Book promotion is an imprecise science, which is why I’m delighted to have actually succeeded at something! I had great success with my free promotional day on Amazon. 3000 people downloaded Shirley Link & The Safe Case and the book shot to #1 in Kids Mystery ebooks, and #113 in all free ebooks. The key to success appears to be simple.
Get the word out.
Who’d have thunk it, huh?
To that end, you have a friend in websites that promote free ebooks. It’s the perfect relationship — your free ebook is their content! They don’t succeed unless they have your book listed.
Author Marketing Club is a site that includes a single page where you can submit your free book for promotion on a number of great destinations around the Web.
While using the submission page above may be the easiest way to go, it may also send you to dead or unresponsive sites.
Below, I’ve broken down which sites I submitted to that are still around (I’ll update often):
- free ebooks daily (and you can submit to get your book tweeted here)
- Free Kindle Books and Tips (I found these folks extra helpful and supportive!)
- freebooksy (no longer offers free promotion, but their paid promotion has been effective for me)
- ereader news today
- Manybooks (use the paid feature for best results)
Good luck! Please let us know if you’d like to add a site that did well by you.
IndieBooks is no longer accepting submissions as of August 23, 2012. They state on the site that this is indefinite because they have too many submissions.
You have published an awesome site.
Thanks for the tip re: IndieBooks! I’d imagine these free ebooks sites are getting pounded with submissions.
Hi Ben,
I’m Taylor, and I work for Freebooksy. I’m sorry that we didn’t feature your book- we usually schedule posts several days in advance. A week’s notice is a good ‘safe’ option to make sure we see your book before our calendar is full.
Next time you have a promo, submit your book to and shoot me an email (taylor at freebooksy.com)- I’ll tell our content manager to look out for your name.
Best of luck with your sales!
I did the href wrong. That should say ‘your book to our site.’
That’s what I get for trying to be fancy.
Thanks Taylor! I’d imagine there are a thousand ways for submissions to go missing. Great tip re: a week’s advance. I will definitely do that for my next giveaway. Cheers!
Another website to promote your book, http://www.bookwormempire.com
My book is this week’s feature book and I’ve had more sales on Amazon.
Thank you, Soledad! Congrats on your sales spike!
By the way, I was just working on a comprehensive update to this blog post. I’ll post soon.