Why do I give away books?

 My recent promotion of Alien Bonds did pretty well. I gave away close to 2,000 Kindle copies. People often ask me, why do authors make books free? It seems like a ridiculous thing to do to some folks.

For me, there are four reasons to give away a book:

1. If it's the first book in the series, people who read it and like it might well buy the other books. 

2. If people read it and like it, they might write a review, or at least rate the book. The more reviews a book has, the more likely it is to sell well. 

3. Even if it's not the first book in a series, people might like the book enough to try another one by the same author, especially if the author has published similar books

4. On online sites like Amazon, giveaways get a book more online traffic and thus help with the "people who bought this also bought . . ." algorithm that sites like Amazon use to push books to buyers.

The question of reviews is really important. Not that many readers actually post reviews, but lots of people judge a book by its star rating and how many reviews it has. Right after the promo ended, a reader posted this review on Amazon:

This is a great review, even though it's not very long. It has an eye-catching, emphatic, and very flattering title, and it says what the reader liked about the book. And it's 5 stars, which does not hurt at all. By the way, you will note that all Amazon reviews have a Helpful button under them. If anyone wants to click that for this review, it's would be great! The most helpful reviews float to the top of the list. 

A caveat for other authors:

 There is one drawback to making a book free, and that is a lot of free books never get read. In effect, the free status lets the reader forego the evaluation of  "Is this a book I will enjoy reading?" As there is no cost, a lot of folks click the "Buy" button but either never open the book or open it and then abandon it a few pages in. 

The Ins and Outs of My Recent Fussy Librarian Promotion

First, Happy Valentine's Day! I hope someone gave you a valentine.

Second, if you're not familiar with ebook promotional newsletters, basically, a company creates an email list of ebook buyers (subscribers have to opt in, but it's free to them) and then charges authors and publishers to include their books in a daily email to subscribers. There are many of these services now. BookBub is the biggest name (and the hardest to get into), but there are others, including Book Gorilla, Bargain Booksy/Free Booksy (they separate free books and cheap books into their two emails and if you want both, you have to subscribe to both.), The Fussy Librarian, and Ereader News Today (ENT). When books are on sale but not free, the email entry has an affiliate link and the company gets a small cut from the sale.

On February 8, I ran a Fussy Librarian promotion for The Sixth Discipline (a free ebook!) . The results were pretty good. I had not used FL in a while, so I didn't know what to expect.

I gave away hundreds of copies, mostly on Kindle. And of course, even though the email itself usually generates "sales" for the one day it runs, Amazon's online algorithms push popular books to readers so increased "sales" continues for a few days. As you can see in the screen snap below, the promo offered links to the the book on Kindle, Nook (B&N), Apple, Kobo and Google Play. The results in the list below the screen snap are "sales" for the day of the promo plus three days after.

Vendor:           No. of Copies given away February 8, 9, 10, and 11

Amazon Kindle: 277 (plus 5 paid*), 88 (plus 2 paid*), 28 (plus  1 paid*), 21 (none paid*)
Google Books: 20, 3, 2, 0
iBooks/Apple Books: 19, 0, 0, 0
Barnes & Noble 0, 0, 0, 0
Smashwords: 0, 1, 2, 0 (note: their link was not listed in the ad; these are normal numbers for comparison)
Kobo 0, 0, 0, 0

* The Kindle version wasn't free in all Amazon bookstores so the paid numbers represent foreign sales.

Note that The Sixth Discipline was my first published title, and it came out in 2011. It is free on Amazon only because Smashwords lets an author make a book free, and because Smashwords is a distributor as well as an e-tailer, the book is thus free on other platforms as well. Amazon practices price matching (which is why you see "Tell us about a cheaper price" links on a book's Amazon page);  if you make the book free elsewhere, Amazon will make the Kindle version free also. These days, I usually give away from zero to three Kindle copies every day, so promotions are helpful to boost "sales."

