Open Road Media Kindle Freebies

[Brendan Moody]

As mentioned above, the "unavailable" thing was affecting books outside the sale, and seems to have been a system glitch. It looks like it's resolved now; all the books I'd found it on are back to displaying normally.

Having scrolled through the almost 3,000 free results of a search for "Open Road Media" last night, I can confirm that most of them are in fact Open Road titles. Your publisher search isn't working correctly because that field gives only exact matches, so books listed as published by "Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy," "Open Road Media Romance," etc. won't show up.

[AnemicOak]

Things appear to be working again.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by Blossom

In order to find the romance books you have to put in "Open Road Media Romance" there are over 200 titles. I grabbed them all yesterday in less than 20 minutes. in case it was a glitch.

Be aware that if it's like other genre's some genre books are listed under plain old "Open Road Media" instead of "Open Road whatever genre".

[Red Falcon]

I talked to Amazon Customer service and they told me it was a technical issue due to the Overwhelming Popularity of this offer. They said it should be cleared up by 11 pm their time as they are moving the sale to a dedicated server(s) to keep Amazon's main site from going down completely.

[Brendan Moody]

Originally Posted by Brendan Moody

Having scrolled through the almost 3,000 free results of a search for "Open Road Media" last night, I can confirm that most of them are in fact Open Road titles. Your publisher search isn't working correctly because that field gives only exact matches, so books listed as published by "Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy," "Open Road Media Romance," etc. won't show up.

(The above was in reply to koland, btw.)

I've noticed that using an * as a wildcard in the publisher field will catch all these variants at once-- so "Open Road Media*"-- giving basically the same number of results as a keyword search for "Open Road Media." Widening the publisher search to "Open Road*" gives an extra 400-odd results. I think there is an imprint I've seen in the past without "Media" in the name, but I'm not going to dig through the results again to find it. [Edit: whatever it is, none of its books are free, as the last free book is result #2,967 in both searches.]

[koland]

Originally Posted by Blossom

In order to find the romance books you have to put in "Open Road Media Romance" there are over 200 titles. I grabbed them all yesterday in less than 20 minutes. in case it was a glitch.

Sent from my XT1528

Correct.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ance&price=0-0

Also try these:

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...edia&price=0-0
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ween&price=0-0
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...ller&price=0-0
https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_n...tasy&price=0-0

Used to "open road" found them all, but no longer for publishers, only keywords. I suspect because of all the people creating fake publishers that included some of the bigger publisher names as a part of their name, hoping to pop up in searches for the bigger guys.

Any other publisher imprints anyone has found?

Oh, and the problems I saw earlier with geo restrictions and books not available seems to have been resolved. I was able to get several of the books that I could not a couple of hours ago.

[koland]

Originally Posted by Brendan Moody

(The above was in reply to koland, btw.)

I've noticed that using an * as a wildcard in the publisher field will catch all these variants at once-- so "Open Road Media*"-- giving basically the same number of results as a keyword search for "Open Road Media." Widening the publisher search to "Open Road*" gives an extra 400-odd results. I think there is an imprint I've seen in the past without "Media" in the name, but I'm not going to dig through the results again to find it. [Edit: whatever it is, none of its books are free, as the last free book is result #2,967 in both searches.]

Nice to know. Thank you.

Amazon must have added that back when they started requiring exact matches in publisher names (quite a pain if you are looking for all the Harlequin imprints, of course).

So, this one gets them all, now:

https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...date-desc-rank

[Little.Egret]

Originally Posted by Brendan Moody

Your publisher search isn't working correctly because that field gives only exact matches, so books listed as published by "Open Road Media Sci-Fi & Fantasy," "Open Road Media Romance," etc. won't show up.

Spinning this off, exact match was a recent Amazon change and a very annoying one.

Is the reason known ?

Thanks for the hint about '*' as a wild card

See also http://www.jungle-search.com/UK/kindle

[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by koland

Any other publisher imprints anyone has found?

