Author Tools, Field Guides, Field Guides for Authors
Gettin’ W i d e with the Spry!
How to Add Wide Links to Your bookspry Promotion
(Spoiler: It’s super easy)
At bookspry, we love helping your books get in front of the right readers, no matter where those readers shop. That’s why we support wide links for every promotion you run. Whether your book is on Kobo, Apple, B&N, Google Play, Smashwords or even your own author store(!), we want to make sure those links are front and centre for our users.
Here’s how to add your wide links when setting up your promotion:
Option 1: Add Them While Booking Your Promotion
When you book your promo, you’ll see fields to paste in your retailer links—this is the easiest way to make sure everything’s set up from the start. Just drop in your Amazon link, then your Kobo, Apple Books, Google Play, or wherever else your book is available.
💡 Pro tip: Double check those links before you hit submit. Nobody wants a surprise 404!
Option 2: Add or Edit Them on the “Your Books” Page
Forgot to add your wide links when booking? No problem!
Just log into the bookspry author platform, find the book on the “Your Books” page and edit away!
You can also find your book by going to Your Promotions and using the “Edit Book Details” button next to the title you’re promoting. From there, you can update or add any retailer links you want.
💡 Another pro tip: Make sure you hit “Save” before you navigate away!
That’s it!
Bookspry readers shop everywhere and you want to get the most bang for your promo buck, so add those links whenever you have them!
Currently we offer links to all the major wide book retailers: Google, Apple, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Smashwords. We also let authors link directly to their own store, no matter what platform they use!
And as always, reach out to us if you ever have any questions or feedback on this (or any) feature!
– Grace
Author Tools, For Readers
What is Stuff Your Kindle Day and How Does it Work?
Essentially Stuff Your Kindle Day is an author organized romance book giveaway. Hundreds of romance authors, in basically all romance genres, make their books available for free on a specific day.
Readers are able to go get those books for free wherever they’re available!
Is there a download limit?
There’s no limit to how many books you can download, but it is for a limited time only, so hurry up!
Is it for Kindle owners only?
Nope! You can get free romance books no matter what type of e-reader you use. Just select your preferred retailer and get started!
Where can I find the free books?
All the books available on Stuff Your Kindle Day are available here. Just select which store you want to download from (Amazon, Apple, Google, Kobo, etc) and start scrolling!
Want more free Romance every day? Sign up for our newsletter here, or check out today’s free books!
Author Tools, Field Guides
Ereaders are a god send for those of us that love to read, but keeping one filled up with books to keep our reading obsession happy is difficult, time consuming, and expensive. For that reason, we’ve put together this article on how to find and download cheap and free ebooks for your e-reader!
Book promo sites
This one might seem obvious since this is what we do here at bookspry, but hear us out…using promo sites gives you access to cheap books you wouldn’t find otherwise for a couple of reasons.
One, some daily deal sites (like bookspry) are scouring the internet for great book deals all the time and then report the cream of the crop back to you. This lets you take advantage of someone else’s work and all you have to do is check the site, or even better, sign up to the newsletter and check your email whenever you’re in the mood for more deals.
The other benefit of following book deal of the day sites, is that authors will often reach out to these sites and alert them when they have a release coming up. This relationship means you’ll often see new releases listed on promo sites before they make bestseller lists or review sites.
Get our Free Romance Books here, and our free and cheap sci-fi/fantasy books here!
Public Domain Collections
Sites like the Gutenberg Project and Standard ebooks have hundreds of volunteers who have spent thousands of hours building and cleaning books that are in the public domain, in order to make them available for free. Classics like Pride and Prejudice, Wuthering Heights and Jane Eyre are all available for free and are available in various formats. You won’t find any recent bestsellers here, but it’s an amazing resource for older classics you haven’t had a chance to read yet.
Amazon Daily Deal lists
One of the beautiful things about ebooks (especially self published ebooks) is that the prices can change constantly and quickly (this is also one of the most frustrating parts of reading ebooks). That means that checking the Amazon Daily Deals page can often result in finding cheap and free books for your Kindle that will only be on sale for a limited time. Bookmark it and check it often!
Author mailing lists
A lot of authors give out free books, epilogues, short stories and bonus chapters to people who are signed up to their mailing lists. All you need to do is go to your favourite author’s website and sign up to their mailing list. The good part of this is that the stories you receive are hyper-specific to you. They’ll all be written by an author that you know you like, so the chances are you’ll enjoy them. The downside is that not every author has a mailing list and some that do, don’t send out freebies. Still, it’s worth checking out your favourite author’s websites to see if they do.
Ebook giveaways
A lot of authors will join together to giveaway free or cheap books en masse in order to gain new readers or draw attention to a new release. There are websites like Instafreebie that offer these giveaways to readers. Simply find a giveaway that matches your interests and look through the books. Note that a lot of these giveaways will require you to give them your email address. That’s a small price to pay for free books, but if that makes you uncomfortable, this one may not be for you.
