Tag: free ebooks

I Have Never Paid for It

Bookbub is a new company which, as you probably know, sends out email shots to hundreds of thousands of registered readers, publicizing a handful of free and discounted books each day. It’s not just for indies either; recently I’ve seen ads for books by James Patterson and Ian Rankin.

Ad prices vary, depending on the book’s genre and offer price ( http://www.bookbub.com/advertise/pricing.php ). Their ad prices are apparently rising steadily. Also, they’re selective in which ads they take. The good folk at Bookbub clearly have impeccable taste, because last week they chose to publicize my novel HOPE ROAD. I didn’t ask them to feature it, and I didn’t pay anything. In fact, until they mailed me to let me know I’d been featured I had no idea that Bookbub existed. It seems that, as they develop their business, they select the odd Amazon freebie and include it alongside their paid ads, no charge to the author. Continue reading “I Have Never Paid for It”

What Comes After Free?

Many years ago, I read an article that asked what I thought was a provocative question: What will come after television? I had never considered the question, of course. I was born in the television generation and took for granted that the medium would always be around. Once the question was asked, I could see how television was really no different than any of the other technologies, all of which are eventually replaced with something else.

The same question can really be asked of any innovation. What will come next? What will make this obsolete? Continue reading “What Comes After Free?”

Is Anyone Listening When I’m Not Here?

What would happen if you threw a party and no one came?

Do you ever feel like that in our world of indie writing and publishing? We continuously talk and promote our books through Twitter, Facebook and other sites. We talk about these things all the time on this site. Hell, I am one of the biggest proponents of social media. In fact, I earn the majority of my non-writing income now from helping companies set up and maintain social media sites and campaigns.

How necessary is it?

Continue reading “Is Anyone Listening When I’m Not Here?”

Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson

[Editor Note: This step-by-step list is a great guide for promoting your free book through KDP Select. We used Rex’s methods to promote BAD BOOK at the end of June and had good success.]

Back when I first started using KDP Select, I used the Squidoo list by theinformationlady to promote my KDP Select promotion periods. I have had some pretty lousy results from Select recently, and I decided to revisit this and try to ferret out the proper way to do this. Here is my current process for promoting KDP Select titles:

Step 1: Make sure you have reviews BEFORE you settle on your promotion dates

Shortly after I published The Goblin Rebellion, I scheduled a KDP Select 2-day promotion over a month later and informed all the major sites without having any reviews for the book in place. I didn’t receive any emails back from ENT or POI, but I was in conversations with 2 book bloggers and had given away 50 copies at LibraryThing to try to garner some reviews. There were at least five people, counting the book bloggers, who told me they should be able to hit the promotion deadline.

None of them came through. Continue reading “Preparing for Your KDP Select Free Days by Rex Jameson”