• Open Road Media Younger Readers (102 freebies)
• MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (3 freebies, all public domain)
• Philosophical Library/Open Road (nothing)

They've also a list of other imprints they distribute on their website, but no freebies for the ones I spot-checked earlier.

Probably the best way to go through the listings if one is doing the 0-0 searches is to sort by publication date, since the default Featured tends to shift stuff around, in my experience.

They may also be rotating the selection somewhat, as I managed to pick up at least three new titles this morning that I somehow missed when I went through the listings yesterday.

Also, be warned that some perfectly valid freebies are simply not showing up in the 0-0 searches. Viz this example of Barbara Hambly's The Witches of Wenshar, which for me at least doesn't show up until page 2 of a price-sorted author listing where it's still filed with the $6.15 books, even though it is indeed the $0.00 it is listed at (and technically now my 4th copy of this novel). It's been like this for the past day and a half.

NB: a lot of sfnal stuff is actually filed under just the plain Open Road Media imprint, from before they started categorizing newer releases into the genre imprint lines. And some authors such as Andre Norton, Nancy Springer, and Jane Yolen have a bunch of their books filed into Younger Readers and Teen & Tween, even when not strictly YA. And some sfnal thrillers got filed into Mystery and vice versa for other genres (there were some Howard Fast suspense thrillers under ORM Romance, presumably because the plots were centred around love gone sour).

Personally, I suggest one's best bet is to actually hit up Open Road's website for their catalogue by genre or ebook categories (scroll down and click See All Categories) or A-Z authors listings, and then to pick out any authors you like who seem to have promising books in the genres you want, and modify the author search above to see what, if any, freebies they have.

You can save time by using just the first or last name if they've a common one likely to be shared with other authors you're interested in (omit middle names, as Open Road shortens “George Alec Effinger” to “George A Effinger” in the Amazon author listings for some unknown reason and does the same with other triple-named authors like Zilpha Keatley Snyder, although they use the full on the actual copy; incidentally, I recommend his works which are part of the promo, especially Budayeen Nights and A Thousand Deaths).

Also, I'll mention that if you get an “Instant Order Update” message after 1-clicking a listing you're pretty sure you didn't have before, and it doesn't come with a “you bought this on [specific date]” and when you go back and refresh you don't see the “bought this on” banner, it tends to mean you didn't get the book into your library at all (and it won't show up in searches of your digital orders and actual archives as available for download), and you'll have to wait probably around 10-30 minutes and try again until you get the proper “Thank you” message (you may need to get to the page again via searching for the ASIN rather than just back-buttoning and reloading).

[Req13]

I picked up a lot of the sci-fi books, but would like to get more mystery. I'm not really familiar with most of the authors though. Can anyone give some solid recommendations? Much appreciated.

[ATDrake]

^

Barbara Hambly, Search the Seven Hills via the link above. Although it's filed under the fantasy imprint, it's actually a perfectly mundane and very good murder mystery set in ancient Rome during 2nd century CE, and has a good period-accurate historical flavour to it (Hambly has degrees in history and now teaches the subject at a local college). It's one of my personal favourites and I've always wished that she'd been able to sell a series out of it (or entertained the notion of a sequel as one of her “Further Adventures” novelettes).

There was definitely also another Roman historical mystery by a popular author in the listings yesterday, but I can't seem to find it again, and unfortunately I seem to have conflated my Roman historical sleuth writer names, since the one I guessed at wasn't it. ETA 2: It's Inquest by Stephen Dando-Collins (Wikipedia), a respected historian. I haven't read it, but this was on my Fictionwise wishlist back in the day, when it was an e-Reads title before ORM acquired them.

ETA: also, Barbara Parker has a freebie. I read her 1st-in-series Suspicion of Innocence when it was an e-Reads Read an Ebook Week giveaway several years ago and quite liked it, enough that I'd recommend trying whatever else she had out for free.

