As an Indie, I’ve often used Amazon KDP’s ‘free days’ to promote my books, but 5 free days out of 90 has never felt like enough. And being forced to sell the book exclusively on Amazon for those 90 days rankled. That’s why I’ve always yearned to make at least some of my books ‘permafree’ – i.e. permanently free.
In marketing terms, this is called a ‘loss leader’, meaning that revenue is lost from one book in order to lead potential customers to other books that are not free. Given how hard it is for Indies to be ‘discovered’ in the first place, permafree can be a very powerful marketing tool, but only if you have one or more series. Make the first book in the series free and hope like hell that people like it enough to buy the rest.
Unfortunately, Amazon doesn’t support permafree. Or should I say, it only supports permafree as part of its price matching policy. This is where going wide comes in. You put the first book of the series up for free on a number of retail platforms and then request that Amazon match ‘the price’. If all goes according to plan, the book will eventually become permafree on Amazon as well.
So that’s the theory. Here comes the reality check. Up the top of this blog you’ll now see a page called ‘Books by acflory’. If you click on it, you’ll see every book I’ve ever published, along with a link direct to the named retailer [sorry, the links in the sidebar lead only to the Amazon ‘Look Inside’ feature].
There are five links to five retailers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Angus & Robertson and Indigo. And guess what? Miira and The Vintage Egg are now permafree on all of them except Amazon.
You can either click on the book page or click on the links below. Oh, and while you’re at it, please scroll down to the end of the post for details on the 5 free days coming up for ‘How to Print Your Novel with CreateSpace‘. Even if you never print your novel, you may as well have the book handy, right? 🙂
Miira, book 1 of the Innerscape cycle
Click one of the links below to be taken to the permafree version of Miira at that retailer:
Barnes & Noble [Nook format]
Kobo [Kobo format]
Angus & Robertson [provides the Kobo format]
Indigo [provides the Kobo format]
The Vintage Egg, book 1 of Postcards from Tomorrow
Click one of the links below to be taken to the permafree version of The Vintage Egg at that retailer:
Barnes & Noble [Nook format]
Kobo [Kobo format]
Angus & Robertson [provides the Kobo format]
Indigo [provides the Kobo format]
And now an apology to Apple users. I would love to be able to add Apple to my list of retailers, but when Draft2Digital requested that my books be included, this is what came back:
Current Apple formatting guidelines require standard author name spelling (First Last name format). Single author names cause customer confusion and nonspecific search results when using online search engines. The exceptions are first names and last names consisting of only one character each. Those names should include a half-width (single-byte) space between them. Please supply author name in First Last name format in the metadata Contributor field, within book manuscript file, and on cover image to proceed with publication at Apple. Author name listed on the cover image, interior manuscript file, and metadata contributor field must match.
Apart from the fact that calling myself ‘acflory’ was a branding decision, the required changes would mean creating and maintaining a whole new cover, interior and ISBN, just for Apple. If I were a mega selling author, I might consider it. Maybe. As things stand, I’ve decided to live without Apple.
And finally, that free book on Amazon.
The book is ‘How to Print Your Novel with CreateSpace‘, and unfortunately, I’ll never be able to make it permafree, at least not in its present format. The reason is that the ebook was created using the KDP Textbook Creator app. Not only can the ebook only be viewed on the Kindle, it can only be viewed on some of the Kindles. The following list details which ones:
If you have any of the listed devices, or use any of the listed apps, you’ll be able to download ‘How to Print Your Novel with CreateSpace’ from Amazon between May 1 and May 5, 2018. Don’t worry, I’ll provide a link to the book as soon as the freebie goes live. Oh, and I’ll remind you every day before then too….mwahahaha!
-cough-
So, there you go. Two permafrees and one short term freebie. Please don’t be shy about downloading the free books. If I can show Amazon that there’s a demand, they may allow me to make both Miira and The Vintage Egg free on Amazon as well.
Thanks,
Meeks
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December 5, 2018 Update….I am officially an idiot. I was so excited to have Miira permafree on Amazon, I totally forgot to include the link for the book. Can I plead old age as an excuse?
Meeka's Mind 