IASFA Monthly Free Book Deals – how do they work? Why are we doing them?
- Build an exclusive IASFA marketing email list to benefit our members
- Benefit our members by getting their full-book free samples in front of a new audience in the effort to gain new readers
We put an open call to authors for each genre on the website (iasfa.org). We only have sign-ups open for one promotion at a time to help us manage the books.
- The free runs are only five days so both premafree and those in KDP Select can participate
- Full books only (more than 40k – an omni edition of novellas or shorts would work as long as the volumes total words was more than 40k)
- Only IASFA members can participate
- Sign up, following the prompts – be sure to use a universal link for your title since IASFA readers are around the world
- A few days prior to each month’s promotional run, we’ll send a media package to all IASFA members to support and promote as they wish. Those with books in the promo are required to hit their list during the promotion. Anyone else, we appreciate the support if you can give the promotion a shout.
- On the morning that the free run starts, we will double check all the books to make sure they are indeed free and that BookFunnel and StoryOrigin downloads do not have any secondary email collection
When a reader clicks on the “Get Free Books” link…
- They are taken to a generic collection page that gets their email
- After they’ve signed up, they will get a confirmation email with the link to the download page
- If the reader had already signed up, they will get an email directly from IASFA in the first afternoon (US time) of the first day of the promotion.
- On the download page, readers have to click through each title to see if they want to download it. There is no one-click download of all titles, so your cover and blurb to entice the reader is on you.
- Once on the IASFA NL list, they remain on the list unless they unsubscribe. They only need to subscribe once and they’ll get the email each month at the beginning of the five-day free run
The monthly free run dates and genres are as follows. This is the link to sign up for whatever is current (for example, Alien Sci-Fi opens on February 15th for sign-ups and closes on March 7th to give us time to make sure the reader download page is working as its supposed to).
Epic Fantasy Feb 10-14
Alien Sci-Fi Mar 9-13
Urban Fantasy Apr 13-17
LitRPG/GameLit/Cyberpunk – May 11-15
Post-Apoc Jun 8-12
Dark Fantasy Jul 13-17
Sci-Fi Romance Aug 10-14
All Sci-Fi Sep 14-18
All Fantasy Oct 12-16
All Urban Fantasy Nov 9-13
Space Opera Dec 14-18
Easy as that. We will refine our monthly emails with the media package and include other information related to the IASFA.All of this will improve over time as we get better and better at how we present these works to the readers who support SFF authors.
Hi, I added my book, Sojin, to the Free epic fantasy book promotion, but I think I made a mistake. I didn’t see until after that it needed to be 40k! Please remove if disqualified.
Thank you and sorry for the mistake!
Kind regards
Cully Mack
No problem – we’ll take it out of this promotion, but maybe for the general genre promo (the big Fantasy wide), we’ll go with books of all lengths and just make sure authors start their blurb with “This is a novella…” so we don’t mislead any of the readers.
Thank you!
Kind regards
Cully
Where do I put my email to be placed on this list?
We email our members once a month with information about the next promo, but you can always check this link. https://iasfa.org/book-entry-form/ for the current promotion being run assuming you want to add your book since this is the members only part of the site. If you want to see the deals that we run from a reader perspective, then sign up at the “Free Books” tab.
Hi Craig, is the above book-entry-form always valid? I mean, if I have something for All Fantasy in Oct., is it okay if I save that link and wait until it says “All fantasy Oct.12-16”?
Thanks
Barb
No. In order to best manage this, we only have the next Free Promo active when the current free promo is not running. Some things are automated and if people tried to enter something for next month now, it would auto-populate to the current form. Plus, it makes sure that people are aware of the promotion they are getting into. If we let people submit months in advance, they would forget and not be active during the promotion period. I think this is the best way to keep the participating authors engaged. You won’t be able to submit for the October promotion until after the September promo has run its course.
Of course, but the link is still there, no? I mean, I’ll submit when I see it’s open for the October promo, not for whatever is running now. I have scheduled it to look up the link in September to make sure I don’t miss the right window.
Yes – it’s the exact same link month to month.