Here are a few free books for your kindle -
- Strange Angel by Adam P. Knave is free if you email the author by midnight tonight ( [adampknave @ gmail(dot)com]). Note that it’s in free PDF format and consists of a short story, 3 novellas, and an end story all compiled into a novel.
- eReads add two free books for Read an eBook week - Highland Hearts by Hannah Howell (a romance novel), and Ship of Death by Warren Murphy and Richard Sapir (an action/adventure book).
- Molly Moon Stops the World by Georgia Byng is available to read online for free at Simon & Schuster’s site. There are also some other books available that were covered before.
- My Savings links to a free audiobook, Wolf Brother, available as podcasts and a free health guide for flu season, What to Expect Guide to a Healthy Home.
- En World talk about the RPG game Talislanta being free on PDF in conjunction with an art book release. The Talislanta site does have a lot of free PDFs and on April 1st the remaining ones will be free too (rights expire then).
- Vickey Anderson has her spiritual book The Awakening for free and it claims to bridge the gap between East and West.
Also interesting -
- Cyberdrome by Joseph Rhea and David Rhea. It’s a Science Fiction Technothriller, priced at $1.99, well rated with 4.5 stars on 15 reviews, and sounds quite interesting. It also won an award – PODBRAM award-winner for best science fiction novel of the year.
- Two Thrifty Sisters link to an offer for a free photo book from Picabo (shipping is $9 or so).
- Binocular Vision and Ocular Motility by Gunter K. van Noorten is available as a free PDF.
- A free book on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder - Tears of a Warrior by Janet and Anthony Seahorn.
Pluses and Minuses of Giving away Free Books
Kent Anderson at The Scholarly Kitchen is a lonely voice speaking up against a published study claiming that releasing a free ebook increases print book sales (The Short-Term Influence of Free Digital Versions of Books on Print Sales).
The study is quite interesting and it concludes -
Although we cannot say that the free e-books caused sales to increase, a correlation exists between a free e-book and increased print sales …
The present study indicates that there is a moderate correlation between free digital books being made permanently available and short-term print sales increases. However, free digital books did not always equal increased sales. This result may be surprising, both to those who claim that when a free version is available fewer people will pay to purchase copies, as well as those who claim that free access will not harm sales.
Kent Anderson makes a few good points of his own -
Some books had significant sales declines with the offer of free e-books, if you accept e-book availability as the only driver. As an author or a book marketer, there is risk to be found in this study, and that’s enough to give one pause.
But, of course, one author of the study published in JEP gives himself away as a shameless advocate of free content …
He does have a point – the study doesn’t dig in deep enough, it shows that there were ups and downs for individual book sales without explaining or analyzing why, and it doesn’t note that one of the two researchers is a big proponent of free books and ‘information should be free’.
Free eBooks might lead to higher physical book sales – However, we’ll need much more comprehensive studies, preferably run keeping personal bias in mind, before we can be sure.
Filed under: free books Tagged: | free kindle books
