That! 2011
This is a great little book that blows open some of the misconceptions about the food we eat on a regular basis. It’s amazed me how so much of the food I’d usually consider as “healthy” is actually worse for us than the other food on the menu.

Cook This, Not That! Easy & Awesome 350-Calorie Meals
A companion to the book above. I haven’t cooked anything from this book yet, but the recipes are simple alternatives to meals we typically spend far too much on from many chain restaurants. The vast majority of the recipes are also under the 350 calorie mark so not only are you saving money – but calories too.

A book I’m anxious to start:

Discovering The God Imagination: Reconstructing A Whole New Christianity
Jonathan published this book earlier this year and sent me a copy to read in prep for an upcoming interview on our podcast. I’m hoping to delve into quickly. I’ve heard some great things about it.

Two books I’m looking forward to adding to my nightstand:

Open Our Eyes: Seeing the Invisible People of Homelessness – by Kevin Hendricks
I’ve mentioned Kevin several times on this blog before — and he was one of my Kingdom Bloggers to Watch in 2010. This is Kevin’s third book to publish in 2010. And I’ve really enjoyed the other two. This book focuses on the work of Mark Horvath and it also helps raise money for Mark’s work as well. Officially the book drops Nov. 9 — but you can order a copy now from Amazon.com.

From Kevin’s site:

These are the stories of real homeless people, collected and retold from InvisiblePeople.tv videos. Interspersed with those real life stories are reflections from social media experts, nonprofit heroes, technology executives and more, sharing their connection to homelessness and how the inspiring example of InvisiblePeople.tv has impacted them. You’ll also find common misconceptions about homelessness and suggestions for how you can get involved.

It’s time to move beyond the stereotypes and stop looking away. It’s time to open our eyes.

Buck Naked Marriage: Strip away the unnecessary and focus on the bare essentials – by Corey Allan
We had Corey on our podcast this past week and it was great to have the opportunity to talk with him and hear his heart and posture towards marriage. His thoughts mirror a lot of mine over the last few years as well.

1. Marriage isn’t about you — it’s about making your spouse better
2. Marriage is the ultimate training ground for every other relationship in your life

I’m really looking forward to reading what he has to say in this second book of his. I think it will be well worth the price of admission.

The book will be released next Tuesday as well (Nov. 9). Until then, you can listen to my interview with him and order his first book, A Simple Marriage.

(P.S. it’s actually an e-book so technically it’ll be on my PC/iPhone and not my nightstand)

So what are you reading these days? What’s on your nightstand or e-reader?

H-Diddy and I-Diddy are expected to be born by C-Section a little later today and we can’t wait!

To celebrate – (since I can’t buy you all a cigar) I’ve got a special discount code for my novel – St. Peter’s Brewery that will give you 50% off the cover price.

Or think of it as an opportunity to buy one – get one to give away for FREE.

Simply order the book from CreateSpace and use the code: 3YK4MGUP for 50% off the cover price.

The discount code will be available now till the end of the month (Oct. 31) — and works for on as many books as you choose to order — so get your orders in quickly.

We’ll keep folks posted throughout the day in the usual ways – Twitter, Flickr and perhaps our blogs and YouTube.

As part of our effort to build a clean drinking water well for the under-resourced, I’ve decided to give away a free PDF copy of my novel, St. Peter’s Brewery, to everyone who makes a donation to charity:water between now and August 31, 2010.

Give any donation — of any amount, and you’ll receive a free e-book (PDF) copy of my novel.

Donate now

Just $20 will provide clean drinking water for someone for the next 20 years! $100 will provide clean drinking water for 5 people for the next 20 years. And $5,000 (our goal) will build a brand new well for an entire village, providing an entire village clean water for the next 20+ years.

And 100% of public donations to charity:water directly fund water projects. So, your donation will go directly to helping people around the world — and you’ll be able to track exactly where the money goes via charity:water’s website.

And you’ll get a free e-book to boot!

But more than buying a book or giving some cash, you’re giving life.

Donate now

So make your donation and as soon as I receive the e-mail notification, I’ll send you a copy of the e-book.

Thanks for caring about the under-resourced around the world! Let’s build a well together!

charity: water is a non-profit organization bringing clean, safe drinking water to people in developing nations. We use 100% of public donations to directly fund sustainable water solutions in areas of greatest need. Just $20 can give one person clean water for 20 years.

