Free Books Amazon

2 eBook Gifts Until Cyber Monday

 


Early Holiday Gift for My Readers: 3 for 1 eBook

From Nov 25 to 11:59 EST on Monday, Nov 28
Purchasing one of my books on Amazon, and sending the receipt by email,
will give you two more FREE ebooks that are listed below.
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Let all your writer friends know about this!
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Just take a copy or pic of your sales receipt, and attach it to your email,
sending it latest on Tuesday, Nov 29 to 111Publishing a t gmail d o t com

You will receive two more books of your choice for FREE.  Don’t forget to state in your email which of the books you would like.
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111 Tips on How to Market Your Book for Free: Detailed Plans and Smart Strategies for Your Book’s Success

111 Tips to Create Your Book Trailer

Book Marketing on a Shoestring: How Authors Can Promote their Books Without Spending a Lot of Money

111 Tips to Get FREE Book Reviews: Best Strategies for Getting Lots of Great Reviews

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Happy Cyber Monday : )

 

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Want Books Permanently FREE on Amazon?

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Free-Books

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There are lots of pro’s and con’s regarding free books and authors are discussing this topic since years, just look at the KDP forums, this thread for example: “Do not give your book away free! EVER”.  Do you feel you are subsidizing the reading habits of a small portion of the American public?
If you wrote only one book so far, it does not make any sense at all to set it up for free.  But after the third or fourth book or a series, offering one book, maybe the first in the series, as a permanently free book on Amazon will help to introduce many new readers. Read more how you can arrange this without opting for KDP Select exclusivity!
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Free via KDP Select
Paying members of KU can ‘borrow’ books as part of their membership.  Authors can give their book away for free, as a 5-day-promotion, during a 90-day KDP-Select period.  The rest of the time, it remains paid for people who aren’t part of this lending club.
The catch: your book must be exclusively sold on Amazon. No Apple iBooks, no Barnes & Noble, no Kobo, no website sales. Exclusivity! Exclusivity is great for Amazon, but it’s not so great for indie authors who want to maintain their independence and build a readership across all online retailers.
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Permanently Free eBook
The only official method of pricing an ebook for free in the Kindle store is for authors to enroll their books in KDP Select, an optional program that requires exclusivity.  Amazon likes to offer books at rock-bottom prices, but on the other hand Amazon is the only online retailer who restricts the ability of authors and publishers to price their books permanently for FREE.
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How it Works:
There’s another, better way, to have an e-book permanently free on Amazon and it doesn’t require exclusivity. Self-publishing authors have been using Smashwords and other online retailers to get permanently free e-books into Amazon without exclusivity. It’s a way to trick Amazon’s price-matching.  They just price their books on Amazon for $.99 – and offer it at Smashwords for free.  Soon Apple iBooks will pick up the new free price, and B&N and Kobo will follow soon.
Now it’s your turn to let Amazon know about your free book.  Click the link under the “Product Details” where it says, “tell us about a lower price” to report that your book is available for free at another retailer.  Provide Amazon with a direct hyperlink to one or all of the retailers.  You need to report the book separately at their other stores in different countries as well, in order to encourage price matching in each store.  Amazon will then “price-match” – not always right away, but most likely eventually.

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Series and Prequels Profit Most
So, if you write series, price your series starter as a perma-free book. The reason: It is proven that series with free series starters earn more overall sales than series without free series starters. iBooks does more to promote free than any other retailer with their regular “First in Series Free” promotions.  Free books can build higher readership (provided they are as good as the paid ones) and can help you establish your first reviews.  However free doesn’t mean the reader will read it or finish it, they’re probably less likely to finish a free book if it doesn’t keep their attention.  A great way to introduce a new book is also to write a short prequel and set it up for free – with lots of info and links to your upcoming new book.

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Conclusion
If you have a standalone book on pre-order, you can price another standalone book at free to drive up readership, and then use the last pages of the free book (and not only those) to advertise your pre-order.  At the end of every book, you should provide a listing of all your other books with sales links anyway. Bestselling author Derek Haines: “I had a perma-free ebook for a couple of years using this method, and it did wonders for my other e-books.  As long as you have enough books published to allow you to use one as a loss leader, it is well worth trying.”
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Really Smart Authors use “Pay-with-a-Tweet”
The only disadvantage of giving away your book on Amazon for free: You will never know who downloaded your title.  To learn more who is interested in your writing: give away the e-book from your own website and let readers “pay-with-a-tweet“.   The benefit will not only be that you get to know your audience, but they also automatically spread the word about your book to all their  Twitter followers, and those may re-tweet it too.  You get the idea!

