FREE/BARGAIN — Science Fiction & Fantasy

[Cactus Chef]

Usually whatever I see on Amazon's DotD stuff will inevitably show up in my eReaderIQ filters, so no, I don't typically bother. I do periodically browse Kobo's Deals page, though, because sometimes stuff shows up there that I haven't seen flagged elsewhere. That's where I picked up the Budayeen Cycle from.

My only complaint is that the "____ genre books under $5" section doesn't seem to distinguish between books that are on sale and books that have a listing price under $5. That bugs me, because it results in books like Hyperion being perpetually in the Sci-Fi deals section, because the book's listing price is $4.

[ballfresno]

Originally Posted by salty-horse

Chess with a Dragon by David Gerrold is $2 in the US (Kobo, Amazon)
This is a new Open Road Media edition.

Also at Kobo UK for £1.99. Got it. Thank you.

[sufue]

I mostly agree with you, and I HATE the new format at Kindle US, so I'm agreeing with you even more recently.

However, if you can travel/have a Kindle UK account, the UK Deal of the Day rather often will have a new book (like really new, major publishers, published within the past few months) for £0.99, for one day. (Mostly genre fiction...) And then it may be many months or longer before that book goes on sale again, and even then maybe not as low as £0.99.

This is a behavior that is peculiar to the UK, AFAIK - at least I've not seen it at Kindle US or Canada. And as @maddz pointed out a while back, usually that one day price of £0.99 will be matched at Kobo UK, so you can usually then go there if you prefer. And the Deal of the Day at Kindle UK is only a few books, so not hard to check. I've gotten bunches of really-new most-recent-in-series books on this basis...usually even before the hold/waitlist at my library would let me get them...

Originally Posted by drofgnal

Is there anybody who browses amazon’s ‘deal of the day’ in ebooks? I have for years. I’ve picked up some great books for 1.99. Typically they always had great books on Sunday and Tuesday, but you could pick up great reads on almost any day. I once got Sarah J Maas’ Throne of Glass omnibus series for 5.99. But lately it’s been garbage. They’ve recently changed their format one, and two the selection. No more are the 4 and 5 digit number of reviews that are ‘deals of the day’. Mostly 2 and even single digit numbers of review books. They even try to slip in a public domain book at 1 or 2.99, like that is some sort of deal. Today they had David Copperfield for 2.99 as a deal of the day. Hey, do they think I’m stupid?

[maddz]

Originally Posted by sufue

And as @maddz pointed out a while back, usually that one day price of £0.99 will be matched at Kobo UK, so you can usually then go there if you prefer.

A recent 99p purchase from Kobo that was a deal of the day at Amazon: Katherine Arden - The Warm Hands of Ghosts

Like Suefue, I check that page daily. It's usually less than a dozen books (unless it's Sunday or a public holiday when you also get the Big Deal). 5 minutes tops? I also subscribe to the Daily Deal newsletter.

Mind you, I agree the quality of Amazon Deals has dropped - too many KU or self-pubbed authors who I rarely read and to my mind just clutter up the results. What's been bugging me at Amazon recently is the sponsored items embedded in the search results; I'm seeing the same items multiple times in the search and it's confusing. It also inflates the number of pages as well.

[salty-horse]

Bitter Seeds by Ian Tregillis (The Milkweek Triptych #1) is $3 in the US. (Kobo, Amazon)
First in a trilogy about WW2 with superheroes and magic.
Since a few months ago, books 2 and 3 are frequently on sale, but the first book wasn't discounted, and still had its original cover. Now it was updated, along with a sale.

It's 1939. The Nazis have supermen, the British have demons, and one perfectly normal man gets caught in between

Raybould Marsh is a British secret agent in the early days of the Second World War, haunted by something strange he saw on a mission during the Spanish Civil War: a German woman with wires going into her head who looked at him as if she knew him.

When the Nazis start running missions with people who have unnatural abilities—a woman who can turn invisible, a man who can walk through walls, and the woman Marsh saw in Spain who can use her knowledge of the future to twist the present—Marsh is the man who has to face them. He rallies the secret warlocks of Britain to hold the impending invasion at bay. But magic always exacts a price. Eventually, the sacrifice necessary to defeat the enemy will be as terrible as outright loss would be.