Loading...
Answers
MenuIs it possible put your kindle book for free, and get a lot of reviews, and then reverse to a paid book?
I have a couple thousand supporters that would be please to back my work and give me positive reviews, but I wonder if I could put a free version of my book and then put it on a paid version when I hit for example more than 200 reviews
What are you guys thoughts?
Answers
If you sign up with KDP select, you'll be given 5 days where you can drop the price to free. You'll be restricted to only publish on their platform, however.
Hit up your email list, use sites like BookBub, or reddit.com/r/FreeEBooks in order to prepare for the discount launch. Start the deal on a Sunday since more people will be at home and prepared to read rather than Friday and Saturday nights when they're out.
Include, at the end of your book, a request for people to leave honest feedback. They're more apt to do it if you remind them. You can also include links to your other titles.
I've published a handful of titles under different pen names but I'm not an expert. I just figured I'd share what my research picked up.
You can put your book for free on multiple vendors (Barnes & Noble, iBooks, Google Play) and try to get Amazon to price match, or use KDP Select if you want your book exclusively on Amazon.
Another alternative, though, is to give out Advance Review Copies to your supporters. These reviews are weighted less heavily than verified purchased reviews, but they'll still show up on Amazon.
Most people have success rates of about 10-30% of people who receive an ARC actually leaving a review, but this is hugely dependent on genre and your relationship with your review team.
When you set your book to perma-free on Amazon, the people who "buy" the book during that period are still considered a verified purchase if and when they leave a review simply because they clicked the buy button and grabbed your book. I have tons of verified purchase reviews for my book My Fair Assassin because it is perma-free.
I would set your book as free on all major sites like B&N, Kobo, iBooks, etc. and then once they are free, contact Amazon and ask them to pricematch for you. It helps to check and make sure that the book is free on all Amazon sites around the world. Sometimes Amazon will allow a book to be free in the USA, but it won't be free in India or the UK, etc.
Just contact customer service, be very nice and personable-these folks speak to mean people all day-and let them know you're running a short promotion and you would be so grateful if the book could be set to free on all Amazon sites. Include the links of your free books from other retailers to prove the price is free on other sites, and then wait for their response.
If you get a rep saying they won't do that for you then just keep sending in requests until you find someone who will. Always be very nice during the whole process.
Then once the book is free you can send your supporters links to the books on these sites, and once they read and post their reviews, the reviews will show up as verified purchases on Amazon.
Related Questions
-
I am an author and have published seven books so far - both ebooks and hard copies. What is the most effective way to market my books?
1. Paid targeted traffic to a sales page. 2. Free giveaways of one book, hoping to get paid sales of another. 3. Podcast/radio show guest appearances discussing the book's topic. 4. Get an authority talking about your book. 5. Affiliate marketing--get one of your books included as content or bonus in a marketer's solution package, and draw prospective customers back to you through links embedded in the book. 6. Post on relevant forums, blogs, Facebook/LI groups, Quora with appropriate feedback, linking back to your sales page/Amazon page. 7. Book a call with me to flesh out these ideas in detail.JK
-
What are the best strategies for pre-launching a book and generating a high volume of pre-orders?
It can depend on the type of book and goal for your book. But the strategies I know of working and that have worked for me. Involved building an audience of your own and leveraging other peoples audiences. So if you don't have an audience go through and find the thought leaders and personalities in that space. Chat with them about the book and see if you can get them on your launch team. Start Sending out advanced copies to these people to get their feedback and support. Then you want to create some pre-sale freebies. With Mark Mason The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck. Had a bunch of freebies if you pre-orded it for 20 bucks or something. He also appeared on a shit load of podcasts and had a bunch of people promoting his pre-launch.JB
-
How do I deploy a Play Framework Scala app on AWS?
Here is an article about setting up AWS EC2 to run Play and Mongo: http://stevenwilliamalexander.wordpress.com/2012/06/10/amazon-ec2-mongo-play-scala-instance-setup-gu/ and there are also guides for binding to Amazon Simple DB and Dynamo in Scala as well that might be much easier setup than using MySQL. I've used a lot of AWS services for building composite services and I'm available for a call if you get stuck or need any advice on best practices.AW
-
If you wrote a book to send a message out to the world, is it OK to give it for free or to charge for it?
This is a hugely important question. Thanks for asking it. You have to first understand the goal of your book. Book sales are a terrible return on investment for 99.99% of authors. The real value is in growing your business and creating new opportunities for more substantial returns. You can often put the same amount of energy into selling a book (and gaining a few bucks) as you would into creating a new client (depending on your business that can be substantial revenue). So know your goals. If your goal is to use your book as a lead generator for your business, then sure, you want to make it available for sale wherever people buy books (at least online), but you want to get that book into the hands of as many potential clients as possible. So plan on giving away lots of them for free. To do that, you're going to need a printing partner who knows how to get you fantastic bulk discount rates so you're spending no more than a few bucks a book. What you also have to consider is that if your book is going to be your calling card, it has to be exceptional. Not good. Not alright. But exceptional. It has to capture the essence of you. Your voice has to resound through the writing. And it has to be a page turner. So hire the right expert or team to help to ensure you are showing off your brand in a way that excites the kind of people you want to attract. Feel free to get in touch with me for more thoughts in this direction. This is the world I live in. Big Love, CoreyCM
-
How can I make a living out of writing and publishing online books?
Hi there, A good question to consider is this: are people willing to pay to read what you want to write? Do your interests represent a big enough "market" to create and sustain a livelihood? People who make a living out of publishing online seem to have one thing in common: they figure out where their interests intersect with other people's interests. I'm not talking about generating a ton of link bait. I'm talking about finding a hungry crowd. You can sell a world-class hamburger in a vegetarian neighborhood and still go out of business. You can publish excellent articles and blog posts on the arts and humanities, and still make no money. Here's some practical advice for finding your hungry crowd(s): Go to Medium.com. Do some research. Identify the writers who are already publishing on the subjects that interest you. What kind of following have they built up? How many recommends do their stories get on average? Which stories are their most popular? What's their strategy? Do their stories route readers to an external blog or website? Can you figure out how they are making money? If you do "competitive analysis" on two to three dozen arts & humanities writers, then you'll notice some patterns. You'll notice that some topics sell better than others. Or some stylistic elements or flourishes have enabled certain writers to build an audience quickly. Use your analysis to reverse engineer your audience. You can't make a living publishing online until you have an audience. Lastly, watch this video, and pay attention to the part at the end about left-handed vampire movies: https://kicktastic.com/video/convince-convert-jay-baer/. Hope this helps, AustinAC
the startups.com platform
Copyright © 2025 Startups.com. All rights reserved.