I tried to get The Saints Go Dying and The Marinara Murders into Overdrive, the system that runs the Tacoma Public Library's ebook lending program. But unfortunately, it wasn't open to an individual author.
So since I can't do that, I'm trying out the new Kindle Lending Library. Anyone with a Kindle and with an Amazon Prime membership can borrow The Marinara Murders (for at least the next 90 days). Of course, you're paying $79 for the privilege to borrow a book for free, but it comes with free shipping and streaming movies.
Even though you're getting it for free, I will get paid by Amazon on a percentage basis–how many of my books are borrowed versus all total borrows that month.
I have no idea if this will help sales. And the downside of it is that to enroll The Marinara Murders, I have to make the ebook exclusive to Amazon for 90 days, which means it can't be on the Nook, iBooks, another competing platform. But I've only sold one copy on a platform other than Kindle, so it may not be giving up much. I'm going to leave The Saints Go Dying out of this program for now, but if it's effective for me, I might end up going exclusively with Amazon.
Self-publishing right now seems to be all about experimentation and seeing what works. Not only are the authors doing it, but so are companies like Amazon.
It will be interesting to see how this goes for the next 90 days. On the Kindle author forum I'm a part of, there's a lot of mixed feelings.