E-books in auctions

[madfilkentist]

I've been asked to donate a copy of my upcoming e-book to a charity auction. I have strong trust in the auction and the person who asked me, but I'm looking into the best way to do it before saying yes. Does anyone have experience with this, with Smashwords or in general?

One thought is that there might be some equivalent to a musician's download card, though I haven't seen such a thing.

Comments

[alexseanchai]

Smashwords has coupon options, and it's possible to do a coupon for 100% off. I don't know how to do this from the author end, though, I only know it works because that's how I got a free ebook I won from the author via LibraryThing.

[elf]

Dean Wesley Smith has a couple of posts about cards for ebooks (the followup says they work).

Smashwords coupon codes are a great way to give out free or discounted copies of your ebook, and if you notice that more are being downloaded than you authorized--because someone handed off the code--you can just change the code, and allow any legit people who haven't yet used it to contact you to ask for a new code.

Many authors use the coupon codes to give out review copies and free copies to friends & family.

[stormcloude]

All the giveaways I've participated in, the author emailed the book to me directly.

[madfilkentist]

Coupons look very useful! Aside from any auctions, that looks like the way to distribute the 111 copies which I've already committed through Kickstarter.

[kate_nepveu]

Yeah, I would think that would be just the easiest.

(Yes, it would be DRM-free, but as DRM is trivially removable anyway, it would be a kindness to your auction winner to not make them go through that step.)