If you’re an author and you’ve been offering a short story or perhaps a series Book 1 for free, in hopes that readers will try it and go on to buy your other work, you may have had some good results. Or you may have encountered ye olde book promotion problem. Just because your ebook is free doesn’t mean people will automatically find it. So, how can you get a little publicity for the title?
Fortunately, with all the people now offering freebies as part of the KDP Select program (enrolled authors can make their ebooks free a few days a quarter on Amazon without going the Smashwords-price-matching-route) many ebook blogs are offering inexpensive sponsorship opportunities to the plethora of authors seeking to promote their freebies.
Here are a few spots (links go straight to sponsorship pages):
- Kindle Nation Daily — I’ve done a few sponsorships with these guys over the last two years and had mixed results as a fantasy author. I’ve rarely recouped the cost of the ad in sales earnings, but now that they have less expensive options for people plugging a free book, I’m trying them again. (I should point out that thriller/mystery authors I’ve encountered have sung the praises of KND; with a lot of these sites, books geared toward a more general audience will do better.)
- Pixel of Ink — I had good results advertising with these folks last year, though they get pretty backed up, and you have to subscribe to their newsletter to find out when slots will be available. That’s for regular priced books though. They now list some free titles on a daily basis, and they don’t charge (though that makes it hard to get selected). I think odds may be better of getting chosen if you make the request several weeks out.
- BookBub — I learned about these guys when I received a free sponsorship from them out of the blue, and I definitely think I’ll buy future sponsorships — I got a boost to EE downloads of course, but I also like that they have their readers broken down by genre and charge different prices depending on your genre and how many readers you’ll reach. They also charge less for advertising free books than books that are simply discounted.
- Free Kindle Books and Tips — Free listings of free ebooks, though it’s another space limited thing.
- Ereader News Today — Another big one where I’ve had success. Their sponsorship pages are often closed for submission (as is the case right now), but it’s worth signing up for their advertising newsletter because they send a note out to people when they’re opening up, and it pays to be on the list and sign up early. I’m pretty sure I’ve never gotten any extra junk from the newsletter.
I’m aware of lots of other blogs that list free ebooks, but have only listed the larger venues here. I’ve rarely seen major upticks in downloads from advertising on small/new blogs (though if they’re offering free mentions, then there’s little to lose). That said, if you’d like to suggest a site (especially if I’ve missed a big one), please feel free to do so.
* For those who like to point out that people who shop for free ebooks on these sites rarely go on to buy anything, I’ll add my usual argument that a) in my experience, this simply isn’t true — many people have told me they became fans and bought my books after trying the free one and b) get enough downloads and your book will appear in the free bestseller lists on Amazon, which line up side-by-side with the paid bestseller lists in each genre (in other words, 10,000 people downloading your ebook can help you even if they never read it, because it increases your visibility on Amazon where it has a chance to catch a buyer’s eye).
Kindle Nation Daily’s site and newsletter always seemed junk-maily to me and it really seems like they’re trying to cash in on authors with their gazillion sponsorship options. ENT and PoI are solid if you can get on them. I’ll look into Bookbub. That’s a newsletter but not a website, is that right?
A newsletter, yes. I wasn’t aware of them until recently, but their plug gave me a big bump in downloads yesterday.
Thanks, Lindsay. It looks like a lot of these opportunities are free. Good stuff.
This article confused me until I went back and read the headline and saw that part about “free.” I’m not on my game today.
I tried KND when I had my YA fantasy in Kindle Select. Used it on the second promotion, because at the time only the first promotions of books were doing well, in most cases. Didn’t budge the needle. Just can’t reach that audience that way. You can only reach the adults who also read YA plus fantasy.
I haven’t had much luck with advertising. Obviously, having more books out would help the efforts. And more are on the way. But the only thing that has worked for me other than Kindle Select is Wattpad. I’d guess 3-4 sales per week. Not a lot, but a quite a few tell me they bought the book after burning through the free chapters and how excited they are. That I like. Took me a while to figure out how to start moving some of the readers there toward buying the books. Still a work in progress.
Wattpad sounds like a good site to look into. I made an account but never went back. 😛
With advertising, yeah, I think it’s more misses than hits, but most of the sites charge a LOT less (and sometimes nothing) to plug a book that is free vs one that isn’t. They tend to group your book with other free ones, but, hey, exposure is exposure. 😉 I think, too, when you have a series for folks to go on and buy you can afford to spend more to get people to try the first book.
Great list, Lindsay.
I’m not free yet as I’m following the route trodden by yourself….I’m going to get three in my series out first, plus another series started, and THEN make my first book free.
Free first’s in a series definitely work…for instance, I got Emporer’s Edge, and then all the subsequent books..so your sales worked on me!
Thanks, Geoff!
You could always try a free short story, too, if you don’t want to wait until you have three books out. I’ve mentioned it before, but the Ice Cracker II short (free) is what led to my first sales of EE when it was $2.99
Actually, I think I remember reading your post about that. I’ve never attempted a short story, but it’s definitely something I’m thinking about.
My series doesn’t really allow for a short without major spoilers, so may have to do a standalone just to get people interested in me as an author.
