Review: Good on the theory, light on the "How To"
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 06 25, 2013
I have a lot of experience doing free promotions for authors via fiverr gigs (handle TimmyBx), so this book was of great interest to me.  I have done over 200 free promos for authors.  Some books even reached #1 on the free amazon list.The theory part of the book was great, and the comparisons to the music industries were interesting.I disagree with some of the author's points.  He seems to only believe in getting reviews "organically", which is great in theory, but in practice, books with more reviews do better than those without reviews.  Just like bartenders "seed" the tip jar at the start of a shift, I think it is useful for authors to "seed" the review jar.  Some free book sites will not even list a book with no reviews.  Some even require 17 reviews!  I understand the "ethics" of this, but if you want to sell more books, reviews matter.I disagree with the author about facebook as well.  There are a lot of ways that facebook can be useful for authors, but you have to know what you are doing (which the author does not - and admits he does not, but possibly could have got a guest to add some value on that topic instead of just dismissing it - we mock that which we do not understand).I disagree with the author saying the freebee seekers tend to leave good reviews as well.  In my experience it is the complete opposite.  If you book has flaws, you will get BRUTAL reviews from the freebee seekers.I think many authors rush their book to be free before they have got rid of all the little errors, typos, bugs, etc, and then get brutal reviews.  If anything I think that when people get the book for free, they don't value it as much, whereas when they buy it, there is some cognitive dissonance, which causes them to justify the purchase.So overall, I am glad I read the book, it is a quick and easy read, but I think the author might have wanted to interview some "experts" on the subject of free promos to get some additional insights or give some more counter opinions, as a lot of this isn't based on facts.  The author admits he wrote the book in only 10 hours, so I think it could have used a little more research and "care and feeding".