Tag Archives: free reading challenge

My free reading challenge: straying outside my genre

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I read a lot of YA fiction. Reading is a high priority in my life. I work, I’m a mum, I write books myself (45.5k words through Nanowrimo – whoop!) and I still squash in reading 2 – 3 books a week. I’d be lost without them. But I can get a bit jaded. Just to check if I was tiring of my free reading challenge I decided to shake things up. Instead of YA I picked a few books from other genres to read.

What a pleasure!

Small town life writ largeFirst up was Libby Kirsch’s The Big Lead. This is part-romance, part-crime and a whole lot of fun. It reminded me of the Jennifer Crusie novels I read years ago to de-stress when I was in the middle of exams. It was an absolute pleasure – small town America with some glorious, off-beat characters to brighten the place up. Plus, I never read crime. I know there were clues there, but they didn’t impinge on me. I was simply along for the ride, so when it all came together in a fabulous, heart-pounding finale I was completely taken by surprise. I’ll definitely look out for more!

Deliciously creepy
Deliciously creepy

Short and far from sweet

Next up was a collection of short stories. I love short stories (a great way to fill a few unexpected minutes queuing or similar) and I probably don’t read enough. That was certainly my opinion after reading these. I downloaded Icy Sedgwick’s Checkmate: Tales of Speculative Fiction. Woah, they were seriously good – creepy and high unsettling as well as being gorgeously imaginative!

Who dunnit?
Who dunnit?

Kept in suspense

And finally, for something completely different I picked up Tracey Pedersen’s All Adrift. I’d probably tag this as romantic suspense as it’s very definitely a romance, but with a strong crime/suspense element.

Also unusual for me, it’s the third in a series. I’m glad to say that didn’t spoil my reading pleasure at all. I was hooked into Jenna and Ryan’s romance from the start, and wanting to find out what was going on with the mysterious, unknown (or was she?) woman. I’m delighted to say all my guesses were completely wrong in a very satisfying way!

Note: putting in links to the books I apologise if they aren’t showing free for you – I think they may have been on a free offer rather than permafree when I picked them up. Having read them, I would say they’re all worth paying for, though!

Free Reading Challenge: How much is too much?

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Finding Free

I’ve spoken before about how I’ve found books to read for my free reading challenge. I’ve surfed Amazon (not a brilliant success), found books from e-mail promotion companies, and from recommendations on Facebook and Twitter and signed up to blog tours (much more successful). Just lately, I’ve also signed up to several author newsletters to get the free book they’re offering (usually the first in series offered to make you fall in love with the series world and characters). As a writer myself, I’m also using this as research to see what other people are doing with and for their subscribers.

Most authors mail periodically, and it’s clearly the recommended approach to send other free stuff to those who’ve signed up (I’m not sure if there’s some kind of a rule – give people so much for free, then ask them to buy a book, maybe?). To a degree I understand this; keep your customers reading and pleased to hear from you. However, in the past week or two I’ve had a newsletter inviting me to enter a draw to win sixty two physical books (how much shelf space?) and other offering fifty free ebooks to download to my Kindle. This morning came the pinnacle of current offers: a hundred ebooks to choose from.

Too much choice?

Am I the only one who finds offers like that a bit overwhelming? I spend a lot of time reading, but – sixty two? All at once? I was bad enough when I got a boxed set of twenty ebooks for 99p last year. I think I read one in its entirety, and about five more I read for long enough to know they weren’t my thing (the quality was REALLY variable). The rest faded into the depths of my Kindle. They might one day resurface, but personally I wouldn’t bet on it. And that’s the thing. I don’t want books to languish, unread. Books aren’t real until they’ve stepped into the imagination of the reader and been given new life. So I really only want to get 3 or 4 books at once, and then replenish once I’ve read them or decided I’m not going to read them.

A cornucopia of sci-fi and fantasy books. Click to check them out.
A cornucopia of sci-fi and fantasy books. Click to check them out.

However, just in case this works as an approach (I’d hate to miss the next big idea) I’ve joined an Instafreebie giveaway with lots of other sci-fi and fantasy authors. If you’re interested, check it out: there are more than a hundred books to choose from, but you can be as picky as you like and just take one or two. Of course, if you aren’t overwhelmed by too much choice you’re free to grab them all!

My free reading challenge: temptation!

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My quest to read as much as I like without spending money on a book for myself until Christmas continues…

Dear and lovely readers, this week was hard. Offspring found an unspent book token, so we headed off to Waterstones to spend it.

