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Amazon Hack: how to get free Amazon eBooks in your favorite genre delivered to your inbox every week. [Freeware]

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[Update: Amazon has killed this service for some reason, by removing the RSS feature. A good alternative you may enjoy however is Daily Free Books US and Daily Free Books UK.]

You like books, right? Not fussy whether they’re paper or digital? Well then step right up and we’ll give you an instant guide to building a free personal library of Amazon eBooks, and what’s more books that you’re actually going to want to read, because they are in your favorite genre. Love thrillers? No problem. Science Fiction? Sorted. Romance? Absolutely.

I’ve already built up a library of over 100 awesome and totally free books over the past few months, which I’m going to go through at my leisure once I get marooned on that beautiful but lonely desert island with my soccer ball.

The secret lies in grabbing the right Amazon RSS links and then using one of the web’s most underrated tools…IFTTT.com. So first things first.

A. Go to Amazon.com (or .co.uk) and choose your favorite book genre:
1. Go here – http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Kindle-Store-eBooks/zgbs/digital-text/ (substitute amazon.co.uk for the UK store)
2. Click on Kindle eBooks in sidebar (or Books in UK)
3. Click on your favorite genre – e.g. Romance
4. Select sub topic if wanted (optional) (e.g. romance – vampires)
5. Scroll to the bottom of the page and copy the Subscribe to: Top Free > [Your genre] link
[Optionally you can click on the link, and then copy it into your clipboard from the address bar]

It will look something like this, with a different number depending on genre chosen:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/rss/top-free/digital-text/158566011/ref=zg_tf_158566011_rsslink

or for the UK

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/rss/top-free/digital-text/362384031/ref=zg_tf_362384031_rsslink

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Example Amazon genre IDs

.com genre ID examples
Generic Fiction – 157054011
Science Fiction – 158591011
Romance – 158566011
Thrillers – 157305011
Humor – 156279011

.uk genre ID examples
Generic Fiction – 341689031
Science Fiction – 362827031
Romance – 362723031
Thrillers – 362247031
Humour – 362384031

B. Set up your email delivery service in IFTTT.com

Once you have chosen your genres and have copy/pasted the relevant RSS links to a safe notepad location, go to IFTTT.com, sign up or login and then follow the instructions in my video or text after the jump.

–~~~~~~~~~~~~–

1. Click on Create at the top of the page, then click on THIS
2. Choose Trigger Channel. In this case we want to use an RSS Feed as our source, so click on the Feed icon.
3. Select New Feed Item (we want the recipe to trigger every time a new item appears in the feed.
4. Paste in the feed link we got from Amazon (as above e.g. http://www.amazon.com/gp/rss/top-free/digital-text/158566011/ref=zg_tf_158566011_rsslink)
5. Click Create Trigger
6. Now click on THAT
7. Choose Action Channel. In this case we want the free eBook link to be sent to us via email (we could also select by SMS, Facebook or even Twitter if we wanted). But in this case select the Email icon.
8. Click on Send Me An Email
9. Check to see the defaults look all right to you (they usually are) and then Click on the Create Action button.
10. Finally check to make sure the whole recipe, including your email address is correct. The email is taken from your IFTTT account details automatically (as are phone numbers etc). Add a description and click on the Create Recipe button.
Well done!

ifft

Now sit back and wait for your choice of free eBooks to land in your email inbox each week. One thing to note is that these free titles are often just sales promotions, so they don’t last very long. You need to grab them quickly before they revert to full or discounted prices. And if you like the books, don’t forget to help the authors out by buying and recommending their other titles.

Appendix

Other great IFTTT Freebie recipes you can edit for your own needs:

Free Google Play Apps to Email – https://ifttt.com/recipes/50885
Google Play Free Song of The Day to Email – https://ifttt.com/recipes/27211
Amazon Top Free MP3 Album to Email – https://ifttt.com/recipes/12278
Amazon Free Android App of The Day to Email – https://ifttt.com/recipes/11248
Amazon Free Kindle Top 100 Generic (USA) – https://ifttt.com/recipes/52788
Apple iTunes Free App of The Week (USA) – https://ifttt.com/recipes/51569
Google Play Hot Deals in The UK – https://ifttt.com/recipes/47993

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