For those of us who have been in the writing arena for a while we have learned, or tried to learn, how to get our work and our name out into the reading world. One thing I’m sure we can all agree on is, “It ain’t easy!” That’s true. It is not easy to get ourselves and our work before the public. In fact, most of us would say writing the book was the easy part – the rest is like tackling a tiger – so what is the solution?

Did you know you can give your book away? Don’t panic. Don’t quit reading. When we are unknown authors, it is sometimes much more productive for us to give our book away for a limited time. We did that with my first book. I knew it was worthy of being read and was certain that it would help people, but as an unknown author I didn’t know how to do it. I finally decided I would rather give it away than have it sit on my shelf doing nothing. After some serious searching – soul and technical – we found a way to do it.

Enter Amazon’s KDP – Kindle Direct Publishing. First of all, in order to do this the book has to be in an eBook format. This can easily be done on KDP Select if you can read directions and follow the steps. On KDP Select, there is an option to offer your eBook free five times over a 90-day period. Don’t faint! Remember, we did this and it worked beautifully for us.

You choose the day(s) you want the book to be offered and lock them in on KDP Select. (Be sure to write those days down on your calendar.) You can do it in one five-day session or you can choose individual days throughout the 90-day time frame. It’s your choice. 

Let’s walk this out a little further. Say you have a fictional crime novel. When is the best time to offer this? Check the market. I would guess winter, when people are no longer working in their yards and are ready to curl up with a good book in front of the fireplace. Maybe late September or October or November would be a good time for you to make this offer. You choose the dates and you set it up in KDP Select. But that isn’t the end of it. There is the issue of letting the public know.