Author Tools, For Readers
What is Stuff Your Kindle Day and How Does it Work?
Essentially Stuff Your Kindle Day is an author organized romance book giveaway. Hundreds of romance authors, in basically all romance genres, make their books available for free on a specific day.
Readers are able to go get those books for free wherever they’re available!
Is there a download limit?
There’s no limit to how many books you can download, but it is for a limited time only, so hurry up!
Is it for Kindle owners only?
Nope! You can get free romance books no matter what type of e-reader you use. Just select your preferred retailer and get started!
Where can I find the free books?
All the books available on Stuff Your Kindle Day are available here. Just select which store you want to download from (Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, etc) and start scrolling!
Want more free Romance every day? Sign up for our newsletter here, or check out today’s free books!
Author Tools, Field Guides
Ereaders are a god send for those of us that love to read, but keeping one filled up with books to keep our reading obsession happy is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. For that reason, we’ve put together this article on how to find and download cheap and free ebooks for your e-reader!
Book promo sites
This one might seem obvious since this is what we do here at bookspry, but hear us out…using promo sites gives you access to cheap books you wouldn’t find otherwise for a couple of reasons.
One, some daily deal sites (like bookspry) are scouring the internet for great book deals all the time and then report the cream of the crop back to you. This lets you take advantage of someone else’s work and all you have to do is check the site, or even better, sign up to the newsletter and check your email whenever you’re in the mood for more deals.
The other benefit of following book deal of the day sites, is that authors will often reach out to these sites and alert them when they have a release coming up. This relationship means you’ll often see new releases listed on promo sites before they make bestseller lists or review sites.
Get our Free Romance Books here, and our free and cheap sci-fi/fantasy books here!
Public Domain Collections
Sites like the Gutenberg Project and Standard ebooks have hundreds of volunteers who have spent thousands of hours building and cleaning books that are in the public domain, in order to make them available for free. Classics like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are all available for free and are available in various formats. You won’t find any recent bestsellers here, but it’s an amazing resource for older classics you haven’t had a chance to read yet.
Amazon Daily Deal lists
One of the beautiful things about ebooks (especially self published ebooks) is that the prices can change constantly and quickly (this is also one of the most frustrating parts of reading ebooks). That means that checking the Amazon Daily Deals page can often result in finding cheap and free books for your Kindle that will only be on sale for a limited time. Bookmark it and check it often!
Author mailing lists
A lot of authors give out free books, epilogues, short stories and bonus chapters to people who are signed up to their mailing lists. All you need to do is go to your favourite author’s website and sign up to their mailing list. The good part of this is that the stories you receive are hyper-specific to you. They’ll all be written by an author that you know you like, so the chances are you’ll enjoy them. The downside is that not every author has a mailing list and some that do, don’t send out freebies. Still, it’s worth checking out your favourite author’s websites to see if they do.
Ebook giveaways
A lot of authors will join together to giveaway free or cheap books en masse in order to gain new readers or draw attention to a new release. There are websites like Instafreebie that offer these giveaways to readers. Simply find a giveaway that matches your interests and look through the books. Note that a lot of these giveaways will require you to give them your email address. That’s a small price to pay for free books, but if that makes you uncomfortable, this one may not be for you.
Updating this because there’s a new giveaway in town! Stuff Your Kindle Day from Romance Book Worms is a quarterly free romance book giveaway that features hundreds of free books! Check it out to find out when the next giveaway starts.
Libraries
Saved the best for last. I know we’re an online daily ebook deal site, but we’ll always have a soft spot for our public library. A lot of people don’t know that most libraries have extensive online ebook and audiobook collections that are completely free. Sites like Overdrive can help you find libraries that have online ebooks, but their list isn’t complete, so make sure to search for libraries in your area or, better yet, go and talk to your librarian to understand everything they have to offer!
What to avoid…
Hopefully this list of places to get free ebooks is more than enough, but we thought it would be a good idea to include what to avoid.
Beware of websites that claim you can download new or bestselling books for free. It’s very rare you can get free bestsellers from anywhere but the source (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc) and that’s only when they’re having a promotion. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Also avoid torrenting books! Someone might tell you it’s a free way to get books, but lots of torrents are filled with malware and if you are downloading a book that isn’t free elsewhere, you’re stealing it. Downloading your cheap and free ebooks from legitimate sources makes sure that the authors and promoters will continue to offer these books!
That’s it. Happy reading!
The bookspry team
Author Tools, Field Guides for Authors
Writing is a lonely job. Everybody’s interested in what you’re doing, you may even have a great support system but, at the end of the day, writing is about sitting down (by yourself) and putting work in.
