By
-- A special guest essay from Janet Evanovich --
Way back in the dark ages of the nineties I bought stock in GemStar because it was producing this amazing new contraption that allowed you to read books electronically on a portable gizmo. GemStar went bankrupt and I lost my invested money, but I didn't lose my enthusiasm for e-books. GemStar and I were simply ahead of the curve.
Don't get me wrong "¦I love hardcover books. I like the way they feel in my hand and I develop an unexplainable emotional attachment to a hardcover book. E-books, however, are ZING, WOW, KAZOWIE!
My new publisher, Random House, has been putting fun collectibles in the back of my hardcovers as a special treat for my readers. Smokin' Seventeen had stickers, and Explosive Eighteen had a calendar. And now Lizzy and Diesel's latest adventure, Wicked Business, has snazzy WICKED and PLUM euro-stickers. And the stickers are so snazzy that Team Evanovich got busy and made similar stickers to give away at signings.
Then Team Evanovich got to feeling bad that e-book readers were missing out on the snazzy stickers, so we did some brainstorming, and we realized we could attach FUN PHOTOS to the e-book!
So now as you read WICKED BUSINESS on your e-reader, you can click on links that will take you directly to a picture, and you'll be riding shotgun with Lizzy and Diesel, seeing some of the things they're seeing. If you don't want to interrupt your reading experience, you can go to the very back of your e-book whenever you want, and see all of the pictures at once "¦plus commentary from me.
Some of the pictures were acquired from photo companies. Other pictures proved to be more of a challenge to obtain, so I sent my husband up to our house in New Hampshire to battle it out with the bugs and the rain, to get pictures of Hanover and Dartmouth College.
Entering Hanover, New Hampshire
Image courtesy of Peter Evanovich
And then I sent my daughter off to Marblehead, Massachusetts to get pictures of Lizzy Tucker's historical town. I'm lucky my daughter came back to Florida. She's obsessed with the hot wings at the local Marblehead tavern, and she says someone is opening a candy shop in town. (Fun side fact: when I was a little girl my parents owned a candy shop!)
Historic house in Marblehead.
Image courtesy of Alex Evanovich
In the end, the e-book bonus content consists of 33 pictures of places throughout New England, and one audio link. I've spent a considerable amount of time in all the places Lizzy and Diesel visit in Wicked Business (if only I had thought to take pictures then), and this bonus content was a lot like putting together a photo album filled with memories of my own adventures. So enjoy your stickers and/or pictures, and remember... whether it's funny business, monkey business or getting down to business, there's no business like WICKED BUSINESS!
-- Janet Evanovich
