Available Now: 99-Cent Ultimate Vegan Guide

Today's my most important advocacy day of the year, and I've just posted the following to my daily Vegan.com blog to let you know all about it:

If you’re a regular reader, today’s the day I could use your help. I’ve just published an updated 2011 edition of my popular Ultimate Vegan Guide. It’s better than ever before, and this time around I’ve decided to cut away nearly all my royalties so that it can be priced as an impulse buy. The Kindle edition is just 99 cents, and the paperback edition has been cut from $14.95 to $8.95.

I don't have the budget to mail hundreds of copies of this book to reviewers across the country, but I have something infinitely more powerful than that. I have you.

Will you think about ways that you can leverage your standing within the vegetarian community to spread the word about this book? Some obvious steps include linking to the new release on your Facebook profile, your fan page, your twitter feed, and your blog. If you're active in any online vegetarian-oriented forums, I'd likewise be grateful if you could mention the book's release there.

Everything I just mentioned will take only a few moments to do, and it will help me immeasurably in allowing the book to reach more people. If you feel inspired to take even greater action, here are some big-time ways that you can help out:

• Write a review of the new edition, emphasizing the 99-cent price point, and submit it to any websites, nonprofits, forums, or blogs where this title would likely be of interest. And of course, please also post your review on Amazon.com.

• Got a friend or a family member with a Kindle? Buy them a copy! Just click the "Give as a Gift" button in the upper right corner of the Kindle edition’s page on Amazon.com. You'll need to know the e-mail account that is associated with your friend’s Kindle.

• Finally, please think of any hard-core, serious animal advocates with whom you are on good terms, and make sure that you bring this book to their attention.

Changing the pricing of the vegan guide to make it as close to free as possible is one of the greatest sacrifices I've made to date for animals. I've basically decided to do away with one of my most important income streams, in the hope that this choice will result in the book getting into tens of thousands more hands. But the make or break is whether my friends will seize this moment and step up to give this book the push it needs. Can you help The Ultimate Vegan Guide go viral?

Here are the pages to link to:

• 99-cent Kindle edition: http://amzn.to/lh3yUx
• $8.95 Paperback: http://amzn.to/lAn3Rk
• The book's new Facebook fan page: http://j.mp/jQGUtC

I'd love to see this book rocket into one of Amazon's top hundred or thousand Kindle books. I'm doing all I can, and now whether this book goes viral or not is up to you. Will you help?

My Brand New Book: A Vegan History 1944-2010

Hey all! It's time once again for another of my exceedingly rare announcements letting you know I've gotten off my butt and put something useful into the world.

My latest book just hit Amazon.com : A Vegan History: 1944-2010. It’s a short book—figure about fifty pages—and Amazon is selling it in Kindle format for just $2.99. Don’t have a Kindle? You can download free Kindle software to read the book on iPads, iPhones, PCs, Macs, Androids, Blackberries, and Windows Phone 7.

I took on this project for a few reasons:

• Nobody has ever written a history of veganism that focuses on the ground gained over the past few decades. The story of how veganism rose from the fringes to the mainstream  is surprisingly interesting and useful.
• I believe that people who read this book will gain new insights into activism, and feel inspired to get involved in especially effective ways.
• Activists in countries with no real vegan presence will benefit by learning how veganism established a foothold in the United States.

Did I mention it’s just $2.99? I think you’ll get a lot out of it.

That's it for now. Hope you'll join the Vegan.com fan page and follow me on Twitter if you aren't already doing so.

The Best Vegan Stuff from Amazon.com

Hey Everyone,

I've just put together seven different pages collecting the very best vegan books, food, vitamin supplements, and lifestyle items available from Amazon.com:

• Vegan Books


• Vegan Cookbooks


• Vegan Diets


• Vegan Groceries


• Vegan Supplements


• Vegan Personal Care


• Kitchenware

You can bookmark any of the above pages for future reference. Or just visit Vegan.com, and you'll find these links atop the site's right column.

I am confident that these pages will help you find some great new products, and get the most out of what the vegan world has to offer. And, of course, everything sold through our Amazon.com links generates commissions that allow me to keep updating and improving Vegan.com.

That's all for now. I hope your new year is off to a great start. If you're not yet a member of our Facebook fan page, I hope to see you there!

