I love my Indie-authors, and I just want to talk about how they market their books. Authors usually have a full time job until they have a large library of books, and they don’t have a staff of people or a bunch of money to market their books. They are dependent on blogs, readers, newsletters, facebook, twitter, reviews on amazon, bn, kobo, etc. and exceptional book prices to get their books noticed.

I love finding new authors, so I look at the amazon.com author pages to try to find similar authors when I have read someone’s whole library and I am waiting for their next book. I also look for similar free books, because then I can see if I really like someone’s plots and characters, and because I have a limited budget for books.

I have found some of my favorite authors that way, like Celia Kyle, Eve Langlais, Penny Reid, Michele Bardsley, Crista Wick and many others.

Some people express that maybe books are free because they are worth less, and hearing that actually makes me angry. No author thinks their books are worth less than another author’s books. They put many hours and their heart and soul into their books. They put out their best product for us to enjoy.

I don’t think free books are worth less than books for cost–I feel grateful to the author for giving me a chance to try their work. They are giving up an income source in the hopes that they find someone who loves their stories like they do. My gratitude takes the form of reviewing the book on Amazon, BN, Kobo, GoodReads, etc. I usually go the extra mile and review on Amazon US, UK, Australia and Canada, because those readers don’t see all the American reviews very easily. Of course, when I love a book, I look for a buy other books by the author to enjoy.

Overall, the prices of ebooks are very low–usually less than a large cappuccino at a coffee house. A book gives me hours of enjoyment that I can repeat whenever I want. Ebooks are a great value, whether they are free, discounted or “full price.”

So, please, remember free ebooks are a gift. A review is a gift you can give in exchange.

rant:
OK, this turned into a long thing, so I am going to mention something else. If you want to tell an author about typos, please contact them so they can fix it–don’t put it in the review to scare off other buyers. They’ll fix it if you are specific enough. And don’t say “editing issues” unless you are a professional editor–that is different from typos and missed words. It gives the wrong impression to other buyers.

If you put up a scathing review of a book you didn’t finish, I consider that lying. I don’t want to see reviews from people who don’t know what they are talking about, because they didn’t read it. And if you don’t finish an ebook and then put up a bad review, do you realize you are protecting others from spending nothing? You are not saving people from bad purchases if it is free.

If you don’t like the review you left, please consider editing it or deleting and re-writing it if an author fixed the issues.

end of rant.