A few months back I added my book, Small Bites 1, to Kobo as free. It’s a starting point to get people interested in my writing. And I also wanted to price match it on Amazon so that I had the same ability there.
Well Amazon had other ideas. They did not price match to free for SB1, but they DID price match to 99 cents for Small Bites 4 because I forgot to raise the price on that.
Well that’s fixed. i raised the price, and it only took a couple days for Amazon to raise the price. But lowering the price… especially to free? Not happening.
But I’m still trying.
Please go to Amazon here:
http://www.amazon.com/Small-Bites-1-ebook/dp/B00CFDHKGW
and tell them my book is free on Kobo here:
http://store.kobobooks.com/en-US/ebook/small-bites-1
Or, heck, just go get the book on Kobo. It’s got a free reader too.
Author Crissy Moss 
From my limited experience, that price match thing on the page doesn’t do much. Any time my book has been price matched it’s been without the page widget, Any time I’ve tried to get people to help price match the second book, it hasn’t done anything.
I think that the ISBN speeds things up. Have you got the same ISBN on Amazon and Kobo/Smashwords? I use the free Smashwords ISBN for Amazon and Kobo and it seems to price match quickly (Within a few days).
Ya, it seems to work great for the guys. Not so much for me. I do not have ISBN’s, they cost too much. I only have them for my print editions through amazon. And I can’t figure out Smashwords.
Let me know if you want any help with Smashwords. For us PC users, it’s pretty simple. From what Garrett says, it’s Mac that has problems with Smashwords.
I can’t afford ISBNs either, but Smashwords gives you one for free when you publish your books with them. It makes them the publisher of record, but I don’t really mind that.
I’ll consider it. I’m not really keen on the whole Oyster thing yet, and I’m not sure if I like the idea of their being a “publisher of record” other then me. Unfortunately, I’d rather spend money on editing then ISBN’s… maybe that’s fortunate.
Personally, I love the idea of Oyster. For movies, I use Netflix, for music I use Spotify. If Oyster comes to Norway (probable ETA 2025), then I’ll use them. It’s what the consumer wants, it kills piracy and it promotes visibility to the best books/movies/music.
Btw, I talked to someone in work and they only pirate books. The reason, “There’s nothing like Netflix for books”.
That kind of annoys me. The same way it annoys me with people who pirate games.
Honestly, there are great books out there for less then a cup of coffee. You can get free books all over. And he’d rather pirate? Then what? Go to a library?
I am betting he only reads name authors, like Rothfuss, who have expensive books out because publishers don’t like putting out bargain books. Doesn’t make it right. But if he opened his mind up to the world of indie authors, or even a library card, he might find something better then just pirated books.
Oh, it annoyed me too. I went off on him about it for about 15 minutes. By the end of it, he still didn’t agree with me though. He goes on some pirate website and downloads an app with 10,000 books. The app recommends books based on his reading history and he just clicks to read.
The problem with piracy is that they’re giving the users a better experience than the paid option. As soon as Netflix came here, piracy was reduced. Steam reduced video game piracy. Spotify practically eliminated music piracy.
Piracy is a symptom, not the cause. The cause is content producers not giving people the best possible service, in my opinion. I still think piracy is theft, but 95% of people I talk to don’t agree.
Yes, but steam you pay for games on. Developers get money so that they can make more games.
I don’t think all piracy is theft, and I do believe that most people who pirate buy more (studies show that). But people like your friend who just pirate and don’t buy anything… they are leaches.
I’m reserving judgement on this Oyster thing, but if money doesn’t flow toward the writer then it is doomed to failure because you’re still going to have rich publishers, and poor authors.
Crissy, did you try asking for help from your FB and Twitter friends, too? FB was what really pushed it over the edge for us on Realm Keepers. We wrote out stupidly, idiotically clear instructions on what to do. We literally numbered the steps. I think we made it just simple enough that even our tech-illiterate grandmothers were like, “Oh, I can help with this.” Might push it over the edge. Maybe.
I don’t have a lot off actual friends on fb. Just a lot of people I use to play Sims and Petville with, then EA canceled those games, and now… Well my friends list shrank. I really don’t like FB much, but yes I did share the instructions on there too.