Home of the FREE? Not at Amazon
I have engaged in a campaign to get my work read by as many readers as I can. Key to my plan is offering a half dozen of my short stories free of charge. I plan to release a novel this spring and an anthology of short stories this fall, and would like to build a fan base before then. It is amazing how big an impediment even $0.99 can be to people downloading and reading a story by a new author. And that is the minimum price Amazon allows on ebooks.
To date, thousands have downloaded my stories where they are offered free of charge, but only a handful on Amazon where the cost is $0.99. Literally, I don’t have to take off my socks to count the Amazon downloads. Amazon is by far the largest ebook retailer, and though many people have read my free stories so far, that number would be triple or quadruple that if they were available on Amazon free. I feel Amazon’s policy is a little short sighted. Offering these six stories free now benefits both Amazon and me in the future.
But Kindle owners, don’t lament. There is a way to download these stories to your Kindle. They are available on Smashwords free. Later in this post, I will outline how to download from Smashwords to the traditional Kindle or Kindle Touch via your USB cable, or to your Kindle Fire via USB cable, or wirelessly, and I’ll include the Smashwords URLs for my free stories.
I would also ask a favor. If you check Amazon for any of the titles below, right at the bottom of the“Product Details” section is a link labeled “tell us about a lower price?” I would greatly appreciate it if you clicked that link and let Amazon know the story is available free of charge on Smashwords, Barnes & Noble, iTunes, Kobo, Diesel, and the Sony “Reader Store.” Other authors have been able to get Amazon to lower their price this way.
My free stories are:
How to Download FREE Books from Smashwords to your Kindle
1.Hook up your USB Data/Charging cable to your Kindle and computer.
2. Turn on your Kindle. Your Kindle should show up as a Removable Disk like a USB memory stick.
3.Double click on the Removable Disk icon. Afterward it should look similar to this. The folder you care about is the Documents folder
4. Go onto Smashwords on your computer and download a book .MOBI to your computer hard drive. Then drag and drop the .MOBI file into the “Documents” folder of your Kindle. For the Kindle Classic and Touch, the book should show up in your Kindle library on your HOME page. For the Kindle Fire, the book will show up in the DOCUMENTS tab, not in the BOOKS tab. You should now be good to go.
Kindle Fire owners can also download wirelessly by opening the web browser, going to Smashwords and click on the “download” button for the .MOBI file. The book will show up in your DOCUMENTS tab, not in the BOOKS tab.
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