News & Reviews

WORD: Novelist Jessica Brody promoting fellow authors with ‘Free Book Friday’
Edited Press Release

Some of the brightest new ideas in book promotion are coming from debut novelists nowadays. Jessica Brody, author of "The Fidelity Files" (St. Martin’s Press - 2008) was searching for creative new ways to market her debut novel and collaborate with fellow authors. She noticed that free giveaways seemed to draw website traffic so she came up with the idea for FreeBookFriday.com, a site that is seeing traffic quickly rise by the week, the author announced.

"I started the site just as a fun way to promote my book and network with other authors, but the response has been overwhelming," said Brody (pictured left), who after six weeks has seen weekly visitor growth rates in the 300 percent range. "We have already filled up the rest of 2008 with an outstanding list of participating authors and have started a wait list for 2009."

Jessica told WORD’N’BASS.com that Jenny Gardiner, who we featured when her novel "Sleeping With Ward Cleaver" launched, is among several other authors slated to appear this year. The initial draw to the site is clearly the giveaways, but the hook that keeps visitors coming back is the content. Not only can readers enter to win a free autographed book, but Brody also hosts a weekly author interview podcast to promote the featured author.

"I love connecting with fellow authors every week. Not only does it help me with my writing, but it gives readers a unique insight into the creative process behind some of their favorite titles," she said.

This week (October 24-31) FBF is hosting a special Halloween Edition, featuring one of the reigning queens of vampire novels, P.C. Cast whose House of Night series has been on the NYT Bestseller list for 25 weeks straight and has more than one million copies in print. Website visitors can listen to an exclusive interview with P.C. and enter to win a free signed copy of her latest release, "Untamed" (St. Martin’s, 2008)

"The response to Untamed has been so great, I decided to launch a spin-off of the main site specifically targeting teen readers," said Brody, who is also working on a Romance Edition, scheduled to launch in early 2009.

The new site, http://teens.freebookfriday.com, will launch November 1, 2008.

About Free Book Friday:

The concept is simple. Each week, a new author is featured with an exclusive author interview podcast and a drawing to win free signed copies of his or her book. Website visitors are asked to sign up to be eligible and winners are chosen at random and posted on the site every Friday morning. Hence the name, "Free Book Friday."

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