Wednesday, May 5, 2010

iPad Nation Daily Free Book Alert for Wednesday, May 5: Colters' Wife by Maya Banks, and Dozens More


Colters' Wife, an erotic western romance novella by Maya Banks, is today's new kid on the block among free iPad-compatible promotional books in the Kindle Store.

Banks is a good example of a prolific author who has hit the sweet spot and found her own connections with readers with her nicely priced ebook offerings, including Amber Eyes, Stay With Me, Seducing Simon, Reckless: A Red Hot Summer Story, Sweet Seduction, Sweet Persuasion, Sweet Surrender, Love Me, Still, Brazen, Be With Me, The Tycoon's Pregnant Mistress, and her Unbroken series (Understood (Unbroken Book 1), Overheard (Unbroken, Book 2), and Undenied (Unbroken, Book 3)).

Meanwhile, check out our new listing of 30 months of month-by-month Kindle Store bestsellers here:

Kindle Store Bestsellers, Month-by-Month for the First 30 Months




 
Death of a Trophy Wife, the eighth novel in Laura Levine's Jane Austen series, was released by Kensington Saturday as a $22 hardcover, discounted to $14.96 by Amazon, but it's free today in the Kindle Store.
 
The Killing Room by John Manning will be released as a $6.99 paperback tomorrow by Pinnacle Books, but it's free today in the Kindle Store.
 
Mistress By Mistake by Maggie Robinson was released by Kensington Saturday as a $14 paperback, discounted to $10.20 by Amazon, but it's free today in the Kindle Store.

D.L. Bogdan's Secrets of the Tudor Court was released by Kensington Saturday as a $15 paperback, discounted to $10.20 by Amazon, but it's free today in the Kindle Store.
 
Bestselling author Niobia Bryant's steamy novel Give Me Fever will be released as a $6.99 paperback tomorrow by Dafina Books, but it's free today in the Kindle Store.
 
Breach of Trust by DiAnn Mills, a popular 2009 release from Tyndale, is newly free in the Kindle Store.

 Meanwhile....



Here are our other updated free promotional  iPad-compatible listings in the Kindle Store as of May 5:

 
The Fence My Father Built by Linda S. Clare

Snow Melts in Spring by Deborah Vogts

 Tender Graces by Kathryn Magendie


by Martha I. Finney and Duncan Mathison

Swashbuckling Fantasy: 10 Thrilling Tales of Magical Adventure, a Sampler from Simon & Schuster


Nothing's been ordinary in the world of ebooks lately, but ordinarily, lately, when you see the line "This price was set by the publisher" on a Kindle ebook's product page it is Amazon's way of letting us know  that there's bad news adjacent to it in the form of one of those special "agency price-fixing model" prices. $12? $15? One never knows.

But here's a breath of fresh air! Big Six publisher Simon & Schuster has done some creative thinking about how to leverage the power of "free" in the Kindle Store and used the agency price-fixing model to try something new, with a substantial volume of freebies under the lusty title Swashbuckling Fantasy: 10 Thrilling Tales of Magical Adventure.

Just what do I mean by substantial? 
  • First, these are 10 tales by 10 authors each with her own substantial oeuvre of fantasy titles already, so of course the authors and the publisher are hoping that this process will work for them and lead readers to their other work in the same way that we have seen work so effectively with our own Free Kindle Nation Shorts program. The authors represented are Jane Johnson, Linda BuckleyArcher, Scott Westerfeld, Kai Meyer, Alan Snow, Anne Ursu, Obert Skye, Margaret Peterson Haddix, D.J. MacHale and Holly Black.
  • Second, for those of you who, like me, take a look at file size and "number of locations" in an ebooks metadata and free sample before committing to a book, you'll recognize that the offering's file size of 1320 KB and its 3,936 "locations" spell a book of significant size and virtual weight.
  • Third, my quick perusal of the full text indicates that, unlike many "sampler" offerings, these 10 tales appear to be just that -- tales, self-contained short stories or novellas -- rather than frustrating tastes of an excerpted chapter or two.

So, bravo, Simon & Schuster! This is just the kind of thing that the big publishers should be doing to experiment with and begin to figure out the retail marketing power of distinctive pricing and free-to-paid linkages, so we've got your back if some of the other agency price-fixing model publishers whine that you are engaging in competitive and adversarial behavior.

And, of course, we still have dozens of other freebies in the Kindle Store, in case you've missed any of them.

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