Updating this because there’s a new giveaway in town! Stuff Your Kindle Day from Romance Book Worms is a quarterly free romance book giveaway that features hundreds of free books! Check it out to find out when the next giveaway starts.
Libraries
Saved the best for last. I know we’re an online daily ebook deal site, but we’ll always have a soft spot for our public library. A lot of people don’t know that most libraries have extensive online ebook and audiobook collections that are completely free. Sites like Overdrive can help you find libraries that have online ebooks, but their list isn’t complete, so make sure to search for libraries in your area or, better yet, go and talk to your librarian to understand everything they have to offer!
What to avoid…
Hopefully this list of places to get free ebooks is more than enough, but we thought it would be a good idea to include what to avoid.
Beware of websites that claim you can download new or bestselling books for free. It’s very rare you can get free bestsellers from anywhere but the source (Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo, etc) and that’s only when they’re having a promotion. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Also avoid torrenting books! Someone might tell you it’s a free way to get books, but lots of torrents are filled with malware and if you are downloading a book that isn’t free elsewhere, you’re stealing it. Downloading your cheap and free ebooks from legitimate sources makes sure that the authors and promoters will continue to offer these books!
That’s it. Happy reading!
The bookspry team
Author Tools, Field Guides for Authors
Writing is a lonely job. Everybody’s interested in what you’re doing, you may even have a great support system but, at the end of the day, writing is about sitting down (by yourself) and putting work in.
This obviously has it pros and cons (no waiting on lazy co-workers!) but one of the hardest parts of working alone is tracking your work and holding yourself accountable. We’ll have a piece about how to set, and achieve, reasonable goals as a writer later, but for now, we’re going to talk about the tracking.
Why Use a Word Count Tracker?
I’ve been using a writing tracker for years, but it wasn’t always that way. I used to wonder daily how much I had written. Did I hit my goals? Did I spend more time on Project A or Project B, and how close were they getting to being completed?
Eventually, once I got sick of feeling that way, I committed to trying to track my writing properly. I made a simple spreadsheet and started writing down time and words written. I promised myself I’d try it for a week and see what happens. That was four years ago and I haven’t missed many days since then.
But it took me awhile to get used to using it. I realised very quickly that there were some very good reasons to spend those few seconds starting my writing tracker every day.
It’s kind of annoying that I have to open up a spreadsheet and actually fill in what time it is before I start my writing session. I’m sitting there, bubbling with ideas and I want to get started now, so why waste time opening up a spreadsheet instead. Well…
“I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can’t pretend I had a productive day when I didn’t. It’s in my face, in black and white, how much I wrote.”
Accountability
When I use a word tracker, I’m making a conscious commitment to writing. It’s time to close other tabs, put my phone on silent and just get typing. It helps give me focus and structure. I know I’m “on the clock”.
It also means I can’t lie to myself anymore. I can’t pretend I had a productive day when I didn’t. It’s in my face, in black and white, how much I wrote.
Let’s be clear, this isn’t about punishment (always remember to be kind to yourself!), this is about me achieving my goals, and that means being honest with myself.
Motivation
Seeing how many words I’ve written that day or week is massively motivating to me. When my word count is low, I’m motivated to write more to catch up. When it’s high, I want to keep that streak running! I want to run up the “high score”! I’m winning? OK, let’s see how much I can win by!
Fun! (Fun?!)
Call me a nerd, but I LOVE seeing my word counts add up. I love seeing little graphs that show how much I’m writing and how much I’m publishing. When I’m tired of writing and just want to zone out, I’ll take my numbers and start playing with them. Which days do I write the most? Which stories am I writing the fastest? Why is that? Etc.
I legitimately have fun using a word count tracker.
Still not enough? Chris Fox’s 5000 Words per Hour book talks about the various techniques you can use to speed up your writing, but the first step, the thing you need to know before you can implement any of those things, is knowing how many words you’re writing per hour.
How to Use a Word Count Tracker?
This depends a lot on how you want to work and what word tracker you choose. Some people like “gamified” word trackers like 4thewords, while some people prefer raw numbers in a spreadsheet they keep by themselves. All of these have different ways to “use them”, so the thing to remember is, “What do you want from a word count tracker?”.
Personally, I need something that will do something with my word count data. Something to show me graphs, progress, charts, etc. Something that will me modify it as my writing goals (and knowledge) change. I need a word count tracker that’s easy to use, but very flexible. That’s why I created my own!
Where Can I Find a Word Count Tracker?
How convenient! We happen to have one right here! 😉
All joking aside. A word tracker like the bookspry.com Writing Diary and Daily Word Count Tracker, hits all my goals. I mean, it should, I built it. But not only does it let me see my totals, it also keeps track of the amount of time I’m actually spending writing, and maybe more importantly, it shows me daily, monthly and annual totals. Which is incredibly motivating.
Other than that, we will be coming out with a list of our favourite word counters soon. Stay tuned!