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If you would like to get a mentor and our support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer for three months all this and more for only $179 – or less than $2 per day!  Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting / Book Marketing for your success: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars

To learn more about professional book marketing and publishing, please read also “Book Marketing on a Shoestring
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00UAVL3LE

Our email newsletters with free insider tips are sent out once a month. To sign up, just go to the form on the right site of each blog post.

5 Ways How You Can Beat Your Book’s Competition

. Book-Competition . Did you notice that all of the online book sites, be it BarnesandNoble.com (they show even several slots with books in the same genre), Amazon.com and Apple’s book sales pages of your book have a listing at the bottom of the screen that says “Customers also bought”  or “People who bought this book also bought …” and then it shows all the books of your competition. They are listed on print sites or e-book sites (or both). . Write More Books If you write more books, say between three and nine books, and readers like what you do, guess whose books appear in this paragraph? Yours! If you only publish one book, then those slots get filled with books, written by other authors.  These book suggestions show that readers who liked not only, but also bought these books.  A great example of a very prolific writers with more than 20 books is Jan Scarbrough.  Just click on one of her books, scroll down and you will see lots of her other books shown under “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought…” . Write More Short Stories However, it might take years until you have written so many books that only yours show up as suggestions. An even better way to promote your writing is to write and sell short stories as e-books (either self-published or traditionally). Unlike book publishers, short story publishers only hold onto exclusive rights to the story for a limited period of time. After that period of time, either the rights revert to you or they become non-exclusive. Read more about book contracts and rights in former blog posts. Your license your copyright for a certain period of time. After this period of time – specified by your publishing contract – you can then put your short story up as an e-book or put it in an e-book collection of your own (or both), without having to remove that story from the place of first publication. If you self-publish your short stories you can do whatever you want and don’t need to wait until your publishing contract expires.  Short story markets will allow new readers to sample your work.  Readers you would never ever reach without. . Sampling is the Best Way to Hook a Reader Retail businesses known the importance of sampling.  Sampling in grocery stores work.  I almost always buy these food novelties after I can try them.  Then there are the many samples arriving in the weekly flyers, and personal products, such as shampoo or body lotions which get promoted through hotels to their guests. In the past some publishers would offer the first chapter of each book in their new book listings, but they only handed these reading samples out at book fairs or to bookstore owners.  However, barely anyone read them.  Now, readers can download samples of any book published electronically. If they like the book, they will most likely buy it. . Write a FREE e-Book It doesn’t need to be a full-length novel, just more than a short story.  You certainly can implement all your other book’s sales page links, your Social Media links and even ready-to-click tweets about your book.  Readers want to know more and interact with the author who’s book they are buying – not only see ads with the message: Buy my book, buy my book, buy my book … Readers rather want to see samples of your writing before they purchase more of your books. . Start With Maximizing Your Foreign Presence – For FREE To maximize your presence in overseas Amazon Kindle stores, just set up an Author Central account in each of those country-specific sites where your book is available.  As Amazon divided the world in single countries, announce your Countdown Deals, new book launches or Free Kindle KDP Days in several languages: Order at http://www.Fiverr.com a short translation of 10 tweets in Spanish, French, German etc. for $5 / 200 words. The countries with the most usage of eReaders, according due to a survey of Bookboon are USA, UK, Netherlands, Belgium, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark etc. . Make sure that not only your books, blogs and short stories, but also your social media content has substance, and that it adds real value for your audience.  Substance comes from consistent interesting blog content, real-time social media engagement, superb visuals and videos, interesting infographics to increase visitor loyalty, plus a bit of individual magic.  Problogger also published more practical ideas how to beat your business competition – valid for writers too.

