Spec The Halls: A special charity appeal

Note: Today I wanted to pass along a guest post from Steven Saus, a great author, eBook wizard, and all-around good guy who has a very worthy project this holiday season. Please give this a read and consideration! Steven's the real deal as far as good folk in the small press/self-publishing world! :) thanks!
-Stephen Z

Spec the Halls

My name is Steven Saus; I'm an author and publisher. I run Alliteration Ink, where I both publish original work and also provide publishing services. This year, I've taken up the mantle of running Spec The Halls from Abra Staffin-Wiebe. There's both a writing contest and a charity fundraiser. Right now, I'm doing a bit of a blog tour to support the fundraiser; each entry talks about something different, so you'll want to stop by them all. You can see a full linklist of the guest posts at specthehalls.tumblr.com and read more about the whole project (and get the charity eBook) at specthehalls.com.

I've already been asked a few times why Spec The Halls is only going to be available in digital formats.

First, I want to point out that if you get the eBook from our website, not only will more of the purchase price be going to charity, but you'll get more formats. You will get a PDF as well as the ePub (iBooks, nook, Kobo, Sony) and Kindle formats. Basically, if you have a computer, you'll be able to read it.

Second, it means that more of the money can go to charity. If I printed the book (about 150 pages if you made it a trade paperback size), it would cost a few dollars a book - and that's not counting what the retailers take. Because the authors donated the stories, Kathleen Tennant donated the cover art, and I do eBook conversions myself, there are neither up-front or per-unit costs. More money for Heifer International!

Third, this eBook is only available for a short time for the fundraiser. When the fundraiser is over, I won't have excess inventory to worry about!

Finally, digital distribution means that we can do innovative things with the book - like accepting reciepts for donations that people make on their own instead of requiring people to pay me directly.

It's that kind of flexibility that made it obvious that this project required digital-only distribution.

This year's edition of Spec The Halls is only available for a limited time, so act quickly to get your copy!