Today is my first venture with the Kindle Select Program wherein a book goes free to the public.
Wild Rose Press, who publishes my romance novels, decided to enter their new titles into this program before the official release date. I am really hoping this offer raises awareness of my series.
Before we proceed further, please go now and download your free copy. Share this link with everyone you know! Please “Like” the page while you are there.
Warrior Rogue (The Drift Lords Series) by Nancy J. Cohen is FREE on Kindle Feb. 13-17. http://www.amazon.com/Warrior-Rogue-Drift-Series-ebook/dp/B00AU62NQS/.
I’m also running a Valentine’s Day contest in conjunction with the free giveaway. Click on the Contest tab here: https://www.facebook.com/pages/Nancy-J-Cohen/112101588804907 and remember to Like the page while you are there.
What have I learned from this experience? It takes a tremendous amount of time away from writing to put up a free book. Why? Because you have to publicize it all over the Net. How do you do this? Here are some sites that will help:
http://digitalbooktoday.com/maximize-your-kdp-select-free-days/
http://indiereviewtracker.com/making-your-e-book-free/
http://www.rachelleayala.com/p/promo-sites.htmlhttp://www.thekindlebookreview.net/author-resources/
http://writeonthewater.com/?p=11162
From helpful sites such as these and from posts by other authors, I’ve gathered two pages of places to notify about an upcoming or current free release. Twitter and Facebook accounts have to be notified on the day of the freebie, but a bunch of other ones expect advance notice. So I’ve been busy filling out these forms.
Here is a list of tips, in no particular order, on what to do before your book goes free.
- Make a list of promotional sites that will announce your free book.
- Notify the sites that require advance notice.
- Decide if you want to pay for ads at any of these sites.
- Get your book reviewed. Some of the sites will only take your title if you’ve had XX number of reviews with a rating of 4.0 or higher.
- Schedule a blog to run on the first free day to announce your freebie offer.
- Prepare a sheet of tweets with hashtags and Facebook posts in advance.
- Schedule tweets ahead of time to run throughout the day of your freebie.
- Send a newsletter to your mailing lists with your free book announcement.
What else would you add?
I set up some tweets for you, Nancy. Great list & links. Good luck with your release. I’m off the download it. Thanks!
Nancy, that sound you just heard was your e-book hitting my Kindle. Best of luck with your new one.
Gave it a Tweet. Who can refuse a free book with such a yummy cover too?
Just clicked it. Good luck.
Yeah, it’s a giant pain in the butt to post on all those sites but it really helps. We posted to at least 30 (didn’t bother with the paid ones) and got a lot of reviews. That was almost two months ago and they are still trickling in…one from a Canadian ebook reviewer this morning.
Best of luck to you M’Lady. Free deals sure seem to work out for me.
Good luck – sounds like a lot of work but worth every minute. Off to download…
Thanks for the info, Nancy, and best of luck with the book! This is very timely for me as I’ll be following your footsteps in a few months. It’s always nice to have someone blaze the trail ahead of you.
Thanks, guy, for your downloads and tweets. I’ve been busy at critique group today and hawking my freebie everywhere on my lists. It’s a daunting job. In one way, I’m glad it’s five days straight so I don’t have to do this again. On the other hand, how do you keep the momentum going after day one?
Schedule tweets using tweetdeck or another app like it and be sure to use hashtags to get beyond your followers & reach others.
Also with Amazon KDP, you’ll have other opportunities to give out freebies. Joe & others might share a strategy to optimize momentum. Good luck.
I’ve scheduled tweets using Hootsuite and use Hashtags on all of them. Good advice.
This 5 day block is my only one for this book. The publisher initiated putting our books into the KDP program.
Kris, I am hoping to get some reviews out of this. Also, if people like book number two, maybe they’ll buy book number one. What’s up with the Likes on Amazon, though? They were down today. Is Amazon getting rid of them like the tags?
Downloaded, Facebooked and tweeted! Good luck with the freebie!
Thanks so much, Terri!
Nancy, curious how your freebie did for you?
I am currently running one of my own books, KARL’S LAST FLIGHT as a freebie today and tomorrow in hopes of resurging it, my first novel, in the market.
Within hours of going free, it is at #7 in it’s category, with another day and a half to go at free.