Are you all familiar with Freado? I wasn’t until a couple days ago. It’s a website that evidently seeks to winnow through the vast ocean of self-published titles and draw readers’ attention to better titles.
Freado was founded in 2009 with a goal to help readers find best books in innovative ways.
One of our biggest learning over the years is that the ebook explosion has increased the amount of noise (i.e. mediocre books) and decreased the signal (i.e quality books.) There are thousands of books competing for your attention and most of them are not worthy of your time.
Our solution is to have humans inspect the books for quality and ensure that the books we put in front of you are only those that are worthy of your attention. Our editorial team will ensure that the books you get in your inbox are at the intersection of high quality and low price or even free.
We don’t sell books here. We screen through top retailers sites and curate the books that are likely to be enjoyed by our reader community.
I heard about this site somewhere or other as a platform that can work for some authors to increase their visibility. Hmm, I said, and checked it out. In order to list a book for a giveaway — in order for Freado to touch your book — it needs to have at least 10 four- or five-star reviews on Amazon. That is actually a pretty high bar.
Um, which does mean you might leave a review on Amazon for any less-visible titles you really enjoyed.
Um, so might I. I’m starting to catch up with putting reviews on Goodreads (still behind, sigh), but then I really should copy a lot of those reviews over to Amazon as well . . . Fine, it’s been on my To Do list since last fall. Hopefully I will get to it by the end of the year.
Anyway, I’m going to give away two copies of Black Dog on April 20th and just see how the process works. And then list it there under their Book Deals section because it’s priced low enough for that as well. And the next time I make it free for a limited time, I’ll list it there as well.
Freado does look like a potentially good resource for readers. Especially those who don’t feel they have enough books on their TBR piles…
Please Feel Free to Share:
Hope that works out well for you. Speaking as a reader, I usually discover new authors through the blogs and recommended reading lists of authors that I already read. Some books I discovered through Goodreads and Amazon, although lately I don’t even pay attention to Amazon recommendations unless someone whose work I like (you, for example!) has already given a positive review of it.
Kootch, me too, basically. But I expect there is a largish pool of readers that are more inclined to browse sites with free books and book deals. I was reading about how Goodreads giveaways basically don’t do much because the site is so big and yadda yadda, I don’t remember the details. So I thought I’d try Freado.
Hmmm. It’s a bit odd that whoever writes / edits their copy is not so great at it. For a site dedicated to good books, it makes me doubt their ability to distinguish good writing.
I’m personally not convinced they do a whole lot other than checking to make sure offered books have 10 four-or-above-star reviews on Amazon. But we’ll see.
Maybe I’ll pick up samples of a couple titles they feature also — just out of curiosity.
Does anyone else mostly review books for their own records? After a few years I remember whether I liked a book or not, but usually not a lot about what I did or didn’t like. So, for me Goodreads is just a (not very, because only my mom regularly reads the reviews) public book journal.
Interesting, Sarah. I usually re-read books at that point, so *eventually* I remember books pretty well.