I think in a way, these numbers do a good job of representing how well each vendor is doing at ebook sales. Amazon is way ahead of the pack; its second day number beat all the others' first day totals combined. But Google and Apple both have a significant ebook presence, On the other hand, Barnes & Noble is pretty much dead in the water, and Kobo is going nowhere (at least in the US; it is more popular overseas where Amazon is less dominant). This explains one of the main reasons Amazon can tempt authors and publishers into enrolling their books in Kindle Unlimited: they give up small sales numbers on other platforms in return for money from KU borrows.

Right now both The Sixth Discipline and its sequel No Safe Haven are available only in ebook form but I am having new covers made, and formatting the books for print. I hope to have paperback versions available in a month or so. I might run another promotion after that, as a test of the new covers.

A word to other authors: Giving away this book makes some sense because there is a direct sequel that is not free, and I always see increased sales of it after a promotion of the first book. Giving away a standalone book is not usually as good an idea.  For one thing, a huge number of free ebooks are never read. Making a book free eliminates the cost barrier, so a lot of readers download a free book first, and then look to see if they want to read it. If you have books that are very similar, it can still be a good idea to make a book free for a day or two, in that it can drive up your sales numbers on Amazon temporarily and thus get the book in front of a lot of readers through the "customers also bought" function. That's another benefit of Kindle Unlimited; authors can make their books free or discounted for short periods of time.

My Latest Book Promotion

This one is for other authors, as it's about giving away books. Why would anyone give away their books? Well, if you write in a series, giving away the first book can yield good sales on the sequels.

 I recently made ALIEN BONDS, the first book in the Wakanreao trilogy, free for several days.The free period started on last Thursday, and I paid for a book slot in two mailing services that are free to readers and offer free or cheap ebooks: Book Gorilla and Ereader News Today. The entry for ALIEN BONDS ran in BG on the Friday, and in ENT on the Saturday. Both promotions did reasonably well., with almost identical numbers.

All together I gave away 1,353 Kindle copies of ALIEN BONDS in the 5 days it was free. The first day, before the promo ran, I tweeted and posted in FB about it. That yielded 21 copies given away. The next day the BG promo ran and I gave away 574 copies. Then on Saturday the ENT promo ran and yielded 578 copies. Some of that total could be from the influence of the earlier promo, because on Saturday with no promo I gave away 125 copies. 

By Friday evening, ALIEN BONDS had risen through the rankings to this.

And on Saturday it reached this:

So, being #2 in Kindle science fiction romances probably helped the giveaway, too. There were 55 copies given away on Monday, the last day it was free, and  also 4 copies on Tuesday that snuck in because any Amazon promotion to make the book free ends on Pacific Standard time so there were a few hours that it was still free in some places. 

It was also interesting to see where the copies were going.  Here's the country list:

Pretty  much as expected. Only Canada, the UK and Germany made double digits. It was interesting that Germany beat out English-speaking Australia. 

Now, of course, I have to wait and see how it goes for sales of ALIEN VOWS and ALIEN SKIES, books 2 and 3 of my Wakanreao series. 

Is Amazon killing the product giveaway for Kindle books?

UPDATE:  The links are back! It must have been a glitch.

A useful marketing  took for authors is Amazon's product giveaway. Anyone with an Amazon account in good standing can give away one or more print books (or non-digital other products). Some time ago they added that functionality for Kindle books, too, but now it looks like they plan to take it away because the buttons have gone from the product pages for Kindle books.

This is what I see immediately below the "Write a review" button (which always appears  after the last visible review) for the paperback version of Alien Bonds:

This is what I see below the "Write a Review" button for the Kindle version of the same title:

It just goes right into "what else did customers look at" list!  No button for hosting a giveaway!

On the other hand, I just successfully hosted a giveaway of a Kindle book by using the "Copy This Giveaway" button that appears on my Completed Giveaways page. Ergo, the functionally still works for Kindle books, but the buttons are gone. There's no mention of this that I can see on Amazon's Giveaway FAQ. In fact it still lists Kindle books as being eligible, so who knows if Amazon is really killing it or somehow the buttons just got deleted.

Dueling promotions and Amazon lets me see the future!

