Free Reads

Dear Author recently talked about the various publishers who are giving away free ebooks and wondered if the romance genre shouldn't jump on that wagon too.

The idea of free books as promotion interests me greatly. It's something I've thought about doing - although not for promotion so much as for giving my seemingly unpublishable books a new life. While I wouldn't giveaway something I thought was absolulte dreck, I might give away a book that I love but is in a sub-genre I'm probably not going to write anymore. I'd also give it away with the disclaimer that it hadn't been through professional edits.

At Romance Divas, we've been doing an annual free ereads program for two years. We usually do it around Valentine's Day. The stories offer are the author's choice. Anything goes, any heat level, any genre, any idea. They're free and with that comes a sort of freeness in the writing. More than once those free reads have resulted in a publishing contract as a result of an editor reading the story and wanting to put out an expanded version. It's an interesting event.

Anyway, what do you think about free reads as promotion? Would it interest you to read an old story of mine? (I'd like to add, it was a GH finalist.) Would you ever consider offering a free book of your own?

Bonus: Noah Lukeman (author of The First Five Pages, The Plot Thickens and A Dash of Style) has decided to make his e-book HOW TO WRITE A GREAT QUERY LETTER free, as a way to give back to the writing community. Get it here: http://www.lukeman. com/greatquery/download.htm