Tag: perma-free

How to Use Perma-Free eBooks to Bolster Paid Sales

permafree books roe-deer-2540087_960_720So, you’ve heard that making books perma-free (permanently or long-term free) is a great way to spur sales of your other books. You read an IU article on how to make your book perma-free, you did it, and now, six months later, your book has a ranking of 80,000 in free books and you’re barely getting one free download a week. Where did things go wrong?

Well, what I’ve described is not unusual. Free can be an effective strategy, but it’s not one that is effortless. If you don’t promote free, it can go badly. Today, I’m going to discuss some ways you can get the most out of a free book. Before I get started, Continue reading “How to Use Perma-Free eBooks to Bolster Paid Sales”

How to Set Your Book Free on Amazon

free ebooks earth-237955_960_720This may be old hat to some of you. But we get new indie authors every day, and also Amazon changes stuff every little while. So since IU is here to help everybody, no matter where they are on their indie-author journey, I thought I’d take a few minutes to explain what it takes to get Amazon to set the price of your eBook to free.

First, let’s get the names straight. To sell an eBook as an indie on Amazon, you need to publish it via Kindle Direct Publishing, which is often abbreviated as KDP. Continue reading “How to Set Your Book Free on Amazon”

How to Make a Book Perma-Free on Amazon

A Novel Idea by Melissa BowersockI was inspired by IU’s administrators when they came up with the nifty concept of First Chapters, a sampler collection of the first chapters of 22 minion novels. I thought this was a great way to take some new books for a test drive, especially since I can usually make up my mind about a book within the first few pages.  So, duly inspired and with the admin’s blessing, I created my own version, composed of the first chapters of my twelve (to date) novels. Not wanting to steal IU’s thunder with a similar name, I chose A Novel Idea for mine. Not terribly original, but it seemed to fit.

My plan was to make this eBook perma-free so readers anytime, anywhere, could take my first chapters out for a spin and see how they liked them.

There are several avenues to getting eBooks online, and of course Amazon is the 500-pound gorilla, so it gets the most bananas for the buck. However, when uploading a book to KDP, you do not get the option of choosing perma-free for a price. In order to accomplish this, you have to do a little end-around that behemoth primate. Here’s what I did. Continue reading “How to Make a Book Perma-Free on Amazon”

Black Magic – Making your book perma-free on Kindle

Simon GoodsonGuest Post
by Simon Goodson

There’s something strange going on with free Kindle books. You can use KDP Select to make your book free, but only for 5 days every quarter. Yet some books are free day after day, week after week – what is known as perma-free.

Here, in theory, is how to make your book perma-free on Amazon…

a) Publish your book on kindle.
b) Publish the same e-book through another online retailer with the price set to free.
c) Tell Amazon that you’ve found the book at a lower price. Go to the books Amazon page, then to Product Details (third section down). The last line ends with a link titled “tell us about a lower price.
d) Amazon checks the information you provided, then lowers the book’s price to zero.

Easy isn’t it? Well, not quite that easy. There are a few gotchas… Continue reading “Black Magic – Making your book perma-free on Kindle”