I've been running two promotions this month, one to advertise that Turnabout is only 99¢ (for a few days only) and one to advertise that The Sixth Discipline is free.

One advantage to advertising a book, even a free one, is if you sell or give away enough copies it gets into Amazon's ranked groups (100 top free science fiction, e.g,), and folks who didn't get the email promotion notice it.  Turnabout did okay, It made it to:

• #199 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Teen & Young Adult > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Dystopian

But The Sixth Discipline jumped up to:

• #8 in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction

Even though the email promotion for T6D was Friday, it's still going strong; I've given away over 200 copies today.. But in checking for free downloads via the KDP interface,I discovered something I had never noticed. Using my phone (I was walking the dog and when we stopped to rest in the shade, I checked my numbers), the Sales Dashboard tab let me select tomorrow's date as part of my date range! And when I did that, I could see I already have 23 downloads, presumably from time zones where it's already August 6. 

The screen shot below was created in Firefox, as I discovered the Chrome browser didn't let me select a one-day future date, but the Firefox version did.  I highlighted the date range so you can see it's for those two days. I couldn't include Thursday because it had over 1,000 downloads and that would make tomorrow's 23 too small to show as more than a tiny blue line.

The really odd thing is, I was using Chrome for Android on my phone when I noticed this! 

Also note, these numbers are for Amazon only. iBooks and B&N take a little longer to report "sales figures" because I get them via Smashwords. 

Print vs ebook: Amazon Giveaways

I recently used an Amazon feature called "Hosting a giveaway." If you look at the product page of a book, below the reviews and just above the "What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?" section, you will see a link to create a giveaway.

Amazon offers this feature on a lot of items, not just books. Basically, whoever "hosts" the giveaway pays for the items, including delivery. It can be anyone, not just an author, but for books, it's usually hosted by the author. Until just about a year ago, you could give way print books but not Kindle books, but now it works for both formats.

Setting up a print giveaway

The set-up process lets the host determine number of prizes, odds of winning (e.g., 1 in 1000, 1 in 500,etc), and what users have to do to enter (e.g., watch a video, or follow the author's Amazon page).

The process also allows some control over who can share the link. If you want to give away copies a part of your own promotion, you might want to use this option to limit how the giveaway was accessed. On the other hand, if you just want more readers and hope for reviews, you would wanted wider distribution not narrower,

What you don't get is a way to contract the winners. You can see their Amazon user names, but not contract them. But Amazon handles picking the winners, so it's guaranteed to be fair.

I have run giveaways in the past, but this time Amazon had added a new button that let them distribute the link for you. It sounded good,so I went for it.

Based on prior experience, I set the odds at 1 in 150, and since it was for print books, I limited the prizes to two. I created my welcome message, my congrats to the winner (with a plea for a review), my sorry you lost message (with a reminder that I have another book free, in Kindle format), and clicked the button.

I was waiting for the email to tell me that the giveaway was live, so I could post the link. I never got it. The giveaway ended in 16 minutes. A total of 282 people entered and, of course, two of them won.   I was astounded.

The ebook giveaway

A couple weeks later, I tried a giveaway that was as identical as I could make it, but this time with the same title in Kindle format, and three copies as prizes. I used the button to make Amazon distribute the link, and since it was a test, I didn't mention the giveaway here or anywhere else until after I gave away two kindle copies. That took 18 hours!

Once the second copy was given away, I advertised the link but even then, the number of entrants slowed to a trickle. I will be curious to see if the third copy is claimed before the giveaway end date of March 15.

So it looks like, as a prize, a print book is still much more valuable than a Kindle book.

E-Book Sale!

Read an eBook Week starts Sunday, March 5, 2017, and in honor of that Smashwords is running a huge promotion. A lot of ebooks are on sale, including mine.

 If you're not familiar with Smashwords, it's a site that allows authors to publish and sell their ebooks globally.  Authors can opt to also push their books out to iBooks, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and a bunch of  other more well known book vendors, but those sites are not where the sale is happening. Smashwords itself sells directly to readers, allowing a choice of non-DRM'd books in a wide variety of formats, and that's where the sale is.