Donate now

Where is it that you find grace?

Where is it that you find sanctuary?

Do you have a safe place where you can unwind? Ask questions? Express doubt?

If so, what does that space look like for you?

From St. Peter’s Brewery:

As the last of the crowds dispersed, Pete sent his part-time help home for the evening and finally made his way over to Jimmy to say hello.

“Pete! I want you to meet my friend Eddie. He works over at the post office with me,” Jimmy said as Pete approached.

“Good to meet you Eddie,” Pete said with an out stretched hand. “Hope you’ve been taken good care of tonight.”

“We’ve had a good time,” Eddie responded. “I imagine I’ll be back.”

“Eddie’s lived in this town his entire life and never once stepped foot in this building since you bought it and now he’s ready to become a regular customer,” Jimmy laughed. “I guess you’re doing something right around here.”

“Yeah, he’s right,” Eddie added. “I guess I felt better about enjoying a beer at home. Didn’t want God to find out I was sneaking around and drinking in his house.”

“Well, you know, rumor has it that Jesus made some of the finest wine in the land,” Pete said, surprising both Jimmy and Eddie. “And most historians will tell you that Martin Luther and other theologians usually discussed the roots of their theology over a good beer.”

It was starting to become obvious that Pete had a passion for his pub and combining theology with good beer.

“In fact, it was Catholic monks who invented beer in the first place,” Pete continued. “So I figured I was in good company if I was going to get in the beer making business.”

As Jimmy and Pete continued talking, Eddie stood from his stool and began to walk around the room. He hadn’t noticed earlier but Pete had framed quotes from theologians and others on the qualities of good faith and good beer throughout the large room.

One quote near the front door caught his eye.

“’Whenever the devil pesters you, at once seek out the company of friends, drink more, joke and jest, or engage in some form of merriment.’ – Martin Luther”

“Boy ain’t that the truth,” Eddie said as he pointed to the quote.

“Yeah, that’s one of my favorite quotes too,” Pete replied.

Eddie continued walking around the room, reading various quotes.

As he read the other quotes around the room, Pete continued, “Part of the reason I started this place where I did was because for years I’ve had a passion for brewing beer and one of my favorite songs we sang in the church I grew up in was ‘Just as I Am.’ As I got older, I started feeling like several churches I visited were singing that song, but never really meaning it. Yet I could walk into a bar or a brewery and feel safe, welcomed, loved, accepted. They might not have known me from Adam, but they accepted me just as I was. It was as if when Nirvana sang ‘Come as You Are’ they actually meant it, but the folks in the church didn’t really love and accept everyone just as they were. Figured there had to be a way to combine those ideas — so when this property became available I saw a vision of all those ideas merging together. I’m hoping this place finally becomes a real sanctuary for all.”

—

If you’re interested in reading the rest of St. Peter’s Brewery, I’m giving away a FREE PDF copy of the full book to anyone who donates to my charity:water campaign between now and Aug. 31, 2010. Simply make a donation of any size and I’ll e-mail you a copy of the book.

Donate now

Help us provide clean drinking water to the 1 billion people around the world who are without.

I shared this on We Live Simply earlier this week and wanted to be sure I shared it here as well for those of you who may not read both sites.

I think it’s time to let the cat out of the bag and help push my motivation forward towards finishing my new book.

While writing posts for We Live Simply, I’ve also slowly been working on my next book, Destroying the Warehouse Mentality: Stop hoarding and declutter your life.

While I wrote my last book (a novel) in a month, this one is taking a bit longer to come together.

So I’m hoping that by putting this information out there, it will give me an even greater incentive to see it through.

But I’ve set a goal for its completion and hope to have it ready for publication by early Fall (hopefully before the twins arrive!).

So far I plan on tackling these areas of clutter:

1. Buying into a $154 billion industry
2. Decluttering your home
3. Decluttering your office
4. Decluttering your digital life
5. Decluttering your time

But I’m definitely open to ideas and input — especially from those of you who have struggled with your own clutter, or the clutter of someone else.

I’m also interested in hearing some of your stories on how you’ve dealt with clutter as well.

If you’d like to share your story or offer input on the book, feel free to leave me a comment or e-mail me at editor @ welivesimply.info.