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this customized Online Seminar / Consulting for writers: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 1,100 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon. Thanks a lot for following: @111publishing http://www.111publishing.com http://www.e-Book-PR.com/ http://www.international-ebooks.com/ http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+   . Hyper Smash Pingate Tagged: People who bought this book also bought, Sampling is the Best Way to Hook a Reader, Write a FREE e-Book, write more books, your books competition

Free Books: 100 Legal Sites to Download Literature

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Amazon, Google, B&N and Apple all offer free eBooks in their stores, but there are lots of other sites to find free e-books.  No registration is required to download free e-books on the sites that JustEnglish.me compiled, it’s a great list of webpages for your convenience.  It contains among others a wide range from classics, who’s copyright expired, all the way to mysteries and even textbooks for students:

  • Classics: Browse works by Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad and other famous authors
  • Featured books about celebrities, movies, fashion and more
  • Mystery books from Sherlock Holmes to more contemporary authors
  • Refresh your memory of world history, the classics and U.S. history
  • Download books in a foreign language like French, Spanish and even Romanian
  • Websites that boast collections of graphic novels, romance novels, fantasy books and more
  • From Shakespeare to George Bernard Shaw to more contemporary playwrights, visit these sites
  • Textbooks: If you don’t absolutely need to pay for your textbooks, save yourself a few hundred dollars by reviewing these sites.
  • Even children’s books are now available online. Find illustrated books, chapter books and more

For even more free book sites, check out this list:
http://justenglish.me/2012/09/01/free-books-100-legal-sites-to-download-literature/

… and if you like to listen to audio-books get some of them for free here:  http://www.librophile.com/#!/ebooks/popular/free

Where do YOU download free e-books?

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If you would like to get more support in all things publishing, have your book intensively promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites – or to learn how you can make yourself a name as an author through content writing: We offer all this and more for only $179 for three months – or less than $2 per day! Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Seminars
Or visit http://www.e-book-pr.com/book-promo/
to advertise your new book, specials, your KDP Select Free Days or the new Kindle Countdown Deals.

Please check out all previous posts of this blog (there are more than 980 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.
Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing

http://www.111publishing.com

http://www.e-Book-PR.com/

http://www.international-ebooks.com/

http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Tagged: books for free, copyright expired, download a free e-book, free e-books, public domain, websites that offer free e-books, where to find free e-books on the Internet

Amazon in India, the World’s Most Avid Readers

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Who Spends the Most Time Reading in the World?  INDIA  It took the Western world a bit by surprise, that the most avid readers can be found in India. See the info-graphic by Publishing Perspectives. Canada is #21, Germany #22 and the USA #23 …
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David Gaughran wrote:”The Indian market has huge potential: a burgeoning middle class which speaks English and enjoys an increasing level of disposable income. Skeptics might point to high levels of poverty and low levels of internet connectivity, but with a population of 1.2 billion, only a very small percentage of the population needs to purchase devices (or read on existing devices such as lap tops or smartphones) before this is an extremely important market.”
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Forbes.com posted on July 2, 2013:  Amazon’s Perfect Timing for India – Why Jeff Bezos’ late India entry will work to the company’s advantage.  Business Today wrote: Amazon launches India website, begins with books and movies categories.
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Most popular in India: self-help books
Penguin India, for example, has sold 5,000 copies of The Ultimate Visual Dictionary. According to a report published in The Sunday Times, in small towns, encyclopedias and dictionaries are sold by travelling salesman and are often occupy pride of place as the sole book owned by a family.
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The strong market for educational books reflects the fierce competition faced by young Indians when applying for a job or a place in the university. Self-help books, how-to guides and textbooks are considered the quickest way to improve prosperity and social status. Every middle-class family dreams of having a doctor or engineer in the house.
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Children-India
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Reading for pleasure is considered less useful and a novel is a bestseller if it sells 2,000-3,000 copies, a tiny number in a country of more than one billion people.  India seems to be almost a paradise for non-fiction authors!
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More readers
With literacy rising, there are also more reasons to pick up a book: Improving conversational skills, being ‘in the know’, and getting cheaper books.
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More publishers
Penguin India, is celebrating its 25th year in India. Plus there are other big publishing houses such as Random House and HarperCollins on the Sub-Continent. There are also independent publishers, for example Katha Press. And many writers are self-publishing, in print or digitally.
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More contests and prizes
Notable ones are the Hindu Literary Prize, the DSC Prize, Shakti Bhatt First Book Prize, and many others.
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More Festivals
Mumbai has three literature fests, Goa, two. There are fests in Kerala, Kolkata, Hyderabad; and these are just the major ones. Many more literature events are taking place in other Indian cities.
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More authors

Goodreads Listopia presents a huge list of “Best Indian Books” – and readers can vote!  
One more author from India: Fiza Pathan.  Her books (short stories) as well as the new one
Classics: Why we should encourage children to read them  (launch July 2013), 
can be found on Amazon. Poetry lovers go to http://insaneowl.com to read more from Fiza. 