To promote ereading, Smashwords makes it easy for authors to put their books on sale, as they offer the use f coupon codes at checkout, and I've taken advantage of that. If you use the promotional coupon, you can buy any of my books this week only for half price (except for The Sixth Discipline, which is always free, and my fantasy novella Where Magic Rules, which is free this week only). .

Once you buy a book from Smashwords, you can download it, and read it on pretty much any device. If you have a Kindle, be sure to select that format (Mobi/Kindle), and download the file to a location on your PC where you can find it again. I have directions for putting Mobi files onto your Kindle here and here.

You can browse the sale page by genre to see what all they've got. Some books will be free and others really cheap.

Remember, all mine are either free or only $1.50, but you have to use the coupon code RAE50 for the non-free titles..

SFR Brigade December Showcase and Giveaway!

I write science fiction and fantasy, and I often include a love story or two in my books. I like to set stories in the far future so that I can create societies and technologies that don't exist, but one reason I like to include romance is that love stories are timeless. There are plenty of other writers who do similar stories. In fact, there's a whole Science Fiction Romance Brigade, and the group is hosting a giveaway. December 15 through 19, just in time for the holidays, a bunch of SFRB authors are offering free books and other stuff, and I am participating.

The book I'm giving away is Saronna's Gift. You can win your choice of a free paperback copy or a free Kindle copy.

What Amazon reviewers have said about Saronna's Gift:

"It’s definitely an interesting SciFi/Romantic storyline. The contrasting backgrounds of both individuals make for a very complex relationship. Not only did I like reading about how Saronna handles her struggles, but also how Duncan handles his struggles as he tries to court her. I give it five stars for creativity because I have never read a SciFi romance set in a future world with the oppression solely based on gender. It’s a very feministic but still romantic storyline. I was definitely not disappointed for another one of Buxton’s books."

"I can probably best express my enjoyment of this book by saying that I was surprised when I came back to write a review and saw that it had 475 pages. I whipped through it so fast that it seemed much shorter."

"I found this book in a fit of disgust over giving up on another book with a weak female lead and an "alpha male" love interest (read: demanding, creepy, controlling). I had searched for "feminist romance paranormal" with very little hope and miraculously, not only did I get results but several! This book was on the top, was offered on kindle unlimited, and looked interesting. It actually gives all of those things. " [nb: this book no longer in Kindle Unlimited]

A brief excerpt to pique your interest:

Science Fiction Romance Brigade

If you're interested in mixing romance with your science fiction (or vice versa), head on over to the SFR Brigade page to see who else is participating and check out what they have to offer. Don't wait! December 19th is the last day.

You must enter to win!

If you want a chance to win a copy of Sarnonna's Gift, just leave a comment below and tell me whether you prefer a Kindle copy or a paperback. If your name is drawn, you will need to provide an email address to receive the Kindle copy, and a US mailing address to win the paperback. I will 3 draw names and give away a total of 3 copies!.

Everyone gets a free book!

If you like a sure thing, you can also check out my free ebook The Sixth Discipline. It's more science fiction than romance, but it does have a sort of slow motion love story. And it's free in most online ebook stores.

Happy Holidays!

GoodReadsBub?

I occasionally blog about book promotion, especially in reference to free books, but also about how hard it is to get a book in front of folks who might want to read it.  One service I've mentioned often is BookBub, the gold standard of email promotion for ebooks, They have a website, but their marketing power comes form their massive email subscriber list. None of the other services compare in scope, and for this reason, BookBub is now extremely popular with traditional publishers who are running sales of ebooks. It's difficult for self published authors to get a slot in the BookBub list.

Now, the mighty BookBub might be getting some real competition. Today I got an email from GoodReads, the popular reader-centric site, which was bought by Amazon a few years ago. It looks like GoodReads will be offering a daily email of books for sale.

Once I logged on to try it, I was able to choose specific authors as well as genres, and also specify my preferred ebook platforms (Kindle, Nook, iBooks, etc), so they are not just offering Kindle deals.

