Perma-free. Once a fantastic tool to introduce new authors to readers not familiar or comfortable with Indie Publishing.

Before that, old TBR piles used to consist of five, ten books piled on the side table, a visual cue calling on you to take the books in your hands, taunting you to make the pile smaller. With perma-free books everywhere—and still growing in numbers daily—readers have become adept of one-clicking books they may have little or no interest in reading. Readers just get a book when it’is free because it’s free and TBR piles in digital eReaders don’t have the same power of persuasion.

Cecilia and I are not immune to one-clicking. As much as it pains us to admit it, our TBR pile is long and has grown to a cringe-worthy size. A little while back, I came across a book’s blurb on Facebook that sounded really interesting. When I checked the book on Amazon, I realized we already had it in our library. In fact, the book had been there for over a year. It hit me then that the same thing was happening to many other readers.

Once downloaded, one-clicked books hide in endless carrousels, forgotten unless readers come across something on social media that makes them visit the book’s page on their retailer of choice only to be notified the book had been purchased in the past.

Sadly, many amazing stories and their authors remain forgotten in that digital TBR black hole. The most effective way to dig those books out of there is to make them discoverable once again. That’s where the #forgottenbookchallenge comes in. It gives a previously released title the chance to shine once again and reach readers who had forgotten about its existence in their very long digital TBR pile.

It’s with that goal in mind that each week, we will be encouraging readers to post their (old) new finds. Encouraging readers to dig a little deeper and find something they forgot they had in the dark recesses of their eReaders.

We hope you’ll join us in this goal by posting your review or find to social media and tagging it with the hash tags #forgottenbookchallenge or #forgottenbook. Most of all, have fun finding the buried gems in your library!

Sláinte!

Chris