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Classics-for-Children

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Amazon explains:
“Authors can track your book sales to customers in India with the new KDP sales reporting, detailed by country. Digital Books enrolled in KDP Select will be eligible to earn 70% royalty for sales to our customers in Brazil, Japan, and India. The List Price you set for Brazil, Japan, and India must also meet the 70% List Price requirements for sales to customers in these territories. If your Digital Book is not enrolled in KDP Select or you do not meet the 70% List Price requirements, you will earn 35% royalty.”   Let me add this: Authors can enroll in KDP Select (which means their book can be borrowed by Prime Members, and which earns the author more than $2 per borrowed book) but they do not have to use the 5 free days, if they don’t want. 

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 785 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/
http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Got an Unfair Book Review after Your FREE KDP Days?

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Then you are not alone. I heard this from many authors, and don’t even want to call them reviews – as these people totally ignore the rules how to write a book review – rather bashing authors and their work. Some people are hoarding free books, without checking them before, they don’t even read the “Look Inside” part on Amazon’s page and then, when it is not the right genre or a book in a series, or when it is too long or too short, they write harsh complaints, instead of writing a fair and professional review. 

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Just one example:
A great novel with 91 customer reviews, almost all in the 5-star range, received these negative “reviews”, after having the book up for two days on Amazon’s KDP Select.

1-Star Review
“I really can’t complain about this since it was a free book, but it…
By the end of the book, I didn’t like any of the characters….”

3-Star Review
“This was a “borrowed” book that I was able to get for being an Amazon Prime member. In a nutshell, this book entertained me for a few days, but I would not recommend it to a friend.”

90% of this books negative reviewers had not bought the book, one reviewer borrowed it through Prime Membership, the rest got it for free at Amazon’s KDP days, obviously without even reading the books description, nor the title headline (where the series was mentioned).  These reviewers just took their frustration out via an Amazon “review”, bashing the free book they had received on their Kindle.

Another example:
A #1 bestseller book in its category, with almost 5,000 !!! reviews. From the 281 “reviewers”, who gave 1-Star, only three of them had actually bought the book! It really seems to be a pattern that people, who download the book for free are very often writing negative reviews.

5 star: (2,802)
4 star: (1,023)
3 star: (554)
2 star: (278)
1 star: (281)
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Let your readers and friends decide if these negative reviews are helpful
Rating the existing book #reviews as “helpful” or “unhelpful” makes a significant impact! Voting for the most helpful reviews, your friends have the power to move them to the head of the line…

Amazon has this rarely used function: “Help other customers find the most helpful reviews” and “Was this review helpful to you? Yes / No”  

There is also another way to boost your book, in order to get more readers and reviews, which we explained in a former blog: “HIGHLIGHTS” in your book: A great tool in Amazon’s algorithm list for book popularity.

Laura Miller is a senior writer for Salon wrote: “Unless such a review is a spiteful slap-down written to gratify the un-examined resentments of the worst sort of reader, how welcome (let alone “useful”) can it really be?”  And think about it: “…it seems the more success you have, the harder some people are on you…”

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Funny, negative reviews
Bestseller author Rayne Hall just blogged about negative, but funny reviews she received, some are really hilarious. Have a look at her article, sampling some of the stupidities for her highly popular novel Storm Dancer (dark epic fantasy novel):

“This book is too long. I had to spend many hours reading it. I’m busy and have other things to do.”

“The character of Queen Matilda is not believable”.    There’s no Queen Matilda in the book.

Read more here: http://venturegalleries.com/blog/have-you-ever-received-any-negative-reviews-that-were-really-funny-most-authors-have/#sthash.F0yMmfCb.dpuf

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If you would like to get help in all things publishing, have your book heavily promoted and learn how to navigate social media sites: We offer all this and more for only a “token” of $1 / day for 3 months. Learn more about this individual book marketing help: http://www.111Publishing.com/  Once you are on this website, click on Seminar to register.