-Erik

Meat Market Book Club

Hey everyone,

Another of my infrequent Vegan.com updates. I'm writing this time mostly to let you know that I've started a Meat Market book discussion club at GoodReads.com. We've got about a hundred totally dedicated activists onboard already, and I would love for you to join in. The club runs through December 21st, 2010.

I continue to spend hours every weekday blogging at Vegan.com. If it's been a while since you stopped by, I hope you'll consider subscribing to our email or RSS feed so that you can stay up-to-date on all the latest vegan and farmed animal oriented news.

And finally, I'm in the middle of our holiday donation drive for Vegan.com. If you enjoy all the stuff the site makes available, I hope you'll take this opportunity to generously show your support.

All the best,
Erik Marcus

Big Changes at Vegan.com

Hey Everyone,

It's been a good six months since my last update to this email list, but a lot has gone on in that time.

First of all, I did a total rethink of Vegan.com's front page. For the past two years, the page has featured my personal blog. But I decided that, for whatever its charms, my blog wasn't the best first thing to show an aspiring vegan.

So I demoted my blog to a secondary page, and redesigned the front page around some introductory material that I think is perfect for people wanting to learn about veganism. The centerpiece to this new front page is a link to the full text of my book, The Ultimate Vegan Guide.

I decided that since this book is so useful to new vegans, I ought to make its complete text available for free at Vegan.com. So I went ahead and did just that. The response has been wonderfully encouraging: the online version of the book now attracts about a hundred readers every day.

I hope you'll keep Vegan.com in mind when talking to potential vegans. With the changes I've made, it may well be the best place to send someone who is interested in the lifestyle.

So that's about it for now. I'll be back in touch later this month with details of my upcoming book club for my book Meat Market: Animals, Ethics, & Money.

I hope you'll check out the site's new front page, and give my Ultimate Vegan Guide a read if you haven't already done so. I'd love to know what you think. And if you aren't yet a reader of my daily Vegan.com blog, I hope you'll check that out as well.

Thanks for all your interest in my work, and I hope you're having a wonderful autumn.

-Erik Marcus

Vegan On the Cheap Giveaway and Facebook Like Buttons

Hello again—

Just a quick note to let you know that on Friday, May seventh I'll be drawing five winners of Robin Robertson's great new cookbook, Vegan On the Cheap. Details and a link to enter here:

http://www.vegan.com/blog/2010/05/03/win-a-copy-of-vegan-on-the-cheap/

If you haven't checked out my Vegan.com blog in a while, please give it a look. I'm constantly hearing from people who tell me that it's a big help to keeping them engaged in all things vegan.

Finally, I've just added a feature that makes a Facebook "Like" button appear beneath each Vegan.com blog entry. This is the perfect way to share with your friends and family the stories that most interest you, without ever coming across as pushy. The best part is clicking the Like button takes less than a second, and doing so publicizes the story to all your Facebook friends. And speaking of Facebook, be sure to check out the Vegan.com fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Vegancom/75326546871?ref=ts

I've got more stuff in the works at Vegan.com that I look forward to announcing soon. Thanks so much for being part of this notification list.

-Erik Marcus

The Year in Meat: 2009

As 2009 drew to a close, I decided to write an article summarizing my entire year of blogging. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. After two weeks of nonstop work, I present "The Year in Meat: 2009." Since it's more than 5000 words long, I've created a typeset PDF for easy printing, and I've also coded an HTML version.

Reading this article is likely the best way to quickly get up to speed on everything that's happened in 2009 related to animal agribusiness and vegetarianism. I think this piece makes clear that, amazingly enough, the animal protection movement is actually moving us somewhere; and quickly.

While I think this document will prove uniquely helpful to many, this project was such a large undertaking there's no way I can contemplate doing it again next year unless this piece gets widely read. So please: post this to your Facebook page, tweet a link to it, and email a link to friends and family who might find it of interest. If you're able to promote it in some small or large way, please let me know so I can thank you. I really need your help in getting this piece out there and seen by many; I think it has the potential to get a ton of people inspired and engaged.

A heartfelt thanks to Paul Shapiro and Josh Balk for closely reading a draft, and offering numerous suggestions that greatly improved the finished piece. Plus a big shout-out to Princess Rachel for final copyedits. Link.