Thanks so much for the congratulations, Gai! I’m so glad the content is useful!

You can give away advance review copies — ARCs. They’re used to get blurbs/endorsements/testimonials for the cover and sales pages and for reader reviews to drop into place once the book goes live.

Sandy

How can authors give away books that haven’t been published?

And I’d like to add my congratulations on your well-deserved award and thanks for consistently valuable content on your blog.

Paying to giveaway a book is not the same thing as paying to have a book reviewed.

Sandy

The fact is, the only ones who really stand to gain from this is Amazon which seeks to get new subscribers by offering Independent authors’ books for free, and now they want to charge Indies for doing it. The idea that we need to give our books away, after spending our time and money writing those books, putting hours into research, honing our craft, editing and rewriting and editing again, sometimes it takes years. Some of us spend hundreds of dollars creating our books with covers and formatting and editing. We’re encouraged to give our hard work away. Readers have become so accustomed to ‘free books’ that it’s almost impossible to even sell one or two. If wasn’t so passionate about what I wrote I would wonder if its even worth the effort. It would be nice to get some real help from companies like Goodreads or Amazon, rather than trying to suck us dry.

Agreed! I get to pay to giveaway my book for a review or two? Not worth the trouble and I thought Amazon was against paid reviews.

Cari, rates are listed on the BookBub site. They depend on the category and whether the book is free or discounted. Getting a slot remains a competitive process because the ads are so successful.

Sandy

Thank you, Wendy. That’s very kind of you.

Sandy