Please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are 785 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and to StumpleUpon.

Thanks a lot for following:

@111publishing
http://pinterest.com/111publishing/
http://on.fb.me/TvqDaK
http://bit.ly/VmtVAS 111Publishing @ Google+

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Free Days on Amazon KDP Select – is it for you?

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FREE_ADVERTISING

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In Part 1 of this Amazon KDP Select article, lets look at pro’s and con’s of using free days and participating in the Prime Member Lending Library. Part 2, the next blog post will show you how to organize your free days and will give you lots of links for free advertising, plus marketing tips for your free days and beyond.

Authors are divided in praising or damning Amazon’s KDP Select Program. This book marketing opportunity may or may not work for your book. It can put your novel or non-fiction work in front of thousands of readers so, at the very least, it’s a great way to grow a readership.
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The Upside: Pro’s of KDP Select
You are allowed to select five “free” promotional days within the 90-day KDP Select period into the Lending Library, where the value of each borrow is currently $1.70. Each counts as a “unit sold” and helps your paid sales rankings. You might gain more reviews. Books with a greater number of reviews have a higher probability of being featured in book blogs.

Readers who are eager to download free books choose those that have more reviews because a higher number of reviews “validates” the book and indicates it is worthy of a download. They also suggest that in the readers’ eyes, this metric is more important than the ranking (number of stars) the book has because readers understand that some people may not like a good book and leave a negative review.
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Readership Explosion: With KDP Select, a new author can grow a following at an enormous rate, and will garner far more reviews than with sales that trickle in under normal circumstances through sheer visibility in the free KDP Select store.  After getting downloaded thousands of times, chances are you’ll reach more readers who will love your book and recognize your name as an author.

Amazon rewards sales with visibility. They treat free downloads the same as sales – according to their number of downloads, placing the author’s book cover in places such as “customers who bought this also bought” section, below other books purchased by those who downloaded the free book, and often in the same genre. KDP Select gives you indirectly promotion not only for the free book but also for the other books written by you listed on your Amazon Author page.

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Possible Downside: Con’s of KDP Select
You must commit exclusivity with Amazon for 90 days, which means that you must remove your e-book (NOT the print version!) from all other retailers and give up your e-book royalties from Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Apple iBook store and Sony’s Nook eBook store or wherever else you sell it. If you are earning more than 80 or 90% of your royalties from Amazon, then the decision to go exclusively with them for 90 days to enter the KDP Select program including Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is an easy one. An Amazon KDP Select Press Release explains that on average, by joining KDP Select, you can earn an additional 26% in royalties from the KDP Select fund, on top of royalties from your paid sales.

Leaving those other platforms, you are also giving up your current sales rankings on them. It could be very difficult to scale those bestselling lists again and reclaim your previous royalties from non-Amazon sources. If your royalty stream from Amazon is less than 70%, think twice if you really want to go with KDP select as you will loose significant royalties on other platforms.

You might also garner a number of negative reviews from people who would not normally buy your type of book, yet download it on free days. When they find out it is not to their taste or not what they expected, some of them seem to enjoy telling everyone why they did not like it.

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What to consider?
How well are you selling on your platforms? The more you are selling, the more likely you are to be on best-selling lists at Amazon, which greatly increases your discoverability and usually translates into higher lends and “free” giveaways – and therefore greater post-“free” sales.

On the other hand, you also might be well-positioned at your other online retailers. Which weighs more heavily? Being well ranked on Amazon or non-Amazon platforms?

Your ranking on Amazon is weighted more than any other platform, as Amazon represents the lion’s share of the e-book market. If you are already on a Top 100 Amazon Bestselling list in a genre, what would the increase get you? Would this increase bounce you into the Top 50 or even Top 10? On average, increasing your best-selling Amazon ranking will increase your royalties by about 7% for each page (Top 80, 60, 40, 20). If you sell well, you will lend well, and you will “give away” well. If you are not selling well, you will not lend well, or even “give away” well.