And Loren D. Estleman has some freebies. ISTR liking his Sherlock Holmes pastiches.

And the Reid Bennett mysteries by Ted Wood, set in small-town Ontario, are decent if dated in a rather retro-80s sort of way, and another thing I read as an RAEBW giveaway.

[Brendan Moody]

Several of Peter Dickinson's mystery novels are freebies. I've only read one of his mysteries so far (not one that's currently free), but I liked it a lot.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by koland

<snip>
So, this one gets them all, now:

https://www.amazon.com/s/?url=search...date-desc-rank

Thanks.

The ability to filter (far lefthand side) is severely limited with that search, I noticed, however. The most helpful feature is that it can show only the ebooks with Whispersync audio narration. It appears that you can't filter by even fiction or non-fiction, much less genre and subgenre.

Someone may have already commented about this either in a post above or a post below. I haven't read every post. If I've said something that's already been said, I apologize.

[GtrsRGr8]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

• Open Road Media Younger Readers (102 freebies)
• MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (3 freebies, all public domain)
• Philosophical Library/Open Road (nothing)

They've also a list of other imprints they distribute on their website, but no freebies for the ones I spot-checked earlier.

Probably the best way to go through the listings if one is doing the 0-0 searches is to sort by publication date, since the default Featured tends to shift stuff around, in my experience.

They may also be rotating the selection somewhat, as I managed to pick up at least three new titles this morning that I somehow missed when I went through the listings yesterday.

Also, be warned that some perfectly valid freebies are simply not showing up in the 0-0 searches. Viz this example of Barbara Hambly's The Witches of Wenshar, which for me at least doesn't show up until page 2 of a price-sorted author listing where it's still filed with the $6.15 books, even though it is indeed the $0.00 it is listed at (and technically now my 4th copy of this novel). It's been like this for the past day and a half.

NB: a lot of sfnal stuff is actually filed under just the plain Open Road Media imprint, from before they started categorizing newer releases into the genre imprint lines. And some authors such as Andre Norton, Nancy Springer, and Jane Yolen have a bunch of their books filed into Younger Readers and Teen & Tween, even when not strictly YA. And some sfnal thrillers got filed into Mystery and vice versa for other genres (there were some Howard Fast suspense thrillers under ORM Romance, presumably because the plots were centred around love gone sour).

Personally, I suggest one's best bet is to actually hit up Open Road's website for their catalogue by genre or ebook categories (scroll down and click See All Categories) or A-Z authors listings, and then to pick out any authors you like who seem to have promising books in the genres you want, and modify the author search above to see what, if any, freebies they have.

You can save time by using just the first or last name if they've a common one likely to be shared with other authors you're interested in (omit middle names, as Open Road shortens “George Alec Effinger” to “George A Effinger” in the Amazon author listings for some unknown reason and does the same with other triple-named authors like Zilpha Keatley Snyder, although they use the full on the actual copy; incidentally, I recommend his works which are part of the promo, especially Budayeen Nights and A Thousand Deaths).

Also, I'll mention that if you get an “Instant Order Update” message after 1-clicking a listing you're pretty sure you didn't have before, and it doesn't come with a “you bought this on [specific date]” and when you go back and refresh you don't see the “bought this on” banner, it tends to mean you didn't get the book into your library at all (and it won't show up in searches of your digital orders and actual archives as available for download), and you'll have to wait probably around 10-30 minutes and try again until you get the proper “Thank you” message (you may need to get to the page again via searching for the ASIN rather than just back-buttoning and reloading).

Lots of helpful information. Thanks.

[tubemonkey]

Originally Posted by ATDrake

• Open Road Media Younger Readers (102 freebies)
• MysteriousPress.com/Open Road (3 freebies, all public domain)
• Philosophical Library/Open Road (nothing)

Thanks for the link to the kids' books. Just downloaded the lot.