Suppose I Want a Free Kindle Book?

1005 Views 20 Replies 7 Participants Last post by Gertie Kindle, Dec 29, 2012

heavycat

Discussion Starter · Dec 29, 2012

I open my Kindle Fire Books section and I start browsing.

Where would I find a book that was newly made free on KDP Select?

The more abstract question being, how specifically and exactly does making a book free make it more discoverable on Amazon?

The reason I ask is because I can't find a free books section on my Kindle Fire or Amazon.com, therefore I have no idea where to find my free book listing.

(Please for the purposes of this discussion let's not repeatedly discuss POI and ENT and other sites. I'm trying to master my Amazon.com page first.)

P.S. it's been five hours. Zero downloads, zero borrows. That's a little worrying to me since I'm married to Amazon for three months now.

1 - 20 of 21 Posts

Steve Vernon

· #2 · Dec 29, 2012

There are a WHOLE lot of websites dedicated to finding FREE Kindle e-books.

You can find links listing to a lot of them in my blog entry "Setting Your E-Book Free".
http://stevevernonstoryteller.wordpress.com/2012/11/25/setting-your-e-book-free/

If you are looking for free e-books to read - just sign up for some of these websites. They send out regular updates - NOW FREE ON KINDLE and the like.

If you are looking for ways to publicize your own free e-book - well get it listed on some of these websites.

In addition - KindleBoard's own BOOK BAZAAR has a listing every month for free e-books that folks have stumbled across.
http://www.kboards.com/index.php/topic,134562.0.html

Hope that helps.

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heavycat

Discussion Starter · #3 · Dec 29, 2012

Perhaps I wasn't clear enough.

Where on Amazon.com or my Kindle will I find the new free books?

Surely there is a list?

Steve Vernon

· #4 · Dec 29, 2012

Whoops - I just re-read your initial entry and I realize I have goofed. You didn't want to hear about POI and ENT) - whoops again.

I guess I didn't answer your question - so let me try again.

When you make your e-book free - and get it showing up on POI and ENT and the like the numbers increase. Especially if you offer the first book in a series for free.

Amazon DOES have a TOP 100 FREE E-Books - that shows up directly beside the Top 100 Kindle e-books.

Amazon also has a New Releases list that your book shows up in for a certain number of days. Hungry readers who are searching for free e-books will hit the qualifier "Price Low to High" and the free e-books will be listed first.

Hungry readers who just type Free into the search slot will pull up a listing of free e-books - and your book will be in that list.

Hope that helps.

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Steve Vernon

· #5 · Dec 29, 2012

Here - on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/digital-text/154606011/ref=pd_ts_zgc_kstore_154606011_morl?pf_rd_p=1408220482&pf_rd_s=right-5&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=15EPY1FNN3JN447KE488

I got to that from the Amazon front page, down in the right hand corner. where it lists Kindle Bestsellers. Hit that BESTSELLERS IN KINDLE BOOKS link and it will take you to the top 100 bestselling e-books with the top 100 free books directly beside.

heavycat

Discussion Starter · #6 · Dec 29, 2012

Thanks Steve

Amanda Brice

· #7 · Dec 29, 2012

I'll be honest. Unless it comes through that day's BookBub email, I see it listed on Facebook or an author's FB page or on one of the blogs I follow that mention free books, or it hits a Top 100 Free list in whatever category I feel like browsing that day (generally the Top 100 overall, as well as Romance, YA, Women Sleuths, or Cookbooks), then I'll never know about it.

Period.

I just don't search for them on my own.

Gertie Kindle

· #8 · Dec 29, 2012

I went to the Kindle Store and typed in free comics.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_c_0_11?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=free%20comics

heavycat

Discussion Starter · #9 · Dec 29, 2012

I'll be honest. Unless it comes through that day's BookBub email, I see it listed on Facebook or an author's FB page or on one of the blogs I follow that mention free books, or it hits a Top 100 Free list in whatever category I feel like browsing that day (generally the Top 100 overall, as well as Romance, YA, Women Sleuths, or Cookbooks), then I'll never know about it.

Frankly, that's what I'm afraid of. That making a book free doesn't improve its visibility on Amazon.com or the Kindle itself.

We've gotten three downloads so far, even though I have no idea how those people found it.

Becca Mills

· #10 · Dec 29, 2012

Steve Vernon said:
Hungry readers who just type Free into the search slot will pull up a listing of free e-books - and your book will be in that list.

So will thousands of other books ... and does this only happen if you've tagged it "free"?

I think it's pretty hard for Amazon customers to find newly free books, since the "best-seller" lists only show the top 100. It's a vicious circle: your free book is only visible on Amazon if it's getting a ton of downloads and gets on a best-seller list, but it won't get a ton of downloads unless it's already visible.

I don't think already published books show up on the "New Releases" list just because their price has changed to $0.00.

It'd be great if Am had a "Newly Free Today!" list. Even if it had several thousand books on it, it'd be better than nothing. Then again, Amazon doesn't have a huge motivation for publicizing free books.

Amanda Brice

· #11 · Dec 29, 2012

Making a book free can entice people to download it and then once enough people download it, it will appear on the free bestseller lists. But you need to do some legwork first to ensure that people know about it. Alert the blogs that mention freebies, ask all your writer friends to mention it on Facebook, ask all your non-writer friends to mention it on Facebook, ask all your friends to download it, etc.