Most successful seem to be authors with multiple books or a series of books out – they use promo days to give away the first book in a series, hoping that customers will come back and buy the other books from that series. There is no guarantee with this strategy, but if your sales at the other e-book online retailers have been stale, then taking a 90-day-gamble on KDP Select might be an interesting experiment. If you have six to ten book titles it’s easier for readers to find you. An author with so many books has probably grown his or her platform over the years anyway. But when you only have one or two titles, KDP Select is the only program which can accelerate the long, draining process of finding readers for your book.
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Goodreads has Giveaway Contests too:

Amazon’s KDP Select is not the only game in town: Goodreads has ‘Giveaway’ contests which is a great way to raise awareness for your books as well as generating sales and reviews. On average, at Goodreads 45% of giveaway winners will review your book – and getting good reviews is one of the best ways to improve your book’s chance of long-term success. Goodreads website offers plenty of advice on getting the most out of your giveaway contest.

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Plan your free days well ahead – at least one month!

  1. Get as many reviews as possible, free book listings often promote only books with a certain amount of reviews. And readers also check out the amount of reviews (not necessarily the stars), to find out if your book is worthwhile to download.
  2. As Amazon Prime Members tend to borrow rather $5.99 – $9.99 e-books, raise the price of you book short before you join KDP Select. To give away a $0.99 e-book for free or to offer it to borrow is a bit of a joke.
  3. Check out if your book is really in the right category. Compare with bestsellers in your genre.
  4. Updated your e-book file and include a page within the first part of the book, asking readers to leave a review for you on Amazon; include a direct link to your books’ page. Add a link to your homepage and add all of your other books as well
  5. Don’t use your promotional days on the weekend (especially Saturday) because people are typically away from their computers and spending time with their families on the weekend, especially holiday weekends. Weekdays are generally better and if you can have at least two days back-to-back you will have more time to build momentum for your promotion.
  6. Inform the free book listing sites a month in advance to have your book listed – mostly for free. Make sure you list PixelofInk, EReaderNewsToday and Digital Book Today. Read their submission rules carefully.
  7. Write an article in your blog about your free days, and ping / share a link to this blog post on Google+, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest etc. several times a day in a variety of headlines.

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More promotional tips and dozens of links for free e-book promotions in Part 2 of this series.
See also a great blog article “The Secret Anatomy of KDP” by James Calbraith, where he explains “The algorithm shows your book to millions of readers; there is no ad that reaches more people, no social network campaign. However…”

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Chime.in, Facebook, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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Get a FREE Beta-Reader for Your Manuscript

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Even so the program does not substitute a professional editor, this free software will save you a lot of editing costs if you pay your editor by the hour.  And it can help you to improve your writing – tremendously.

Travis Luedke, author of The Nightlife New York  writes:

“It finds all the sticky sentences, all the repetitive word use errors, all the instances of was, had, could, should, would, and that….that need to be reconsidered or removed from your manuscript.

It does not editing for me, but it is teaching me to look at my own material like an editor.”
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Read more in Travis’ blog about http://prowritingaid.com

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out all previous posts of this blog (there are almost 600 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “LIKE” next to it. There is also the “SHARE” button underneath each article where you can submit the article to Pinterest, Google+, Twitter, Tumblr and StumpleUpon.

Follow on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on other social networking sites of your choice for other writers who might also enjoy this blog and find it useful. Thanks, Doris

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No More 99cent Books! Decent Pay for Decent Work!

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Gail Gentry wrote a great blog about ebook prices – I fully agree what she writes. If ALL authors would value their books – and their work – more, would band together and prize all their works at least to the level of a cappuccino… and get rid of these 99cent books.
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Gail wrote: “I’ve watched the trends and read articles about how new indie authors must price their books at 99 cents. Get the sales out there – get your name recognized. Great! I can do that. Sell 100 books, make $100, right, or well, hey, close to it, right? RIGHT? My bubble is then burst when I’m told the percentage tier for sale prices on Amazon. For every book you list and sell at 99 cents, you get 35%. Wait, what? For every book I sell at 99 cents I get 35 cents? So for my brand spanking new book I only get a mere 8 cents more than a book, an old book, a used, worn book, a dated book, that I would sell as a yard sale item for a quarter?

Now, I work a full-time job and in addition I have a part-time job where I freelance as a typist for a small company. I only have to work about one minute in my part-timer to get paid 35cents. I don’t even want to do the math and add up the hours I’m spending writing my book, dreaming about my book, editing and revising; and, this doesn’t even take into account what it’s going to take to have cover art designed, or pay CreateSpace for hardbound copies, in addition to advertising. How about the countless hours of sleep I’ve lost – some nights I’m lucky to get 3 or 4 hours before I turn around and go to my day job. I figure, it’s okay. I love writing. It’s my passion, my heart.

