First, lets look at two free books in Kindle format you can get from Feedbooks -
- Gone by Bryan W. Alaspa. For some strange reason he’s only got it on Feedbooks.
- Beautiful Red by M. Darusha Wehm. Someone is actually illegally selling this book in the Kindle Store and the author is in the process of getting it removed from there.
Next, let’s look at something called the World eBook Fair. This site usually has a $8.95 a year membership (a devilishly brilliant idea) based off of free public domain books. From July 4th until August 4th, they have all their books free in PDF format -
- Their biggest source, The Internet Archive, is something you can access directly to download text versions that don’t need conversion for Kindle 2.
- The World eBook Fair site itself. Its confusing – just scroll down to reach the search fields. The books are all in PDF format.
Finally, two kindle deals I’ve mentioned before (however the official Kindle blog is referencing the second in a post of its own so it might be worth a second look) -
- $1.99 romance novel – Seducing a Scottish Bride by Sue-Ellen Welfonder.
- Purchase Secret Speech (Tom Rob Smith) and get Child 44 free.
Malcolm Gladwell Vs Chris Anderson on Viability of Free
Though I’m firmly on the side of Malcolm Gladwell i.e. free is not a viable model, the actual behavior of authors trying to get attention in the Kindle Store seems to be tending towards -
Do anything to get attention and a competitive advantage – to the point of giving away books for free.
If it weren’t for Amazon’s $1 price limit, every independent author would be giving away their books for free. And every publisher would be introducing 2-3 day free offers and withdrawing them as soon as the books hit the top 25 in sales rank.
Very large markets in general, and the Internet in particular, create a few conditions -
- A huge customer base which is very tempting.
- An opportunity for People to give away their valuable products for competitive advantage.
- An opportunity for People to give away their products because of their belief systems.
- Everyone being forced to compete under this system.
Its creating a downward pressure on prices and its going to start affecting book prices more and more in the coming years.
Filed under: free books Tagged: | free book, kindle deal
Hi there,
Thanks for the mention. I put it on Feedbooks because I wanted to make it available for people with smartphones. I recently got a G1 and discovered the Feedbooks Reader (as I do not have a Kindle). Feedbooks provides formats for smartphones as well as Kindle and other readers. So, I made it an exclusive thing with Feedbooks because that just happens to be what I have.
I also have two books available just for the Kindle! But you have to pay for those!
Thanks again,
Bryan W. Alaspa
Author