Let's talk about FREE

Okay, I want to talk about something important today. Can you guess what it is?
Ebooks.
Not just any average ebook, but Free Ebooks. Its a big deal. Trust me.

 

The word Free always catches a persons attention. People like Free. Free is easy, free gives you a thrill. Free always catches your eye like when you're in the store and you see a sale going on for something you love and you see a tag saying BUY ONE, GET ONE FREE or The price is FREE (just pay s&h) in small letters. Its an attention getter. A person feels that they benefit from it. They get that two second rush of "I just got that and I didn't have to pay." We always feel great about it and we can't wait to tell our friends about how we just got a free bottle of perfume at Victoria Secret, or that Free blouse at Macy's.
But FREE gets abused. FREE gets taken advantage of. Especially in the digital world.
We all know that people all over the world pirate books when they go online, it happens every day. Its an epidemic that doesn't seem to see any end in sight.
But the thing about people that pirate books is that they usually do it quietly yet they still rave about how they got this such and such a book but when you ask them where they got it well...
So in comes the whole dilemma of people that are fans taking from the authors that they love so much. Then you start to hear, "I love this authors work, I just can't afford to buy it from the store. Besides what's one more downloaded book? No one is going to notice."
Someone does.

 

Then there are fans that actually do buy the books so they go out and buy ereaders or tablets specifically for their ebooks. (Yes, they really do that.) But they only have a few ebooks on them because they can't afford to invest in buying books as much as they would like.
That doesn't need to be a problem. For someone like me who doesn't have a whole lot of money to invest in my addiction all the time or even have a few bucks to spare at the end of the month I need a way to feed my need to read. Very frequently.
So how can someone like me afford to buy dozens of books a week, or hundreds of books a month without stealing them?

There are plenty of online websites that provide them to you. Legitimately.
(I know, I know... An honest person never uses the word legit, right?) But seriously.

I'm not just talking about going on some site signing up hoping to win a give away at the end of the month, or entering some kind of contest that does a random selection out of thousands of other readers. Although those are totally cool and fun. I do them all the time. Thank you and God bless Writerspace, Fresh Fiction and Goodreads - among many other websites that host giveaways.
And I'm not talking about publisher provided ebooks - which if you haven't tried, you need to seriously consider because its the best thing I've discovered since chocolate. (Thank you Netgalley)

But for those of you that want that simple click automatic download fulfillment....

(I'm sure we all know this button by heart....) 

...you can easily find FREE ebooks provided by Amazon, Barnes and Noble, KOBO, Itunes/Ibooks, Smashwords and many other websites. Seriously. Like millions of books a day on those websites are FREE. (Promotion whore much?)

Even authors post FREE ebooks on their websites. (Don't believe me, check their pages and give them a visit. I bet you'll find at least one site that has a free novella or ebook available. Sign up for newsletters too because a lot of times the authors provide discount coupons to get Free access to their books.)

But back to my original point, people hear that Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Itunes provide Free ebooks and they think, well they got to be unknown authors or lame novellas written by someones sister in law that no one wants to read,  no.
There are tons of really great, very well known authors listed every day, cycled every twenty four hours on their websites posting FREE ebooks all the time.
I'm not kidding.

 

All the time I'm asked how I could possibly own thousands... thousands of ebooks all Free without pirating them. That's how. Its as simple as that.

Every day I go online or -(any time I have some free time) to look it over and I search for the Free ebooks.
Because I am a major Romance genre fan, I typically look under that category but all the time I find really great books listed for Free from well known to best selling authors. I buy them up, the author still benefits from it, and I'm not stealing from them. All the while I get to feed my book addiction, I post reviews on the books I read and still have plenty more to pick from.

My wallet gets to survive another week, and when I can go out and invest in a major book haul, I go on a little spree and walk out with a smile because I don't have to worry about how I'm going to be able to afford the next one.

So you may have to wait a little while for the next new book or save up for the one you really want to buy at the store but you can also give a looksee online. You may discover something you like. I've discovered hundreds of new authors doing it that way, and there's nothing wrong with finding someone new to read.
Give it a try sometime.

So go and buy FREE.

 Free... Free... Free....