Kevin's Watch

Thought we could use a free e-books thread,

This anthology is free over the weekend only.

Thanks for the reminder, MsMary -- I meant to download that earlier today but got sidetracked.

I have a link below for a free e-book I wrote years ago. It has its strengths and weaknesses, some avid readers have told me it was one of the best books they ever read, but I still feel somewhat coy about it even now-- I wrote it at a time when Tolkien was obscure and borrowed shamelessly from his mytharc of Elves, although I did so in my own vision. And it's awfully romantic. Still, the price is right and you can get it in any e-book format.

All kinds of classics available here: www.gutenberg.org/

I recommend the books of George Borrow, particularly Lavengro, an intriguing memoir of a young man's time vagabonding in England in the 1800s. If you like understated humor in a colorful narrative-- I became a fan of Borrow, just of his personality, his flaws and tragic unrequited love with Isopel, a fellow vagabond hippie chick of the 19th century (that was in Romany Rye, the sequel to Lavengro).

Another source for free e-books is author blogs, who often give away free copies of e-books in contests and blog hops. I just won a free copy of a book that looks really great, just by commenting on an author's blog and liking her FB page.

Cool, DotD! Let us know what you think of the book.

I recently discovered that if you check Amazon frequently for "free Kindle downloads", there are often very good books for free for a very short time. Not sure if the authors are looking for reviews, or what-- I check the reviews that are already there to make sure it's something I'll be interested in, first.

They're probably books enrolled in KDP Select. If you give Amazon exclusive distribution of your e-book for three months, they give you 5 "free" days, which you can schedule whenever you want during that time period.

I did that with "Seized" -- uploaded it to Amazon first and enrolled it in KDP Select for the first three months, and then released it to Smashwords and B&N this month.

The free days boost your rankings. And it used to be that a front-page ranking on the "free" list would bring your ranking high enough on the regular list to translate into a nice bump in sales for a day or two after the free period ended. But Amazon changed its algorithm in April or so, so the bump is much smaller now.

I wondered if the Select option was worth it. I just didn't want to spend the time taking it down from Smashwords for 3 months. Maybe it would be worth it, though.

At some point I used a "spare" e-mail account to sign up for BookBub, which gives "specials" each day, including some freebies. But it's easy enough to go to Amazon and look for myself. The blurbs BookBub gives do not include reviews, so I'd have to check before downloading anyway.

Right now I have a crapload of books to read so I need to stay away from that anyway!!

Amazon has plenty of free books to download. If you want to load an ebook from another site, you'll have to download it to your computer and sideload it to the Kindle.

Since I live in Africa, I have to do that anyway.

Lately, all I find for free on Amazon is Brides of the West, Brides of Werewolves, Brides of Vampires, or Brides of 50-Shades wannabees, none of which interest me...