What I don't know is, how does GoodReads know about these deals? Are they getting paid by someone to list the books, or do they just scour the web looking? Certainly they will money on every Kindle books sold, but what about non-Kindle deals?  Or maybe they figure if they can cut into BookBub's business, they won't have to pay associate fees to sell the books. 

One feature GoodReads has always offered is a "want to read" list. You can tag a book as "want to read," and now GoodReads will tell you when it's on sale.  Likewise, they can tell you if an author you follow has a promotion running. 

I wonder if GoodReads will expand this service to cover print books. While ordering a print book online night not have the immediacy of getting an ebook download, if you rely on online ordering for your print book needs, knowing about special offers, and price reductions could still be a great thing for you. But then Amazon probably already does that directly, based on your buying history. 

Promotion Smackdown: The Fussy Librarian vs eReader News Today

I ran two more promotions recently, to advertise The Sixth Discipline being free. That book is always free, but the Amazon numbers for it were dropping; I wanted to get more copies out there, because it drives sales of No Safe Haven (the direct sequel, which is not free, but is reasonably priced at $2.99). I blogged about my earlier promotion efforts back in October.

The first service I used this time is called The Fussy Librarian. A friend had recommended them, and the fee for my options (science fiction for the genre, and free for the price) was only $25, so I went with it. The Fussy Librarian (TFL) sends email to their subscribers (free to readers, of course), and also maintains a searchable database of free books, which contains all the books that have been included in emails for the last 30 days. I'll be interested to see if The Sixth Discipline gets any lift from this. It's an added benefit for the same price.

Of course, it might be hard to separate, because I did do back-to-back promotions again. I had a second promo on eReader News Today (ERNT) the day after the one on TFL. Interestingly, promoting a free science fiction book was also $25 with ERNT.

Well, it as been a few days now, and ERNT won hands down. TFL did okay; I gave away 189 Kindle copies, 20 Nook (B&N), and 11 iBooks. The ERNT promo was the very next day, and that one was huge! Not BookBub huge, but almost as good as my earlier FreeBooksy promot, which cost more than twice as much. I gave away 755 Kindle copies, 23 Nook copies, and 11 on iBooks! Now, a dozen or two could well be hold overs from the TFL site/email, but I can't believe it would be more than that when the intial number topped out at 189. The virtue of those kinds of number is they jump your book up in the Amazon sales rankings.

Amazon has links for the 100 most popular free Kindle books, and also the most popular 100 by genre, e.g., 100 top free science fiction and fantasy. These appear at the bottom of the product page, where the book's ranking is, but you only see the genre links if the book ranks in the top 1,000 of a genre or subgenre. Before these promotions, The Sixth Discipline was hovering around the 25,000 mark for overall free Kindle books.

This was the ranking for T6thD on the day of the Fussy Librarian promo:

4:00 pm

10:00 pm

This was during the ERNT promo:

7:00 pm

11:00 pm

So, what that means is the giveaway numbers stay higher for several days after the promo. In the three days after my book ran on ERNT, its Kindle "sales" per day were 116, 36, and 39.

I think I will try another promotion for a book that's not free, to compare. My Freebooksey promo did much better than when I used Bargain Booksy. That might be purely because there are more people looking for free books than bargain books, which would mean no promo for a sale book is going to do anywhere near as well, not even BookBub.

Act now to win a Kindle copy of Saronna's Gift

Amazon lets anyone host a giveaway of any print book sold by Amazon. If you look on the product page of a book, you'll see the icon right below the "Create a review" button.

Interestingly, you don't have to be the author or publisher to set up a giveaway. The link appears for everyone. Once you click it, you have to commit to paying for the books you're going to give away, select the number of copies, the odds of winning (e.g. one in 100), and provide the wording for win and lose messages. You can also specify a single requirement, such as making people follow you on Twitter or watch a short video or follow the author on Amazon. You can even control whether the link can be shared or not, which controls who can see it.

If you wanted to find a way to gain more Twitter followers, for example, you could pick a popular book and host a giveaway of it.  This is more feasible now, because Amazon now allows folks to host a giveaway of a Kindle book. This is much less expensive (cheaper price and no shipping costs), so it's easier to give away more copies.

