While there’s some debate going about whether offering a free ebook is a good marketing tactic, you may want to give it a try for yourself.
So far, I’ve got Ice Cracker II up at Feedbooks and Smashwords, where it’s gotten quite a few downloads. I’ll try some other sites as time permits, but, for now, here’s a short list of sites.
Where to Publish Your Free Ebook (for free!):
There are other sites I found through Google, but some of them never sent the verification email they promised or seemed a bit sketchy (sketchy stuff on the internet associated with the word “free”–who knew?). If you have other recommendations, please post them in the comments.
I’ll be real interested to hear how your freexperiment works out. I just dropped the prices of all my Kindle books to $2.99, and even that prompts screaming protest from some who believes it’s too low. All kinds of opinions out there, but I’ve come to value yours quite a lot.
That’s some holiday season sucking up, right there.
Oh, yes, Mark, I’ve seen some of those arguments about price!
I’m not sure which side of the fence I’ll end up on when it comes to the free ebook (though someone did end up buying my novel on Smashwords after picking up the free story–first sale there from someone I didn’t give a coupon to, heh), but I don’t think $2.99 is too low, given how generous the cut is for indie authors. I imagine that much of the frustration comes from those going through publishers, who can’t really afford to compete at that price point.
It’s fun watching this all enfold though!
I personally think $2.99 is a reasonable price point. A hard back costs what it costs due to proof reading, editing, production, marketing, distribution, storage and middle men. With your own work you only have couple of these to worry about and some of them are at a much reduced level. You still need to be proof read and edited. You still have a middle man to worry about but I’m not sure what sort of percentage places like Smashwords charge.
Why publishers think people will pay more for the electronic version that the physical version is beyond me.
Thanks for your post. From my previous free ebooks sharing an experience, I think BookRix, Scribd, and Obooko (here it’s missing) is better for free ebooks sharing.