M.J. Rose is a first-rate novelist and, even before her fiction was brought to dramatic life in the Past Life series that debuted last night on the Fox network, she has long shown that she has a first-rate mind when it comes to thinking in independent and innovative ways about how to connect with readers. She pays plenty of attention to what readers want, a quality that I would love to see become more widespread among today’s bestselling authors.
So it’s not surprising that she has come up with a new and distinctive way to use the Kindle platform to entice us to enter the world of her novels.
She’s just created a nice, free, almost book-length Kindle sampler of the first three chapters of the three novels that compose her series, The Reincarnationist: The Reincarnationist
There have been a number of other “series” novelists who have experienced some success lately with the strategy of offering a previous title or two from a series as a free book on the Kindle platform in an effort to attract readers to the newest installment in a series, and we certainly welcome more of that. But I really like Rose’s approach here, and there’s no indication how long it will last, so I have already downloaded the sampler which is available right here:
Here’s one reader who is quite likely to buy all three Kindle books as a result of this nice welcome.
As Amazon works to find ways to offer more and more distinctive, high-quality Kindle content at prices that will continue to support the decisions of millions of avid readers to invest in Kindles, it is high time for the company to provide all its authors with the opportunity to come up with innovative ideas like this one. The Digital Text Platform for Kindle publishers should allow authors and publisher to choose from several promotional options with the click of a mouse.
In another situation related to free Kindle listings, we’ve noticed in the last day or two that a new free listing that we mentioned here yesterday — Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #3: Paragon — has strangely been excluded so far from Amazon’s Kindle Store Sales Rankings. It is clear to us that the book has been downloaded by hundreds of Kindle owners already, and if it got the same Sales Rankings treatment that has been accorded to nearly every other title include Star Wars: Lost Tribe of the Sith #1 and #2, it would be near the top of numerous Kindle Store bestseller lists, including the primary bestseller list. So, we’re just wondering whether this is a glitch or the advance-guard of new policy. Time will tell.