[ATDrake]

It has to be free.

The reasoning being that there are so many out there who have a whole bunch of stuff at or starting at 99 cents and up that it would take up a substantial amount of space among what already promises to be a space-eating category (see how big the "Romance" round-up post has gotten and I haven't even looked at half the authors I know have Smashwords/iTunes presences and offered free stuff in the past, nor have I yet put in the 2-3 dozen or so sf/fantasy authors I know have downloadable free stuff to try before buying).

And dirt-cheap or not, people would still have to invest their money, as well as their time, to check out those authors/publishers and at 99 cents a pop, it would add up pretty quickly. In exchange for a free offering, I am willing to give an author a bit of a link-to-their-pay-stuff boost in terms of publicity by way of thanks. No freebie, no free promo as authors for whom you'd have to pay to sample in full are perfectly capable of getting their books in front of their audiences on their own, IMHO.

However, a separate thread for multi/other-outlet-available "regular" bargain backlist books would probably be useful, although subject to a certain amount of change, as it looks like PPP's taken down their 99 cent promotion (I went to check to see if they'd rotated it for this month, and I get an error message for the links from their front page both for the lingering March offer and the "Promos" in the navbar).