Suggestions For Authors Distributing Free eBooks

I am not pretending to be any kind of expert here, but I have been reading many of these free ebooks, by unknown first time authors, and some are really good! But some keep making the same mistakes over and over again and I feel compelled to offer some suggestions. This is just to get you started, you have to do the work yourself.

1. Put your best work forward.

Too many of these ebooks I've seen have plenty of spelling mistakes, punctuation, grammar mistakes. Sentences that don't make sense or stop right in the middle. This type of problem. Go through your work and correct these things or have someone else do it for you.

You are trying to get readers to like your work, to want to read your next book. You are trying to convince publishers that your talent is worth taking a risk on. Putting this sloppy work out says to people that you don't really care, so why should they?

2. Create a nice presentation.

Make a web page with a good, interesting synopsis of the book. Something that makes the reader want to read the book. You are a writer, you can come up with something interesting to describe your book.

Add a good cover image and some positive reviews if you have some. Both of these things make your book seem more interesting and therefore are important.

Put the download links, well labelled, right on the page so it's easy to see the options and select one. Do not make people follow a trail of links to download or read the book. The harder you make it, the more potential readers you're going to lose.

Do not make the web page slow loading. There is no need for anything that takes a long time to load. You don't need fancy flash movies or the entire page done in images so nobody can copy. You are defeating yourself with this nonsense.

There is a whole theory that some people are following, making it hard to read the book online so the reader will buy a copy for convenience instead. Personally, I think it's a game you're going to lose. This type of attempted manipulation is not conducive to a good relationship. I think people will just move on to another easier to read freebie. Don't try to make sales by playing stupid games. You want to build fans by letting people read your book, and by having books that are good enough that someone wants to read the next one.

Make the page very clear for someone who has never seen it before. The more confusing it is, the more people are going to leave without reading your book.

Put a link to the page in a prominent spot on your website so people can find it. Say what it is - free ebook. You want people to find and click the link, you want people to read your book.

3. Make the book easy to access.

There are a lot of ways people are reading ebooks these days. If you want to put something online per chapter or even with smaller page segments, that's fine.

I think it's also important to make it more easily available for download. The whole book on one plain html page, and the whole book in a pdf file is a good idea. People are reading online and offline with various software and hardware and having the entire book in one file makes it a lot more portable.

Offering more file types is also a good thing. The easier it is for someone to get the book on their reading device, the more likely they're going to put it there, and the more likely they are to read it.

Unlike some ebook pirates out there, I don't think anyone is obligated to give their work away for free. I do think that if you have made the decision to do so, then you shouldn't play games and make the book hard to read. Make the work easily accessible and have faith in your work that people will like it if they read it.

4. Get the word out about your book.

There is this blog, of course. Hundreds of people daily, just looking for free books to read. There are other popular websites which will announce your free ebook too. There are popular blogs where you might get a review done, which will encourage people to want to read your book.

Get the word out! Don't post it on your website and sit waiting for people to find you. The unfortunate fact is that there are bazillions of websites out there and somehow the scummiest seem to float to the top of search engine results. It's really hard to find an author site with a free ebook through a search engine unless you already know exactly what names you're looking for. Even then it can be difficult. You've got to get your book mentioned and linked to on some of the popular book blogs and websites. This is how potential readers can find you.


A lot of the books and sites I've found are good, but there are those which I feel could benefit from these suggestions. I hope some of them stumble upon this post and find it useful.

Updates:

- Add your name and link to your site at the END of your ebook files (in addition to the beginning). It's when I finish the book that I'm wondering who wrote it and where I might find more of their work. Yeah I can go look at the beginning, but why not add it at the end? Have the info right there when I'm most receptive to it.