I did some print giveaways a while ago, and now I've started one for the Kindle version of Saronna's Gift. Click here to enter!

nb:  The link above will only work until the giveaway runs it course and all five copies are claimed, or March 16, 2016, whichever comes first.

How hard can it be to give away a book?

Harder than you might think. I have been selling my books as ebooks since 2011. I have seven novels and one novella available as ebooks, and one of the novels is also available in print. I have yet to set the book world on fire. Some years were better than others. My best year for sales was in 2013 because that was the year I got a BookBub promotion.

Unlike print, selling ebooks happens entirely online, and some of the best ways to promote ebooks are also online. Several companies offer websites, social media posts, and/or email alerts to tell people about free or cheap books. The services are free to subscribers but usually, authors have to pay a fee to include their books.

Not how but why?

So, why would an author make a book free, let alone pay to advertise that its free? Well, for one thing, you can get reviews that way, and reviews sell books. But even better, if the book has at least one sequel, giving the first book away can make sense. The Sixth Discipline has been free for quite some time, but its number of downloads has been going down lately because it has so much competition.

In May of 2013,  paid $60 to include the listing for The Sixth Discipline in a Bookbub email. They included the links for the US Kindle store, Barnes & Noble Nook, Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, Sony, and Diesel. I got the Kindle numbers right away, but since the other numbers all came through Smashwords, it took a lot longer to find out, but altogether I gave away about 20,000 copies of my book: about 14,000 Kindle copies and the rest split among the other platforms.

Bookbub promotions now start at $99 for books that are free, and go way up from there, depending on the price of the book and the genre. But price aside, the problem with using Bookbub now is that it's very difficult to get  a slot.

Bookbub is the premiere email promotion service and it's going great guns because they figured out that:

• New ebooks from major publishers are overpriced, so people are always looking for deals
• They can make money as an Amazon affiliate (if a customer clicks on a link to a non-free book from a Bookbub email, the link has a code embedded that tells Amazon to credit Bookbub a teeny-tiny percentage of that sale. Teeny-tiny adds up when multiplied by thousands.)
• Readers will use their service if it's free and they make sure the books they're telling readers about are well-written
• If you deliver high enough numbers, authors and even major publishers will pay a lot for your service

Of course, giving away 20,000 copies of a book doesn't do me a lot of good, except it's Book 1 of a two-book series.  In the months that followed the promotion, I sold about 1,200 copies of the sequel No Safe Haven. This points out one huge limitation of giving away a book. Not everyone who downloads it will read it. A lot of people see "Free" and click the button, but don't read the book. I've done it plenty of times myself, so I know. You figure "Get it now, while it's free, and read it later," but later might never come. Unlike books available through a subscription program that limits how many books you can have at a time, free downloaded ebooks have no expiration date. In fact, plenty of people download books without checking whether or not they would want to read it.

FreeBooksy Listing

And while The Sixth Discipline has mainly very good reviews, not every single person who reads it will want to read the sequel. This means for every hundred copies of Book 2 I sold, I had to give away well over a thousand copies of Book 1.

However, Bookbub is now so popular that they can be very, very choosy about the books they list. They make a lot less on free books (a lower author fee and no affiliate percentage), but they always include one or two freebies per email, to keep their readers happy. But even the free ebooks have to have lots of good reviews and a professional-looking cover. And with major publishers wanting to advertise sale prices of backlist books, and a gazillion self published authors trying to get some traction, it's very hard for a self-published author to get a slot with BookBub.

Where else can you go?

There are plenty of other services; none have the impact of BookBub, but they can be worth the time and money to use. I recently tried out a few of them: Book Gorilla (affiliated with Lendle), eBook Daily, Free Booksey, and eBookSoda.  All of them offer varying services at different prices. For example, Book Gorilla lets their subscribers choose how many books maximum to be included per email, with 12 as the smallest, so it costs more to be sure your book will be one of the first 12 in your genre.  They also vary as to range, in that not all of them will post all your buy links.  Book Gorilla and eBook Daily show only Amazon links, not iBooks or B&N.

