Here’s the Deal: Books Almost Free, No Money Needed

The common wisdom is that giving away books gets you reviews that gains you the attention of folks who’ll actually buy books. Maybe this works, or maybe you just give away a lot of books and then starve. I don’t know, but I’m willing to give it a try.

However, the primary avenue for book giveaways is still Amazon, and, as far as I can tell (being no fan of boilerplate, I have not researched the matter profoundly on the Big A’s website), you can’t run a  free book promotion there without listing your book with Amazon Select, and to do that you have to agree not to sell digital versions of your work on any other channel. That means, of course, that the millions of readers who prefer the .epub format are left out in the cold, as are other merchants. Bit of the old restraint of trade, eh what?

I don’t want to do that.

So here’s the deal: if You have an Amazon account–and almost everyone does, even if they are not Kindle users–then promise me you’ll post a reader review of one of the books below, and I’ll send you a free e-book in Kindle, .epub, or PDF format. You don’t need to have bought a book on Amazon to review it (at least not  this week). You do need to have bought something, anything, from them in the last year or so.

I’m looking for honest reviews, not puff pieces, though of course if you hate my work I’d probably rather you didn’t tell the world. But read one, write a few lines about it, click a star rating, and I’ll take whatever I can get. It need not be an in-depth New York Times level review. (Of course, if you want to post a professional-style review I certainly won’t mind.)

The risk is all mine. I won’t nag or complain if you don’t review it–I am, like Blanche DuBois, depending on the kindness of strangers.

Write me at rickrise@earthlink.net to request a book. Let me know which one of the two below you’d like (you can ask for both), and what format you need. And please don’t send me spam.

I’ll do this till the end of April at least.

Thanks for reading this far at least.

Best,

Rick

The books:

The Dust Will Answer (description here)
Family Ties (description here)