I’m definitely a part of group b. I read so much that I can’t afford my habit. I like to try new authors – and if I can try them for free… awesome!
When I find a new author I like, I tend to read everything the author offers – free or not. I’ve found most of my new favorite authors in the last few years through reading their free first book in a series.
I do have a couple of “rules” for myself. If the author leaves the first book in a cliffhanger, I really have to like the book in order to buy the next one. I really don’t like cliffhangers. I feel manipulated when every story in a series leaves you hanging at the end.
Not all cliffhangers are bad – I didn’t feel manipulated at the end of EE4 – it was a natural place to pause the story. Karen Marie Moning about killed me with the cliffhanger at the end of book 4 in the Fever series – but, again, it was a good place to end the story. It wasn’t a total surprise that you would have to wait until the next book.
Another bonus for free books is it opens up new genres for people. I would never have found steampunk without free books. They just didn’t fall into my search list. Now, I can’t get enough and I’m sad there aren’t more authors in the category.
So, as a reader of free books, yes, you should totally offer your book for free. At least for a little while. You will find a whole new audience and yes, they will buy the rest of the series.
Thanks for sharing your experience, Jen! Those pesky authors and their cliffhangers… 😀
It’s great that the free books available out there have led you to try new genres. I know that I’ve found a lot of now-favorite authors by first checking the books out of the library, and I think the free-first-book is sort of a way to set up a similar situation online.
I’m a little confused . . . it seems some of these sites want to you *pay* them to list your book for free. Am I understanding that correctly? I don’t know . . . seems fishy to me. Otherwise, great stuff here–and I completely agree that free books can boost sales. 🙂
Hey Ilana,
Some of them offer the service for free, but others charge, yes. You’re paying to have your book seen by however many thousands of readers they have, AKA buying advertising. Nothing fishy. That’s what advertising is. 😀
I’ve found that, with the sites that don’t charge, it’s pretty unlikely that your book will be chosen from the gazillions of submissions they get. Paying is a way to ensure placement, and you can also usually choose your day. If you wanted to try to make a big wave at Amazon during your free days, you might want to try and appear on numerous sites like these on the same day.
But, of course, it’s all up to the individual authors. Not everybody believes in paying for advertising.
Pingback: Wednesday Writing Links for September 12, 2012 « Michael Montoure's "Bloodletters"
Pingback: Friday Features #22 - Yesenia Vargas
Perfect timing! I just followed your instructions on an earlier post about how to make a story free. The Troll’s Belt will probably take a while to wend its way from Smashwords to B&N and from there to free on Amazon. But while I’m waiting, I’ll go check some of these listings.
Thanks Lindsay! I was just worrying about how readers would *find* my free story and wondering what I could do besides hope. Now I can act instead of worrying. That feels much better.
Update: I’ve seen many mentions at this point that Amazon’s price matching bots resist price matching free books. This seems to be true. The Troll’s Belt went free on Smashwords in September 2012. The free price slowly trickled to Kobo, Sony, iTunes, Diesel, and B&N. But as of January 2013, the great Zon stubbornly lists it at $2.99. 😀 FYI for others trying this.
I have a theory (based on how search engine bots work for indexing pages) that the speed of the price-matching has to do with the popularity of the book or rather with the number of internal (Amazon) links pointing to the book’s page (if it shows up in tons of other books’ also-boughts for example). The more links to a page, the more often the bots find their way to it. For example, EE1 went free within a day or two, whereas my less popular Flash Gold story took longer.
Not sure if that makes sense. Either way, it’s probably not that helpful. 😛
I’m about to price match a short story to free. My first attempt at free, but Amazon has price matched me a number of times before. The way that always happens is when I raise my prices after a sale, I always forget and move Amazon up first. They detect the lower price at B&N and even though B&N gets moved up the same day, it takes Amazon a few days to adjust.
So I wonder if setting the story to free everywhere else and then trying to raise the price at Amazon would work.
David, I’d be interested to hear how it goes for you. I put The Troll’s Belt down to 99 cents for about a month and just restored it to $2.99 last week, hoping for that very dynamic. So far, no go.
If it works for you and not for me, that would be a point in favor of Lindsay’s theory, since I gather you have a steady flow of sales, while (thus far) I have merely a sporadic trickle.
If you have difficulty as well, it might mean Amazon’s algorithms for price matching have changed. Either way, not much I can do about it, but i am curious!
Thanks to both of you, Lindsay and David, for your feedback. Much appreciated.
Pingback: Writing Blog Treasures 9~15 | Gene Lempp ~ Writer
You are are the epitome of helpful generosity, Lindsay. Your blog should be on every writer’s Follow List. Thank you for posting!!
-aniko
You can always “pin” your book for free on BookPinning.com!
You can also promote your book by this site:
http://free-kindle-books.deha-solutions.com/promote-your-book/
Hi! I wanted to let you know that http://www.ebooksgrowontrees.com offers affordable advertising for free and discounted ebooks 🙂
Great article.
Add to this lovely list http://BookPraiser.com
All in One submission service. Free if you do it by yourself
You can also list your free or discounted eBook promotion at http://newfreekindlebooks.com
Thanks!