Authors have a variety of reasons for sharing their work for free. Sometimes, the book is a leader into a series. If the reader enjoys the first book, they are likely to purchase the rest of them. That’s the hope, anyway. Sometimes the e-Book is a short story, usually serving the same purpose as the leader. Sometimes free e-Books are a way to gain downloads on sites like Amazon. And sometimes, the author just wants to spread their work to as many people as possible.
Ew, that sounded kind of gross.
But what’s not gross are all these lovely sites you can submit your free ebook to, for no cost. The irony of charging to list a free e-Book would be too much.
Pixel of Ink has a great reputation, though there’s no guarantee you will be listed if you submit. Worth a shot though. There are reports across the web about the great traffic they have brought in for featured authors. And I even gave you a link straight to the submission information because it can be a little tricky to find. No uploading required.
My pet project, Rainy’s Book Realm, also now offers a category for sharing your free e-Book. Either register and fill out the post yourself, or use the form which requires no registration and no messing around with WordPress. Simple! No uploading required—link straight to Amazon or other site.
The rest of these sites do require uploading. That means if the point of the free e-Book is to generate download ranking, then these sites probably won’t help much because the readers will be downloading directly from them. If you are just interested in hooking readers, then consider these guys, as well.
Perhaps the most popular one is Smashwords. While many people use it to sell their books, you can also choose to give it away for free.
Scribd also has a free ebook service, which allows readers to read or download your book directly from them.
Free Ebooks has a slew of options for your, um, free e-Book. Check them out first. Then, if you decide you want to host your book with them, use this contact form.
Many Books will consider hosting your free ebook as well. Here is the direct link to the form.
Finally, PDF-Geni. This is more like a search engine for e-Books, but it works fundamentally the same as the other upload sites. And, once again, here’s the direct form.
So go spread it around town, shout it from the roof top, and be proud you’ll give it away for free, anywhere, anytime. ;)
Have you used any of the above sites for sharing your free ebook? What did you and did you not like about them? Do you know of any other similar sites?
This article originally appeared on Rainy of the Dark.