Anytime I get books – whether from the library or by purchase – I get a mixed bag. Some will be good, some so-so, and some are real stinkers. What about free books? Is there any reason to download an ebook that doesn’t cost you anything? Well, yes, sure.
Why do authors offer their books for free?
- They are new and need someone – anyone – to read and hopefully review their work
- They want you to read the first book in their series so you continue on to buy the sequels
- They know the value of marketing and offer free samples
I’ve found several authors via BookBub, for example C. Gockel who writes enjoyable contemporary novels about Loki and his fellow Asgardians, and Raymond Weil who writes novels about aliens invading Earth. Our library has neither author. In both cases the first book was free and I followed up buying several more.
All that said, I don’t expect a lot from a free book and when it opens up a new author I’m delighted.
Let’s look at the ones I read this last week from Instafreebie and BookBub.
The pick of the litter was Amateur Grammatics: A Comic Fantasy Novellete by Kevin Partner. I didn’t expect much with this – funny is extraordinarily difficult to do well – and was happily surprised by the interesting characters, creative and ingenious plot and setting. Even the odd speech (not quite a dialect but not standard English either) worked.
Rubbish With Names An Interstellar Railroad Story was a freebie from Felix R. Savage by way of his newsletter that I didn’t find on Amazon. It was OK.
The Trilisk Ruins (Parker Interstellar Travels Book 1) by Michael McCloskey is the first of a series offered for free on Amazon. I’ll review this in more detail in a separate post as it was good, worth reading albeit with some unbelievable moments.
Return by J. A. Scorch was an excellent short novella about the aftermath of an alien invasion. His first book in the alien invasion is Return which I’m reading now. Perhaps this is his first book, period, because I cannot find him on Amazon. Or perhaps his one-word titles are hard to find given the umpteen other books with the same name.
Carrie Hatchett’s Christmas from J. J. Green was cute.
Mage Lessons was a sample only. Quite good but not something I wanted to spring $5 to read in full. If author Ilana Waters offers any of the series for free I will certainly get it.
Not Alone by Craig A Falconer had thi intriguing cover, unfortunately was so-so, similar to Close Encounters of the Third Kind with a heavy dose of public relations shenanigans.
Special Offers by M. L. Ryan had a fun-sounding blurb and was OK, possibly quite good with serious editing to remove fluff like breakfast menus. I skimmed the middle third.
Felis Catus by A. J. Chaudhury had a white cat on the cover, how could I resist? This was a novella with uneven quality set in India.
Melanie Karsak’s Chasing Christmas Past: An Airship Racing Chronicles Short Story Prequel featured a whiny character I detested.
Most likely of the 200 or so books I recently got there will be 20 good to very good books and maybe another 50 or so that are worth reading.
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