Reader's Freebies 9 - INSTAFREEBIE
Hello, lovely Aboders!
Today, I’d like to talk about one of my favourite websites, Instafreebie. I bumped into it after I subscribed to the newsletter of Future House Publishing, an indie press that publishes fantasy and sci-fi novels with particular focus on superhero stories like Marrow, and The Supes.
Anyway, I received an email from FHP saying that one of their novels, Stuck in the Game was free on Instafreebie for a limited time. I clicked and wow! I got my free copy of the e-book before you could say Chihuahua.
What I like about Instafreebie is, first, the wide selection of free e-books. And I mean WIDE. There’s everything, from non-fiction to paranormal. Twice a week, I receive an email with a few suggested titles, so I don’t even have to browse, and the download takes a moment. I click on the cover of the e-book I want to read, type my email address, and it’s done. Just so you know, every time you download an e-book, you automatically subscribe to the author’s newsletter. If you loved the book, that’s great. If you didn’t like the book, no worries. You can unsubscribe in a jiffy.
Before downloading the e-book, you can choose among three different formats: epub (for the e-book readers), mobi (for Kindle devices), and pdf (for your computer). (I only use the mobi one.) The e-book arrives attached to an email. If you want to receive the e-book directly on your Kindle, the instructions are printed on the email, but to be honest, I never bother following them. I just download the attachment and pass it on to my Kindle.
Downloading an e-book takes longer from Amazon, at least in my opinion. I have to login, go through three passages, select the device where I want to download the book… yeah, I know. It doesn’t sound like a long process, but if you have a slow connection like mine, you might understand me.
Another plus of Instafreebie is that you’ll find e-books from self-published authors and small indie presses (I might be wrong, but so far I haven’t come across any e-book by trad-published authors), and I love supporting self-pubbed authors and indie presses.
The downside is that you can’t see a preview of the first chapters like in Amazon, which is something I always do before downloading an e-book. I read the blurb… no, wait, I’m lying. I confess that the first thing I do is look at the cover, I shouldn’t, I know, but a good cover catches my eye. If I love the cover, I read the blurb, then I start reading the first chapter. If the writing captures me, I want the book!
With Instafreebie, you can only read the blurb, which sometimes is very short and doesn’t really explain the plot. But hey, the book is free, so it’s no biggie. You don’t like it? You can choose among thousands more books, and isn’t that the dream of every bookworm?
Thanks for reading. Join us in two weeks’ time for a review of Prequel to Fallen to Grace: Lucifer's Fall, followed by a one-on-one interview with author AJ Flowers. And remember to have a look at our short stories collection.
