Kindle as Book Beta Testing Device

I think author Daniel Oran is onto something. He's at the beta stage with his latest novel, Believe, and decided to offer it to Kindle owners for 99 cents. The goal: To get customer feedback before he moves the novel from beta stage to final release stage.

What a great idea! Many author have wanted to obtain pre-publication feedback like this in the past and have struggled for the right forum. Some have used the Internet. Others have sent out PDFs. No solution is as simple and elegant as what Oran is doing with Believe though. For the ridiculously low price of 99 cents you can have the beta book loaded on your Kindle in seconds.

Then there's the PR angle. If enough blogs and other news sites pick up on Oran's efforts he benefits from a lot of free online buzz. For example, I see the Read Write Web has already picked up on it in this post.

On top of all that, Oran is donating all his proceeds from the beta book effort to a charity called the Neediest Cases Fund. Brilliant!