My results (your mileage may vary)

Freebooksey: ($70) 1,187 Kindle copies (this overlaps eBookdaily.com. so it's hard to separate them), 102 on iBooks, 68 on Nook, and 1 on Kobo (note I also had one Kobo sale of the sequel shortly after, which suggests the Kobo folks don't have as many free books to choose from and actually read the ones they can get)

eBookDaily: (free) 267 Kindle copies (this one is a bit different as they rely on a Facebook page to get submissions from authors and they post the book they select to their website, and tweet it, as well as email it. There is no scheduling mechanism.)

Book Gorilla: ($150) 490 Kindle copies

eBookSoda:  ($27) 68 copies on Kindle, 3 on Google Books, 3 on Smashwords, 1 on iBooks, and 5 on Nook

eBookSoda Listing

So, Freebooksy won this round in total numbers with eBookDaily winning in terms of cost/benefit (hard to beat free).  Freebooksey has a version for sale/cheap books called BargainBooksy, and I might try that for another book if I decide to put one on sale.

Another free ebook!

Updated to show this is now free on Amazon, too! 

It's actually not that easy to give away an ebook, at least not via a vendor site.  Amazon's KDP platform will only let an author make a book free a very limited number of days, and the ebook has to be exclusive to the Kindle store.  None of my books are exclusive to Amazon at the moment. I only do that for the first 90 days when I launch a new book.

However, Smashwords is another story. Smashwords sets no limits on making books free, and when it's free on Smashwords, most of the retailers they distribute to follow suit, eventually. Sometimes it takes them a while, though. But in the meantime, you can get the free ebook from Smashwords in any format, including Kindle and ePub, and always DRM-free. See this post if you want info on putting Smashwords books on a Kindle.

So, I wanted to make another book free. I happen to have one novella for sale, Where Magic Rules, my only fantasy. It has magic and a dragon! I decided to make it free wherever possible as a sort of "summer sale." I changed the price to be free on Smashwords, and the next day it was also free in iBooks!  It took a little longer, but eventually Nook (B&N) and then the Kindle stores followed suit. No luck in the Kobo store yet, but I am watching for the change.  The info on this ebook, my only fantasy, as of now, is listed below. I plan to keep it free for a while, a few weeks or even months.

Where Magic Rules
Joseph Andrews wandered away from an Army Reserve training exercise and into an alternate world where magic rules science and mages rule the land. He has learned the language and taken service with the kindest mage he can find, but he still dreams of the real world.    

When Joe rescues a wounded soldier in service to a dark lord, he finds he has saved not a young boy but a woman who calls herself Phillip and insists she's really a man. Joe is shocked when the Great Mage orders him to go on a quest with Phillip, but his surprise is mild compared to Phillip's outrage. 

Part road movie, part romantic comedy, this novella follows Joe and Phillip as they try to fulfill the Great Mage's demand without killing each other along the way.  

From the Amazon reviews:

“Whatever you have been expecting of a dragon, except for being large, winged, and reptilian, it probably isn't like this dragon. He's one of the most charming characters in the story. I won't reveal any more of the plot, except to say that I enjoyed the book and its twists. While its not a humorous tale, there is quite a bit of humor in it, which was one of the main charms of the story.”

“I've downloaded so many books lately that start off well, but disintegrate a little ways in - it's a real joy to discover a new author who holds her ground throughout.” (review by Janis Ian)

Currently this novella is free in the US Kindle store, and on Smashwords, iBooks, and the Nook store (Barnes & Noble).Hopefully it will be free in the Kobo store soon.  If you want it for your Kindle and you're not in the US, you can get it free from Smashwords and side-load it to the Kindle, or you can try clicking the "tell us about a cheaper price" link on the books Kindle page in your store, and then paste in the link to the Nook store.

Hola, España! Mi libro es gratuito!

