Amazon's Free Book Questions

[Tris]

Okay so I got my Kindle this month and I'm still puzzled about this whole free book thing...

• Is there a time line when new free books come out?  I mean does it come out weekly, bi-weekly, etc?
• Has Amazon ever given out a free book that didn't have the warning of explicet sex...etc?
• Has there ever been a big named author posting a free book (the answer is probably a big fat 'no' but I still had to ask)?

With the second question, I don't mind if a book has it as long as it's not like a total porno or anything.  The same thing about foul language and what not.  However I am annoyed that I downloaded on such free book because I was desperately wanting to try the downloading out...only to continously have rather explicet books keep popping out in my "recommended for you" list (pretty much right in front of the covers list and consistantly in my face).  Unfortunately I don't have a lot of money (until my new job kicks in) to purchase all the books I want to kinda change the list.  So now I am very weary of not only what I download into my Kindle but what I can purchase.

Tris

[Leslie]

I don't think there is a specific timetable for free books, but it seems like at least one pops up weekly. It seems that many of them are done in connection with the publisher as a promotion. For example, The Reincarnationist by MJ Rose is free right now (today is the last day). The author has a new book coming out on Saturday, so this was a promotion to drum up interest. They did the same thing with two of Julia Spencer-Fleming's books back in June -- gave those away in advance of a new title being published. In her case I think it worked well. I read alot of comments from people who went back and bought a bunch of her other books and snapped up the new one when it was published.

It appears that the publisher, Samhain, is also giving a free book away on a regular basis. They are primarily an erotic romance publisher which probably explains the number of titles that have been pretty explicit in the sex department.

In terms of a big author, who qualifies? They had The Surgeon by Tess Gerritsen as a freebie back in September. She's been on the New York Times bestseller list. Does that count?

L

[SweetPea]

You can also edit your list of recommended items...there is a way to mark items as gifts purchased for others and/or to mark them as not to be used for recommendations. 

You should see the following on the top of Amazon's homepage...

Hello, SweetPea. We have recommendations for you. (Not SweetPea?)

Just click on recommendations, then on See All Recommendations.  There will be an option on the left side of the page to "Improve All Recommendations."  From there you can mark that one book, or any other item as you see fit, as not to be used for recommendations.

Hopefully this will prevent Amazon recommending other explicit books that you may not be interested in.

Hope that helps!

[Khabita]

SweetPea -- thanks for that tip! I had recently posted over at the Amazon Kindle forum that my one complaint about the free books (and I'm usually NOT one to look a gift horse in the mouth) is that they totally mess up my book recommendations. When I downloaded "Perfecting Amanda" for example, my "Recommendations" started showing all sorts of erotica, which was kind of embarrassing when I was showing a friend my Kindle and he went to the Kindle Store page and saw my Recommendations.

Now I know how to fix that. Thanks!

[SweetPea]

Glad I could help!  Being one of those "still waiting for it to arrive...reading every forum to kill the time" junkies, I jump on any opportunity to help with anything non-Kindle-specific that I can!

[LuckyRainbow]

Just finished Talking With the Dead which was my first free book. While it did have a couple of intimate scenes, that was not a major part of the story. It was a decent read, but really glad I did not have to pay for it.

[Tris]

Thanks all!

I have made the change on my recommendations list.  I can't believe that I never saw that link there!  It's so much nicer on my Kindle now.  I totally understand what you were talking about Khabita because my family members and friends like to pick up my Kindle to look at it and flip through it.

Now my question is (yes, I seem to have a ton) how do you know when the free book expires?  Like you said L, that the 'Reincarnationist' is expiring today. 

Tris

[Leslie]

For the free books: you don't know when they are expiring, unless they say in advance (like the author did with The Reincarnationist). So my advice is snag them when you see them. If you don't like a book, it's easy enough to delete.

L

[Khabita]

I, too, have just fixed my Recommendations list. Life will be just a LITTLE bit less embarassing for me when someone looks at my Kindle Store page.

And I'm reading The Reincarnationist right now -- it's pretty good. The writing is better than Dan Brown (I don't think much of his writing, though), and the plot is pretty exciting. And it was FREE!!!!