While this is technically not free, costing $1 comes pretty close to it. Book publisher Orbit is running a promotion allowing Kindle owners to download one of their books per month for one dollar.
Almost free eBook for March 2009 is Empress By Karen Miller. It’s a fantasy story of Hekat, who is no more than an unwanted mouth to feed, worth only a few coins from a passing slave trader. But Hekat was not born to be a slave. For her, a different path has been chosen.
Many Kindle authors are discovering that giving away free ebooks is an excellent way to make readers aware of their work.
I tried to make the first book of a trilogy free on Kindle, but the lowest Amazon would let me set the price was 99 cents, which probably accounts for all the $1 books turning up.
I got around Amazon’s restrictions by giving away free copies from my author website:
http://www.catherine-m-wilson.com/
I think we are going to see a lot more free and low-priced books as more authors and publishers become aware of this kind of promotion. It costs the publisher nothing to give away an ebook, and it builds a readership for the author.