The Sixth Discipline is now free in the Spanish Kindle store! I'm not sure why, but I suspect someone clicked the link to tell Amazon about a lower price— or in this case, un precio más bajo. So, there you go, España! Start clicking that “buy” link!

iBooks sales versus Barnes & Noble Nook sales

In an earlier post about my use of a BookBub promotion  back in May, I mentioned that I was guessing that Apple didn't seem to report how many free books they give away any more, but actually, they do. It's just it takes a lot longer to get free book numbers from Apple than it does sales numbers. Interestingly, since my May and early June sales of No Safe Haven (the sequel to the free book) were higher for iBooks than for B&N, I was assuming that I had given away more free copies of The Sixth Discipline on that platform than on B&N. Not so! I actually gave away noticeably fewer (only a little over 2,500 in iBooks, versus 4,000 on B&N). So what does that mean?

I could hypothesize either that there are more free books on the iBooks platform, which makes it harder for an unknown author to stand out, or that there are simply fewer iBooks customers. But either way, iBooks readers have a higher follow-through on actually reading books they get for free. I know from my own experience and from anecdotal evidence that lots of books downloaded for free are never even opened, let alone read. You'll notice I'm assuming that sales of the sequel will be higher for folks who read the first book!

On the other hand, in July, I had higher sales numbers on Nook than on iBooks, so go figure.

BookBub promotion: second wave of numbers

The one drawback to using Smashwords as a portal to other retailers (iBooks store and the Nook store are my biggest non-Kindle markets, but they also cover Sony and Kobo, and a few others) is that it takes a while to get the sales numbers back. Smashwords just recently updated the May numbers both Apple iBooks and Barnes & Noble Nook sales reports. When it came to giveaways, Nook was a winner, at least for me. I gave away over 4,000 Nook copies of The Sixth Discipline! That doesn't compare to the 15,000 copies I gave away in May on the Kindle, but it's still a lot more books than I ever gave away before on any other non-Kindle platform. Sales figures for No Safe Haven, the sequel to the free book, were pretty good for the Nook, but about 20% higher for Apple. I wish I had some giveaways stats for iBooks, but it seems like Apple no longer bothers to report “sales” for free books, so I don't have much to go on in comparing, but since the Kindle and Nook giveaway-to-sales ratios are very similar, I think I probably gave away about 5,000 iBooks copies. Since I don't know for sure, I will go with Nook as the giveaway winner.

The Sixth Discipline is now free in the UK Kindle store!

It seems like Amazon is on a mission! They have made The Sixth Discipline free in the UK Kindle store. That means it's now free in the US, UK, and Canadian Kindle stores, as well as most other retailers.

Fly free, little ebook! Fly free!

The Sixth Discipline is free in Canada!

Good news, eh? The Sixth Discipline has been free in in the US Kindle store since August (due to price matching) but now Amazon has made it free in Canada!

Yay for price matching! I wish I knew what caused this? I've only given away a few copies but it' already moving up in the rankings!

BookBub: a great resource for readers of digital books!

BookBub is a new service that lists both free and reduced price ebooks, available on Kindle and other platforms. They charge authors a (very reasonable) fee for the promotion, but readers can get the info for free. BookBub posts to the web, and also to FaceBook, and they even offer free daily email, which you can filter so you only see books in the genres that interest you.

It's a great service! Did I mention that The Sixth Discipline is listed there today?  here's the blurb they wrote for it:

“Ran-Del, a skilled forest warrior, finds his life turned upside down when a mysterious kidnapper takes him to a terrifying city, foiling his every attempt to escape — a gripping, futuristic novel simmering with suspense.”

And it's going like hotcakes, too! #42 in Free Kindle Books and #4 in free science fiction!

As of 7:30 pm, it was up to #19 in free Kindle books, and #1 in free science fiction!

King of Trees is free for the last time!

Happy May Day!

My alternate history/science fiction novel KING OF TREES will be free in the Kindle store TODAY ONLY (May 1)! This is the last time it will be free!

Here are the links:

US & India Kindle store
UK Kindle store
German Kindle store
French Kindle store
Spanish Kindle store
Italian Kindle store
Japanese Kindle store
Brazilian Kindle store