Available options to give away an eBook?

[Dodge]

I am interested in giving away one of my eBooks for free in order to garner interest, readers, and reviews.

I know Smashwords offers the free option but I don't like the way the eBooks show when formatted by them.

Another option is going KDP select via Amazon, then you can offer it free for 5 days out of every 90 days.

I was wondering if anyone has used Rafflecopter, pros and cons?

Has anyone just simply emailed their Kindle or epub file out to interested parties? Can those files be protected? Pros and cons?

Just looking for the best option available. Thanks for any insight on this.

[Trevor Z]

You could probably email a file if you convert it from something like mobicreator (.mobi kindle files).

There are a few third party programs that will turn your .docs/.html/.pdf files into mobi/epub things. I'm not sure if there's a way to send it directly from Amazon though.

You could potentially write in to the kdp help folk, they're a bit slow with the responses but are pretty helpful once they get around to talking to ya.

[Dodge]

Thanks, Trevor Z. I have Kindle and epub files. Do you know if I just email those out if they can be manipulated by other parties and mess with the story? I guess free is one thing, it's the changing of the story that would concern me. And should it even be a concern?

[Old Hack]

Why would anyone rewrite your book if you sent them a free copy?

And what would they do with it then?

If you don't feel you can trust the people you send your books to, then don't send them. Good reviewers aren't interested in screwing with writers in the way you suggest; and I don't see how bad reviewers would be either.

[Dodge]

Thanks for the questions and the responses, Old Hack. Can't hurt to ask as I haven't delved into the piracy aspect of what folks do out there. Crazy questions on my part, sure.

[TheKoB]

I don't even know if piracy is something we should be afraid at the early stages of self-publishing. Honestly I even considered uploading my own work to filehosters etc.
True you don't get sales, but at least you have a chance of spreading the word about your own book.

Still I could not bring myself to pirate my own book yet

[Old Hack]

The piracy problems you'll face involve people selling your book without your permission, and without paying you the royalties you deserve on those sales.

They are extremely unlikely to involve anyone rewriting your work before selling it on.

[Dodge]

Good info. I got plans for freebies.

[Arpeggio]

Here are some links. I can tell you from experience I have my free eBook in many places, it has been downloaded and read many 1000's of times, and received good reviews that stand out from the competitors by a good margin.

However I can't say that I can attribute any sales to this, while the reviews are on the free sites for the free eBook. What is does do is give confidence in my material and is good for exposure and link building.


http://www.free-ebooks.net/

http://www.scribd.com/

http://www.slideshare.net/

http://issuu.com/

http://www.drewsebooks.com/

http://ebookjunkie.com/

http://self.gutenberg.org/default.aspx

http://www.witguides.com/index.asp

http://www.ebooksdownloadfree.com/

http://www.getfreeebooks.com/

[Dodge]

That's a lot of resources, Arpeggio. Thanks and hope those sales pickup for all your efforts.

[veinglory]

If you are giving people a free ebook, you give them a free ebook that they can do what they want with. There is really no way around that regardless of the mechanism.

I personally don't bother with rafflecopter contest any more. When I go there it always turns out that I have to do somersaults and give them my baby just to get an entry in a contest for a book that I'm not even that sure I want.

[TroyJackson]

One that I found to be successful was at LibraryThing. Over about a 3-4 week period I offered 100 free ebooks, and had over 75 takers. I've contacted the "winners" and am in the process of getting it to them all. Most seemed very excited to get it, which is encouraging.

Take a look:

http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list

[kingsley]

Originally Posted by TroyJackson

One that I found to be successful was at LibraryThing. Over about a 3-4 week period I offered 100 free ebooks, and had over 75 takers. I've contacted the "winners" and am in the process of getting it to them all. Most seemed very excited to get it, which is encouraging.

I second this. We recently had an ebook giveaway on LibraryThing and we got 20+ takers (our limit was 20 free books). We were asking for reviews in exchange. It has only been a couple weeks (and the holidays and all), but we've already received two reviews. I'm happy with LibraryThing giveaways as a promotional tool for finding reviewers and will probably run them again for future releases.

[TroyJackson]

Originally Posted by kingsley

I second this. We recently had an ebook giveaway on LibraryThing and we got 20+ takers (our limit was 20 free books). We were asking for reviews in exchange. It has only been a couple weeks (and the holidays and all), but we've already received two reviews. I'm happy with LibraryThing giveaways as a promotional tool for finding reviewers and will probably run them again for future releases.

Yeah it's maybe a week or so, during a holiday season, and I've already had one post a review on LibraryThing, Amazon, and B&N (a 4-star). I was definitely happy with the quick turnaround. Hopefully more will pop up in the next week or two now that most everyone has their free ebook I sent them.

[gingerwoman]

Originally Posted by Old Hack

The piracy problems you'll face involve people selling your book without your permission, and without paying you the royalties you deserve on those sales.

They are extremely unlikely to involve anyone rewriting your work before selling it on.

What I've seen out there isn't selling it on, but offering it for free on websites full of popup ads. There's a lot of that, and the books get uploaded to the pirate sites as soon as they come out. But you can send legal letters to get them to take them down.

[gcookltx]

One site that I noticed that features several books that are getting thousands of reads is free-ebooks.net. But I read further in their Terms of Service agreement...

I quote:

"Manuscripts

A. The Website permits you and other users to submit Manuscripts and provides for the hosting and/or publishing of such Manuscripts. By submitting a Manuscript, you hereby grant the Company and its affiliates and sublicensees a worldwide, perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable right to (and the right to grant others the right to) use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, display, publicly and digitally perform the Manuscript in any media formats and through any media channels. For clarity, you retain all of your ownership rights in your Manuscript. You grant Company and its affiliates and sublicensees the right to use your name and the Manuscript title in connection with the advertisement, promotion, distribution and sale of the Manuscript and in connection with the advertisement and promotion of Company and its affiliates and sublicensees and the Website."

The part that really disturbs me is the perpetual license to use and modify, etc.

How can they do that? Has anyone ever seen any other online publishers with that broad of a statement?

[HistorySleuth]

Sounds like anyone can do what ever they want with your book, including yourself. Not a good place to put your work in my opinion.