For today’s tip, I thought I’d try recording a video. This short “screencast” tutorial walks you through getting your ebook listed for free at Barnes & Noble and Amazon.
If you’re an independent author, publishing ebooks via PubIt on Barnes & Noble and the Kindle Direct Publishing Platform on Amazon (I went old-school in the video and kept calling it the Digital Text Publishing Platform, oops!), you know that the lowest you can list your ebook for is $0.99. But you’ve seen free ebooks in Amazon and B&N, right? How did they get there? This video shows you the trick.
Making one of your ebooks free temporarily (or forever) can be a great way to introduce people to your work and (we hope) get them to go on and buy the non-free books. Give it a try! (Hint: you can use a short story if you don’t want to give away an entire novel — that’s how I got my start.)
(Just a word of warning: Amazon can be a little finicky and the trick doesn’t seem to work for everyone 100% of the time, but it’s worked for me and lots of other indie authors, and if you can get a freebie listed at Amazon, prepare to be downloaded a lot — and those downloads should help your other book sales — the non-free ones! — assuming people enjoy your writing.)
Cool! I’ve been wondering about this. (And it’s so simple!) Thanks for the tip.
Good job. Do more videos.
Ok, follow up question… What if you don’t want your book priced as free indefinitely? When you increase the price on Smashwords to match your pricing on Amazon/B&N, how long does it take for Amazon/B&N to catch on?
(Can you tell I have some promos planned?
)
It’s not the speediest process, but they seem to figure it out again eventually. I wouldn’t expect the prices to reset for at least a couple of weeks though.
Oh this is great timing. I was just scratching my head, trying to figure out how to do this
Thanks!
P.S. great job on the video tutorial!
Thanks, Jon! Maybe next time I’ll re-size the browser window, so y’all don’t have to look at my desktop icon clutter on the side.
Spare a thought for us poor souls with slower connections!
I know my West African set up is extreme, but even when in the UK it can be next to impossible to watch video in some areas, and guessing there must be a lot of blind spots in the US too, and many more internationally.
Hey, Mark, I’ll do some now and then since it’s nice to show the screen for a “how to” blurb, but most posts will still be text. I’ve watched YouTube from a horrible shared wifi in Mexico, so I know it’s possible, lol. Maybe download the video (let it play in the background) first, and then play it through a second time to watch?
For the free ebook thing, you basically upload the book with Smashwords, use them to distribute it to Barnes & Noble (backdoor into getting a freebie on B&N — always works), and then let Amazon know it’s free at B&N if you want them to price match. That seems to work 3 out of 4 times.
Nice tutorial, Lindsay. While I’d heard of Smashwords, I didn’t really know what it did, so that was cool, too.
A quick question– if you use smashwords, can you add a kindle version to an existing Amazon book? And do you upload one copy of the book, and it converts it for the different platforms for you?
Hi Thomas,
Thanks for watching! With Smashwords, you upload a Word doc (make sure to read through their free style guide), and their “meatgrinder” will convert it to the various ebook formats (mobi, epub, pdf, etc.).
Yes, you can link a Kindle ebook to an existing paperback on Amazon. Here’s the link to the section of their FAQ that covers that:
https://authorcentral.amazon.com/gp/help?topicID=200341570#link
Oh– cool. Thanks, Lindsay.
Great video lesson, Lindsay. I’ve been too chicken to try with my short, short stories.
But tomorrow I try my first upload. But not for free. Maybe later on down the road.
Hey Lindsay, it worked great! Amazon finally lowered the price to free
Thanks again!
Glad to hear it! Have you released your second set of stories yet?
They’re coming soon! Special Weird West stories just in time for Halloween
Another follow up question now that I’ve gotten this working:
If you’ve managed to get Amazon to mark down your ebook and now you want to update the content files, do you know whether ‘republishing’ bumps your retail price back up again?
Thanks!
It shouldn’t, Jacquelyn. In fact, it’s kind of a pain in the butt to get Amazon to set the book back to un-free if you decide your “sale” is over. If it still appears free anywhere out there (and it takes a while for changes to trickle down from Smashwords), Amazon will keep it free too.
I was also worried about that when I did an update right after it had been marked down to free, but after it re-published, it was still free
*steeples fingers* Excellent. Thanks!
Really informative! I’ve tried it… its been two weeks my book still isn’t free on Amazon. I hope it changes one day.
Thanks
Hi Kenya,
FYI, my book took about 5-6 weeks to flip to free, so you might have a bit more of a wait ahead of you… Good luck!