This obviously has it pros and cons (no waiting on lazy co-workers!) but one of the hardest parts of working alone is tracking your work and holding yourself accountable. We’ll have a piece about how to set, and achieve, reasonable goals as a writer later, but for now, we’re going to talk about the tracking.
Why Use a Word Count Tracker?
I’ve been using a writing tracker for years, but it wasn’t always that way. I used to wonder daily how much I had written. Did I hit my goals? Did I spend more time on Project A or Project B, and how close were they getting to being completed?
Eventually, once I got sick of feeling that way, I committed to trying to track my writing properly. I made a simple spreadsheet and started writing down time and words written. I promised myself I’d try it for a week and see what happens. That was four years ago and I haven’t missed many days since then.
But it took me awhile to get used to using it. I realised very quickly that there were some very good reasons to spend those few seconds starting my writing tracker every day.
It’s kind of annoying that I have to open up a spreadsheet and actually fill in what time it is before I start my writing session. I’m sitting there, bubbling with ideas and I want to get started now, so why waste time opening up a spreadsheet instead. Well…
“I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can’t pretend I had a productive day when I didn’t. It’s in my face, in black and white, how much I wrote.”
Accountability
When I use a word tracker, I’m making a conscious commitment to writing. It’s time to close other tabs, put my phone on silent and just get typing. It helps give me focus and structure. I know I’m “on the clock”.
It also means I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can’t pretend I had a productive day when I didn’t. It’s in my face, in black and white, how much I wrote.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about punishment (always remember to be kind to yourself!), this is about me achieving my goals, and that means being honest with myself.
Motivation
Seeing how many words I’ve written that day or week is massively motivating to me. When my word count is low, I’m motivated to write more to catch up. When it’s high, I want to keep that streak running! I want to run up the “high score”! I’m winning? OK, let’s see how much I can win by!
Fun! (Fun?!)
Call me a nerd, but I LOVE seeing my word counts add up. I love seeing little graphs that show how much I’m writing and how much I’m publishing. When I’m tired of writing and just want to zone out, I’ll take my numbers and start playing with them. Which days do I write the most? Which stories am I writing the fastest? Why is that? Etc.
I legitimately have fun using a word count tracker.
Still not enough? Chris Fox’s 5000 Words per Hour book talks about the various techniques you can use to speed up your writing, but the first step, the thing you need to know before you can implement any of those things, is knowing how many words you’re writing per hour.
How to Use a Word Count Tracker?
This depends a lot on how you want to work and what word tracker you choose. Some people like “gamified” word trackers like 4thewords, while some people prefer raw numbers in a spreadsheet they keep by themselves. All of these have different ways to “use them”, so the thing to remember is, “What do you want from a word count tracker?”.
Personally, I need something that will do something with my word count data. Something to show me graphs, progress, charts, etc. Something that will me modify it as my writing goals (and knowledge) change. I need a word count tracker that’s easy to use, but very flexible. That’s why I created my own!
Where Can I Find a Word Count Tracker?
How convenient! We happen to have one right here! 😉
All joking aside. A word tracker like the bookspry.com Writing Diary and Daily Word Count Tracker, hits all my goals. I mean, it should, I built it. But not only does it let me see my totals, it also keeps track of the amount of time I’m actually spending writing, and maybe more importantly, it shows me daily, monthly and annual totals. Which is incredibly motivating.
Other than that, we will be coming out with a list of our favourite word counters soon. Stay tuned!
Author Tools, Field Guides for Authors, Interviews
It was my pleasure this week to chat with indie author, and founder of Indie Exchange (www.indiepubexchange.com), Oliver Ryan, about the self-publishing industry and how his new platform can help authors save time, and avoid some of the major pitfalls involved with the self publishing industry.
“Indie Exchange is for every author who has struggled to find editors, designers, and marketing that they can trust.”
What’s your background in the self-publishing world?
Well, I started in self publishing about five years ago. I was looking for a job I could do from home and when I stumbled upon self publishing I knew it’d be perfect for me and dove in head first.
It took probably a year for me to reach the income I desired but once I was doing this full-time, I immersed myself fully in the industry. And for five years, I’ve loved it!
Describe for our readers what exactly Indie Exchange is.
Indie Exchange is a platform for service providers in the indie publishing industry to offer their services and for authors to seek them out. Unlike other freelancing ad sites, Indie Exchange is a subscription based membership service where you can browse ads, look at sample galleries, leave comments and reviews. It’s more involved than your usual ad site and a lot more private!
I think on other freelancing websites, it’s very difficult for providers to get paid what their creative work is worth and it’s similarly difficult for authors to find quality work that they can market to their readers. Indie Exchange is a curated platform that aims to create a community of both quality providers and clients.