Becca Mills

· #12 · Dec 29, 2012

heavycat said:
Frankly, that's what I'm afraid of. That making a book free doesn't improve its visibility on Amazon.com or the Kindle itself.

We've gotten three downloads so far, even though I have no idea how those people found it.

There's at least one site out there that lets you put watches on books that interest you. When the price drops, you get an email. Maybe those folks were watching your book?

heavycat

Discussion Starter · #13 · Dec 29, 2012

But you need to do some legwork first to ensure that people know about it.

I understand the value of promoting the book and it's new free price. But I'm trying to limit this discussion to just what happens on Amazon and the Kindle, because Amazon is where my audience is today.

There have been discussions in the Select thread, for example, about how people have found free books on their Kindles. If true, I'd like to verify that our book is visible there. Same for the Amazon site itself. If we are getting downloads today (and we are), why are we getting downloads without notifying other sites? (No mention of our first free book was made outside of Amazon)

Does anyone know how this works? Does it always involve another site or mechanism other than Amazon and Kindles themselves?

Please bear with my persistence. I'm really trying to understand the specifics here so we can make our free days count.

UPDATE: Here's one theory. LadyStar: The Battle of Demon Skull Rock Book One is at the top of the list if the last 30 days' "Friendship" category books are sorted lowest price to highest. That's probably the closest we've ever been to the front page on Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr_st?bbn=155886011&qid=1356791745&rh=n%3A133140011%2Cn%3A!133141011%2Cn%3A154606011%2Cn%3A155009011%2Cn%3A155752011%2Cn%3A155882011%2Cn%3A155886011%2Cp_n_date%3A1249100011&sort=price

Is this likely?

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valeriec80

· #14 · Dec 29, 2012

It does show up in also bought lists as well, but I've noticed that free books are less visible than they used to be. I imagine people sometimes find it that way.

Like you, I have no idea. I have two perma-free books. One gets about 50 downloads a day (or it was before the bookbub promo I did. Now things are off the rails, and I wish they'd stay that way, but they probably won't.) The other only gets 25. Those numbers are pretty consistent, and I don't point people to the books. Somehow, people find them. I don't know how, but I expect it's mostly also boughts.

Amanda Brice

· #15 · Dec 29, 2012

But Valerie, I assume you'd pointed people to the price change originally, right? One of my books gets a steady 25-50 free downloads per day and I currently do nothing, but several months ago when it first went free, I did a lot of notifying free sites, blogs, Facebook mentions etc, to get the ball rolling. Now it's on two free bestseller lists (albeit not big ones) so I don't have to do anything and it just continues to get downloads. Not the big downloads it once got (200+ per day, sometimes as much as 1000), but as long as it continues to get downloads, I'm happy.

Speaker-To-Animals

· #16 · Dec 29, 2012

You can change the published date in the KDP control panel to reset it. I have heard if you make a habit of this, they will stop approving it though.

Gertie Kindle

· #17 · Dec 29, 2012

heavycat said:
There have been discussions in the Select thread, for example, about how people have found free books on their Kindles. If true, I'd like to verify that our book is visible there. Same for the Amazon site itself. If we are getting downloads today (and we are), why are we getting downloads without notifying other sites? (No mention of our first free book was made outside of Amazon)

Does anyone know how this works? Does it always involve another site or mechanism other than Amazon and Kindles themselves?

You can type in your category in the search box then sort low to high, but that isn't always accurate. Sometimes it sorts by the current price, but it also might sort by the list price. It's kind of hit or miss.

Have you had any downloads yet? If not, your book is probably on the last page of the freebies in your category.

heavycat

Discussion Starter · #18 · Dec 29, 2012

Here's another possibility:

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-Childrens-Books-Friendship/zgbs/digital-text/155886011/ref=zg_bs_nav_kstore_4_155186011

There are only three books on friendship for Kindle. Our book is in this category. We should be #4 on the free list at some point then, correct? (We do have a non-zero number of downloads)

valeriec80

· #19 · Dec 29, 2012

Amanda Brice said:
But Valerie, I assume you'd pointed people to the price change originally, right? One of my books gets a steady 25-50 free downloads per day and I currently do nothing, but month ago when it first went free, I did a lot of notifying free sites, blogs, Facebook mentions etc, to get the ball rolling. Now it's on two free bestseller lists (albeit not big ones) so I don't have to do anything and it just continues to get downloads. Not the big downloads it once got (200+ per day), but as long as it continues to get downloads, I'm happy.

Well, one book has been free so long that the rules have changed too much to speculate.

The other went free in October, and I couldn't get any of the blogs to pick it up, but it jumped up to about 700 on the free list for no discernible reason. (Now it's at 4K, months later.) Thinking about that reminded me that I speculated this (http://kindlenationdaily.com/2012/12/free-book-alert-for-december-27-415-brand-new-freebies-in-the-last-24-hours-added-to-our-4650-free-titles-sorted-by-category-date-added-bestselling-or-review-rating-plus-tony-dunbar/)might have had something to with it, and maybe it can help to shed light on things for the OP as well. That seems to be an automated system that pulls and lists every new free book. Only patient people wade through it, I suppose, but it is there.

Gertie Kindle

· #20 · Dec 29, 2012

BTW, you won't have any borrows while your book is free.

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