24 HOURS ONLY, BI-ANNUAL FREE INDIE DARK FICTION EBOOKS
DARK MODE BOOKS is the official home for the Stuff Your Kindle With Dark Fiction event. A community and volunteer-based event, this 24-hour-only indie eBook day is free from the love and labor put into hosting the books to the books listed.
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Dark Mode Books is hosted/created by Jinapher J. Hoffman, Author of Wrathos, an epic, dark fantasy multiverse of feminine rage. Her books include her #1 Best-Selling Alchemight Duology, #1 Best-Selling Fates of Mirror Trilogy, and her upcoming release, The Shard and The Serpent.
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This event is independently organized by Jinapher J. Hoffman, and is styled to be similar to Stuff Your Kindle events hosted by Zoe York on Romance Bookworms.
THE MASTERLIST
A minimum of 3 weeks prior to the day of the event, this website will go live with all of the books. Dark Mode Books' purpose is to offer granular filtering and tags based on Main Genre, Subgenres, Age Range, Series Info, Romance Level, POVs, Summary, A Quote to Convince You, Author Links, Book Cover, Tropes, Representation, Content Warnings, etc...This is an event for readers who enjoy the nitty-gritty details of a dark book without it being spoiled before downloading.
THE TOP READS LIST
Unlike most SYK events, Dark Mode Books works directly with BookTok and Bookstagram Influencers to curate a list of Top Reads. This list is created through a series of polls offered for Influencers to vote on.
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This is a great list to look out for if you've no idea where to start with your eBook hunt.
WHAT IS DARK FICTION?
"Dark fiction is fiction that contains dark elements. It deals with pain and death. Sometimes it elicits fear. Other times, it evokes despair. Dark fiction takes an unflinching look at the things that make us uncomfortable and doesn't sugarcoat them." -DarkDispatch.com
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Our free indie eBook day is specific to dark fiction. Think gritty books with questionable morals across our four main genres (Dark Fantasy, Dark Romance, Horror, and Dark SciFi). Whether it's taboo romance to create a safe space for sexual exploration, extreme horror to bring into question cowardice and fear, wildly dystopian sci-fi to explore the effects of mankind and technology, grimdark fantasy that leaves you reeling, or all four combined, Dark Mode puts a spotlight on these books and is a safe space for readers who want to dive into the genre. Most dark fiction books spotlight complicated relationships and darker worldbuilding/environments.
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Dark Mode will provide tags for endings, such as HEA (Happily Ever After) or Tragedy, to help you decide just how dark you want your book. You will be able to filter through these tags when the Masterlist goes live. Each individual book page will also include further tags (such as tropes) and a list of the book's content warnings.
DOWNLOADING FREE EBOOKS HELP
Free eBooks are available daily on Amazon. It's highly recommended you learn how to download a free eBook before the day of the event.​ For currently free eBooks to do a test run Click Here
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Free eBooks are purchased through the "Want to Buy?" toggle. This is NOT the Kindle Unlimited option but the actual "Buy Now For $0.00" button.
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Free eBooks Are NOT AVAILABLE To Download in the Amazon App.
Free eBooks are only accessible through a web browser or the Amazon Desktop Site.
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We cannot control Amazon Global Distribution. We only host the links. We do not set location.
Dark Mode Authors are always recommended to set their free promo to Amazon US. If you are outside of the US, you will need to switch to Amazon US, which includes updating your address to a US address for the time you'll be downloading.
Some readers have recommended also grabbing a free VPN for the day of the event, so you don't have to worry about switching your address in Amazon to access the promos. *This has not been tested by Dark Mode, just recommended by many international readers.
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These are unfortunately the only options for global participation in a free eBook day. Our hope is Amazon will listen to our many support tickets to expand distribution, but there's not much else we can do at this time<3
DARK MODE + Ai
DARK MODE BOOKS IS 100% AGAINST GENERATIVE Ai.
If you disagree with this stance, then this event is not for you. Until there are proper restrictions and laws in place to censor generative Ai usage, Dark Mode's stance on this will not change.
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There are several reasons not to participate in or use Ai software, but the main one is it steals from creatives. As this is an event surrounding uplifting creatives, Dark Mode will not support something so unethical.
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Authors who submit to the event are required to mark whether or not their book/cover contains Ai usage. They will not be allowed to participate, their submissions removed, if they checkmark 'yes'.
DISCLAIMERS
Expect High Traffic, Slow Load Times, and Potential Crashes on the Day of the Event.
We always recommend our newsletter subscribers to view the website, figure out what you want to download, and save that list in a separate place before the day of.
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Dark Mode cannot control high website traffic the day of. We are a free event, which includes our website hosting. We use donations to help fund hosting, but our last event had 4 MILLION views in less than 24 hours. We are striving to afford such traffic, but as a new event (Winter 2024 will be our second event), we simply can't afford yet to handle that much traffic. Please understand and know we can only grow from community effort and uplifting.​
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We can't control if an author doesn't set their book free, but we will blacklist them for future events.
We give our authors months of advanced notice to schedule their free promo. They are given the date of the promo on the sign up form, so they know right away and can make the proper arrangements.
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Because we give so much advanced notice, there's no excuse with the exception that Amazon messes it up (they also have instructions on how to inform Dark Mode if that happens).
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Dark Mode does our best to send out reminders. We've provided 'Guides' on how to set their books for free, but unfortunately, we can't control forgetfulness or Amazon.
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Sometimes, Amazon screws the author over. Sometimes, the author doesn't follow through. It's unfortunate, but we have protocols to keep it from happening again with the same author.
We take the integrity of the event very seriously, and we do everything in our power to make sure the books on the site are free.​
Rights reserved to HBO and George R. R. Martin for "Winter is coming..." use on this website.
All copyright and trademark rights belong to HBO and George R. R. Martin in regards to "Winter is coming..." usage from Game of Thrones.​