As you can tell from the title of this post, the topic today is free books. Two things have triggered this. First, I gave away two .pdf copies of my newest book, Dragon Guard, away on Twitter this week. I'll talk more about that in a minute. Second, I'm giving away my self-published novel, Ghost Betweens, for free on Amazon for the Kindle for the next five days. My reasons for doing this are more than simply I have five promotional days left for this selling period. I'll get to that after I talk about Dragon Guard.
As I said, I ran a contest to give away two free .pdf copies of my newest novel, Dragon Guard, which is a Young Adult Contemporary Fantasy story. I did this spur of the moment, so I didn't know what sort of response I would get. Turns out, not much but more than I expected. Let me explain. I received my .pdf file of the novel from my publisher, Hunt Press, late last week. I decided to give away two copies of it to anyone who retweeted a post I made. I didn't make a blog post or anything else; I simply did this on Twitter. Plus I only ran the contest over the weekend. Turns out, this didn't work out so well for my normal followers. I believe I had three people retweet it, and I gave plenty of chances for people to do so. That was a bit disheartening. But, as I said, I also got a much bigger response than I'd hoped. One of my tweets ended with two simple words: Free Book! I didn't hashtag it (for those of you on Twitter, you know this is how you get non-followers to see your posts), but I still got the post picked up by a number (about 30) of people who were, judging from their Twitter descriptions, big compers - people who love to enter contests for free stuff. I don't know if one picked up on this and it spread through their ranks or if it was on a contest list somewhere, but I had a bunch of people retweet to enter the contest that way. That was awesome for me! After all, they're potential new fans if they enjoy the story, right?
Anyway, I'm happy with how it turned out. Two people got a .pdf copy of my book, and I'm hoping they'll really enjoy it. If I hadn't put those two magical words ("Free Book!") in one of my tweets, I would have had a lousy turnout for my contest. But that is mostly my fault. I did simply run it as a spur-of-the-moment thing, and I didn't publicize it very well. In the future, I'm sure I'll have another such contest, but this time I'll give some heads-up to create some buzz for it. I'll post it on my blog and other sites. I'll keep it going for a full week so I get both weekend and weekday tweeters. This knowledge is probably the best thing that came out of this experience for me. (Though I hope the book is read, possibly reviewed on Amazon or anywhere else, and talked about by those who won. That would be an even bigger win for me!)
My second point in this post is my releasing of my self-published book, Ghost Betweens, a Young Adult Paranormal Adventure, free for then next five days (starting Thursday and running through Monday). The reason I'm doing this is because of Dragon Guard. I'm hoping people will download Ghost Betweens, enjoy it, and decide they'd like to give Dragon Guard a read. I'm confident readers just need a reason to pick up Dragon Guard, and when they do, they'll enjoy the heck out of it. I'm also hoping people will review Ghost Betweens on Amazon. I have 6 reviews right now (3 5-stars and 3 4-stars), and I'd love more. More reviews not only mean future sales for Ghost Betweens, but I'm hoping it rubs off on Dragon Guard, too.
So, if you have a Kindle, please download Ghost Betweens these next five days. Read it, review it, and pass the word on. If you don't have a Kindle, get yourself a Kindle App. It's free, and you won't miss out on great free promotions like this one. I hope you enjoy Ghost Betweens, and I hope it's a gateway drug to Dragon Guard!
Kindle Link to Ghost Betweens (Free Thursday April 11 - Monday April 15)
Kindle Link to Dragon Guard (Not free, but about the same price as a large value meal at a fast food joint, and much healthier for you!)
