Giving Away Books to Inspire

Concord Press has a unique non-business model. It gives away it's books on the condition that the person receiving the books makes a charitable donation to the organization of their choice. They charge for e-books to keep the place afloat, but the real paperback novels, they just give away. Readers of free Concord Free Press books had given away more than $250,000 to charitable causes, which is admirable. The writers provide the novels to the press for free and the designers who create the covers do as well.

It's an interesting concept to get books into more people's hands and hopefully generate larger readership while doing good a the same time.

Here's how it works. You go to their website here to request your book. Then after you make your donation, you're encouraged go back to the website and tell them what organization received your donation. I asked for a novel called, A HANDBOOK OF AMERICAN PRAYER, by Lucius Shepard and it was mailed to me with in a week.

You can see the covers of previous books that were offered below.

Once you're done with the book, they encourage you to sign the back page and pass it along to someone else who will also make a donation. It's an innovative way to get books out to new readers, while helping others at the same time.