Who is the Indie Exchange platform for?
Indie Exchange is for every author who has struggled to find editors, designers, and marketing that they can trust. It’s for experienced authors who struggle to efficiently find new providers and promotional services and feel they waste a lot of time vetting new providers.
It’s also for providers who struggle to market their services to the indie authors who need them.
Basically, it’s for anyone who offers or needs a service and struggles to get connected!
“It’s hard to get started in this industry when you don’t know what to look for in an editor or a cover designer.”
Tell me about the day you decided to build Indie Exchange.
It actually was an idea I had back when I did ghostwriting. I was making some money on the side to supplement my self publishing and I realized I loved ghostwriting, it paid really well, and the clients were generally very good… But it was hard to find clients. I mostly had to do so by word of mouth from friends and acquaintances in the industry. And I just thought to myself… why should it be this hard?
This is a multi-million dollar industry and there are tons of people who want ghostwriters and new writers who would like to ghostwrite and yet there is not a central place for these people to connect.
As a writer, I couldn’t find well paying jobs on freelance websites because people were looking for dirt cheap pricing. And, likewise, authors can’t find quality work on these sites that are marketable in our industry…but they’re willing to pay top dollar to providers who are qualified.
And it’s really from that Idea that Indie Exchange was born! It’s years later and there still isn’t one central site to connect quality providers and professional clients. I hope Indie Exchange will eventually be the place that bridges that gap and providers and authors alike find it an effective way to find every service they need.
What are the main challenges facing indie authors today, and how does your site help?
Well, I think the number one challenge is that it’s more competitive than it’s ever been. So it’s extremely difficult to break through right now and become successful.
And I think Indie Exchange can help with the competition for both new authors and experienced authors alike. For those experienced, I hope to offer a wide range of the best service providers in the industry so that can efficiently find designers, editors, and writers at the touch of a button.
Likewise, with ads for marketing consulting and promotional opportunities, I hope we can help new authors break into the market. It’s hard to get started in this industry when you don’t know what to look for in an editor or a cover designer. Indie Exchange should make it easier than ever to get into this industry if you don’t already have connections to providers.
“On other freelancing websites, it’s very difficult for providers to get paid what their creative work is worth”
What were some of the biggest challenges you came across when putting this project together?
Honestly, to my surprise, the project came together very smoothly! I happened to find an amazing developer through a friend of mine and through his experience, I learned so much. I sketched out my vision for the site, hired a designer to make it all pretty, then hired a developer who really built on all my ideas. It was very much a collaborative effort and I’m so glad building the site went so well.
I think the real challenge comes now that the site is done! The hardest thing is bringing this idea forward into the community and getting the word out so we can get quality providers and members. But I’ve gotten a ton of great feedback and thus far it seems everyone who’s using the site really enjoys it.
So as long as word spreads, I see things going great for Indie Exchange!
What’s your favourite feature of the site?
Well, if I had to pick just one, I’d say our reviewing system is my favorite just because it allows clients to really discern one provider from another.
I don’t buy anything these days without reading the reviews online and I don’t know that I’d be able to work with someone without any knowledge of them beforehand. And I think it’s an awesome bonus that you’re able to anonymously review as well!
What’s next for you guys?
I’ve got a bunch of updates in the works with my developers and I’ve got my ears to the ground as I really try to figure out what members want to be next for Indie Exchange.
I have so many ideas for how to build upon Indie Exchange but it’ll really be the opinions of my members that help me decide what to move forward with first!
What’s your #1 tip for someone thinking about getting into self publishing?
Research, research, research!
The only reason I was able to pave a career in self publishing was because I researched it obsessively. It takes a while to learn the ropes and build an indie author career but it’s very rewarding when you do.
This also folds into Indie Exchange a little bit but long before Indie Exchange came to be, I told people to develop their side hustles. It may take a while to learn the ropes of self publishing but there are so many ways to make a living in this industry. If you’ve got a graphic design background, learn how to make marketable covers! You can edit, you can ghostwrite, there are so many people making money in this industry who aren’t self publishing. While you learn, find something that pays the bills.
Thank you so much for taking the time to talk with us. Where can people reach you if they have any questions?
Anyone who has any questions can email me at support@indiepubexchange.com
Indie Exchange is a subscription-based classifieds website curated specifically to the indie publishing community! Publishers and service providers can offer their services or seek out jobs they need, from editing to cover art to promotional services. Members can leave reviews and comments on their favorite services or their clients’ profiles so others can make informed purchasing decisions. You can also browse categories or use Indie Exchange’s advanced search option to find the exact service you’re looking for.
For more information on this new platform for self-published authors, head to www.indiepubexchange.com.
