FreeBooksy has hundreds of thousands of email subscribers, and it’s the site I used.įrom a strictly economic perspective, you can’t really call either a success as I obviously didn’t make my money back. However, it’s also the hardest to get accepted in, and it has strict criteria for authors.Īnother popular site is FreeBooksy.
It has a huge reach, and many authors have reported great results even from free book giveaways. The consensus best of the paid sites is BookBub.
I’ve only got experience with a few sites on that list. Some are free to submit your promotion to some charge you for the privilege of reaching their email subscribers. Here’s a long list of them, with a helpful breakdown.
There are hundreds floating around, so it can be confusing and overwhelming. But a popular alternative (or addition) is submitting your book as a feature on one of many specialist book promotion websites. There are the usual methods, like sharing it on social media, sending an email to subscribers, or using Google/Facebook/Amazon ads.
“If a free book falls flat on Amazon and nobody is around to download it, does it make a sound?”įree book promotions are supposed to get your books into the hands of more people, so you’ve got to actually have a plan and market this giveaway if you want it to have an impact.
I’ve tried the free book giveaway with zero promotion as an experiment, and I got single-digit downloads. You might be wondering why you should pay a third-party to promote your giveaway when Amazon is already doing it? Well, in my own experience, Amazon does very little - if anything - to push your book.
The other is the Free Book Promotion, where you can offer your book for free for five days, either consecutively or spread out over 90 days. One is the Kindle Countdown Deal, where you can discount your eBook but retain the same royalty rate. Why Pay Another Site to Promote Your Amazon Giveaway?Īmazon eBook authors can choose one of two promotional tools every 90 days if they enroll in KDP Select. But are these less tangible and less immediate benefits worth shelling out money to externally promote an Amazon giveaway?Īs a self-published author who has tried this strategy with two Kindle eBooks, here are my thoughts. To this end, there are several websites that will feature your free book for a set price, and send out emails to their large subscriber base. Royalties aren’t the be-all and end-all, and free book promotions can be beneficial in several other ways, from generating interest in your other titles, to reviews, email subscriptions, and cultivating a potentially larger audience for future books. Paying to give one’s books away seems to make even less sense, but some authors have had success marketing these free book promotions via external sites. Yet that’s one promotional tool Amazon offers if you enroll in its KDP Select program. We’re not charities, after all, and I’m sure we all want to be compensated for our efforts. Giving your eBooks away for free doesn’t sit well with most authors, myself included.