HOWEVER, it’s not okay to get 35 cents for every book I sell. Sorry but I’m not going to accept that. It’s not even okay to sell my book for 99 cents. I look around and see not only good authors but GREAT authors selling their books for 99 cents. And, it’s not okay with them to sell their books either for 99cents but they’re having to do it to stay competitive.

I say BULL….SHIT. When did it become the norm to throw all the books written by Indie authors into the marked-down bin? Now I know I’ll probably get the comments that “if you’re a true writer, you’re not in it for the money, you’re in it for the passion.” To that I say DOUBLE BULL….SHIT.  If I wanted to just plain write, then I wouldn’t revise, I wouldn’t edit, I wouldn’t hire a cover artist, I wouldn’t have hardbound copies made, etc., etc.  Anyone who wants to tell me that they would, then go for it. Prove it. Send me your book for free, and I hope it’s okay if I in turn send you over a mailing list to all of my friends – I’ll even tweet my 6600 followers on Twitter and let them know you’re giving your books away for free from here to eternity just because it makes you happy to have your writing in someone else’s hands and you’re not looking for anything in return. No reviews, no “Likes”, no recognition, no money to cover your out-of-pocket costs.

After you send me your book just keep in mind, I didn’t say I would read your book. Change your mind? Yup, thought so. If you don’t value your work any more than that, why should I? Free books are what I get with my library card. At least I know the authors sitting on the shelves in the library believed in themselves enough to have made an investment in their writing.

My good friend, R. S. Guthrie, has said it and I agree with him 100% that it’s up to authors – both seasoned and green – to move the price market. I’m an unknown author, I have yet to prove my worth – I might even suck. Still, when I release my book this year I will be debuting it at $2.99, maybe even $4.99.

I will leave it up to the promotions to reduce the price or do a give-away. I can tell you there are just as many authors out there selling their books at $2.99 or above that I have not heard of as there are selling them at 99 cents. So what’s the difference. On my Amazon site, I plan on having an excerpt from the book or perhaps the first chapter – something for the public to read in order to be able to make an informed choice on whether or not it’s a book they would like to delve into. I believe it’s not so much the price of the book that will get me my readers but how I market my book and the quality of my book.

Shall I say that again? I believe it’s not so much the price of the book that will get me my readers but how I market my book and the quality of my book.”

Read the article in full length here: http://chickletslit.wordpress.com/2012/05/08/coming-soon-reality-smash-hit-market-preppers/ and let me know what YOU think about e-book prices from independent authors. Should they stay at the free or 99cent – level or should authors receive decent pay for their work?

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If you enjoyed this blog post, please feel free to check out previous posts (there are almost 500 of them : ) if you haven’t already. Why not sign up to receive them regularly by email? Just click on “Follow” in the upper line on each page – and then on “Like” next to it.

Follow us on Twitter: @111publishing

And don’t forget to spread the word on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, Tumblr or StumbleUpon – or other social networking sites of your choice) – other writers might also enjoy this blog and find it useful.

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Facts About Selling Your Book too Cheap

Melissa Forster

Melissa Forster, bestseller author wrote in a terrific blog:

“There is value in listing your book for free, at least for right now there is value. Readers will download your book in droves. Your rankings will soar. Immediately after your free days, at 99 cents you will sell many books, probably about 1000 in three days, equating to $350.

However, you would probably reap at least 1/3 equivalent sales at $2.99, increasing your revenue to 70% while also engaging readers who will think before downloading, which equates to readers who will more likely read your book–you have just added worth to your hard work.”

“Here’s a great fact — not all free and 99 cent books are read. Yet, most $2.99 books and above are read.”

“The difference? The books are not impulse buys, but they’re reasonable enough that readers who are interested in really reading the books will read them. More importantly, you are putting a value on your book, your writing, and your time.  You only need to sell 125 books to earn the same $350 at $2.99.”

Read her eye-opening article: http://www.worldliterarycafe.com/content/placing-value-free-marketing

See also an interview with her: http://melissafoster.com/content/over-edge-book-review-interviews-melissa-foster

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