A will of iron

Now, that’s not the hard part. I’m – generally – pretty good at resisting temptation. While O browsed the books and read out amusing sentences to me I simply cast longing looks at the big pile of Crooked Kingdom paperbacks and stifled the occasional, wistful sigh.

Three shiny new books to read
Offspring’s new book stash

Waiting to be spent

No, what’s difficult is that when Offspring found an unspent book token so did I! And I don’t mean a card with 57p on left over from Christmas. No – £40 no less! And even worse was, at the moment of discovery I completely forgot my free reading challenge.

I seized the card-sized envelope with a massive grin and said, “Oh, and I can get – ” then deflated with, “Oh, no I can’t.”

Denial is character-forming

No books whatsoever!
My new book stash – disappointing

So, don’t think this is an idle, intellectual exercise, readers. This free reading challenge is tough. I’m starting to think I should be sponsored – Stoptober for readers, maybe: Nobookvember, anyone?

My free reading challenge: I bought a book

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When I started my free reading challenge, I knew it was going to be difficult, so I gave myself some let-outs.

This week I used my joker to buy a book from an author I’ve read a free book from in order to help with their launch.

Like one – Love the next

A couple of weeks ago I read Kelly St Clare’s Fantasy of Frost (free in a giveaway). A high fantasy YA novel, I thoroughly enjoyed it. So when I discovered she had a sci-fi/dystopian novel due out 30th August, The Retreat, I wanted to support her launch. I asked for and got a review copy and loved The Retreat even more than I had Fantasy of Frost.

Cover of Kelly St Clare's The Retreat
Click for the preview

Pay with a review

So, all’s well so far, and I could just have stuck to my free reading challenge and “paid” with a review (which I have, check it out on the Paisley Piranha site).

Amazon are at it again

But I’ve also seen a lot this week about Amazon doing yet another purge of anything they consider less-than-ethical reviews, which always seems to mean removing reviews from legitimate independent authors, while leaving them to help spam-bot rip-off merchants.

Now, I know we authors get very exercised about vanishing reviews (they are – fortunately or unfortunately – very important), but as a reader I’m pretty cross about it, too. If I take the time to read a book, then further time and effort to arrange my thoughts about that book into a review, I don’t think it’s acceptable for Amazon to arbitrarily decide my review isn’t valid (especially since it’s evaluated by software, not a human being: way to wind up a human – make a machine more important than them!)

The value of ‘verified’

So, I bought a copy on the basis that a review from a “Verified Purchase” would be less liable to interference from the ‘Zon (and because I really wanted to support this 5-star read).

And now I’m scratching my head, wondering how come a dislike of Amazon’s practices means I’ve made an additional purchase with them…

Free reading challenge: but that doesn’t count!

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I’ve bought four books this week, which sounds like a lot for someone who isn’t buying books at the moment, but wait, your honour, I can explain…

One for me…

I have bought a book for myself this week, but it was non-fiction and an excellent reference book for self-publishing (it’s Format it Yourself by Jo Roderick). Being non-fiction and for “use” rather than for “pleasure” doesn’t change the fact that I bought it, but it is allowable, however, under exception category 2. as a book I bought at release to support a writer I know, so I haven’t fallen off the wagon of my free reading challenge.

It’s for a friend, honest..

This week also let me get a fix of book-buying because I had two nieces to buy birthday presents for, as well as it being father’s day. That lead to a very happy ten minutes browsing in Waterstones. (Yeah, I know, that seems pretty brief to me, too. I think I didn’t want to hang around in case I found something I wanted myself!)

Read for review

As far as my challenge goes, I haven’t spent anything on (fiction) books for myself. I’ve read and reviewed or lined up reviews for several books from small presses or self-published authors, and I’ve signed up to participate in review blog tours with Xpresso Book Tours and YA Book Bound.

I’ve also been pretty manic writing promo pieces for Rising Tides, which releases on Friday (argh, that’s really REALLY close now!), so there certainly hasn’t been a dull moment.

Overall, I’m still finding plenty of good-quality books to read for free. Guilt levels are moderate at not paying for them, but they are all legitimately free which means the authors are perfectly happy for me to read them without paying, and I’m maintaining my levels of reviews – anything that is read to the end gets a review. And if I didn’t get to the end, it’s because the book really isn’t my thing, and you really don’t want a review, I promise you that!