I have a Free Book Promotion coming up and I keep hearing
the George Strait song ‘Give it Away’ playing in my ears. (Now you know where I get some of the inspirations for
my blogs). It was time for me to do some research and talk to several
successful authors on how to do this and what their experiences were in giving
their books away.
Free books have been a custom
in traditional paper books for as long as book reviews have been written. They
came with the territory. They were sent directly to a person or an agent. The
reader/customer rarely got their hands on a freebie unless they went to the
Library.
The Internet has changed all
that. The ebook has altered the way we read, distribute and market books. It has
increased the competition between authors and retailers and publishers, all at
the speed of light. Now one of the most important things for an author is to
create an interest in his book with friends and followers online.
One of the methods of choice
is a Free Book Promotion.
10 Easy Planning Steps
I’ll start off with ten steps we all should write down and
follow if we are going to give our books away.
1.
Start several weeks in advance. First, select the dates
and the period of time you want to run your promotion. There is some wisdom
used here. The experts say do the promotion for 2 or 3 days in the middle of
the week but not at the start of the month. Give yourself enough lead time so
you can get everything together.
2.
Get your book and site information together in an easy place
to work with. I use a Word document to manage mine.
That includes your
book description, the ASIN and ISBN numbers, your cover, the Amazon buy link
and any other link that relates to your book. This should include links to reviews
and blogs.
3.
Made sure all your support group’s information is
updated with the latest book information plus all your author profiles are up to
date.
4.
Next, go to the Amazon promotion manager and schedule
your Free Book Promotion.
Review the Amazon Free Promotion Rules before you start. If
this blog had more space, I would recommend this step before I published the
book but that is a whole different topic.
Basically, you need to be enrolled in the KDP Select
program. You have 5 days to offer your book free every 3 months and you must
have exclusive rights for the primary content of the book and Amazon has the
exclusive rights to the sales. If you got all of the above, you’re good to go.
5.
I recommend you set up a day to day schedule (at
least a 2 week schedule) and decide what you are going to offer free and when?
Your book? Giveaway product? A Bonus book? Remember
not all things can be done at once and you well run out of time if you’re not
careful.
6. Start drafting your tweets and your Facebook
communications. This is something you can start way ahead of time. Your are
going to post them often. Variety is a good thing here. If you just keep sending
the same tweet at your followers, they will start skipping over them like some
of the other noise out there.
Here is a sample of two that
I created for my upcoming Free promotion. This will give some idea anyway of
what I am talking about. Notice I have put the number of characters in brackets
after the post. When I get down to tweet time, I know right where I’m at with
Twitter.
**********Start 12/19. FREE Holiday Present. Stone encounters Murder/Espionage on on the Colorado - Black Mountain Secrets http://amzn.to/TZnZJ4 #RT [139]
**********
FREE 12/19 Black Mountain Secrets, a Jonathon Stone Mystery - Murder - Espionage - Intrigue on the Colorado River http://amzn.to/PMC5T2 #RT [139]
**********
8.
Create a blog or two, highlighting your book and time them
to be released just before your promotion. Don’t forget the links back to
everything.
For example, I have three blogs prepared for my promotion.
Make sure that other bloggers know the timing of your event as well as other
sites that list your book. Remember they need enough lead time to react. That
is where scheduling comes in to play.
9.
If you want to try something different, try Pinterest
and their pins as a storyboard of your book, like you would a book trailer. Then
point your readers to the board.
I did that, using pictures I took during my research for my latest novel, Black Mountain Secrets. They were the stills from my book trailer. I can’t tell you how this will work out in practice but I know I need to link and tweet this heavily to make it work.
I did that, using pictures I took during my research for my latest novel, Black Mountain Secrets. They were the stills from my book trailer. I can’t tell you how this will work out in practice but I know I need to link and tweet this heavily to make it work.
10. Develop
a follow up plan to re-contact your followers to reinforce when and where they
can get your free book. This could be by Twitter, Facebook, email or another vehicle
of your choice. The key is to keep communicating during and after your
promotion.
Yogi says: It’s
not over till it’s over. I’ll add to that: And it’s only over when you stop.
Setup Goals and Objectives
Of course, everybody’s primary goal is to sell more books.
But there are a lot of ways to look at giving your book away. There are goals
and objectives that you should consider.
To tackle this problem, I went to my HBS Author’s Spotlight
crew. They are a group of award-winning, bestselling authors, some with very
different points of view, who I have interviewed on my blog. They weighed in on
their experiences with Free Books. (The links inserted in this post are to the Authors
Spotlight interview. A must read.)
Develop a Strategy
One of the first things that was apparent. You need a
strategy for giving your books away.Award-winning self-published Fantasy Writer, M.R. Mathias - @DahgMahn gave us his point of view.
I give away books all the time. It sometimes helps, sometimes not. Here is how it helps ME: I give away book one of a series, or a prequel type novella. If people like it they buy books two and three. The 23rd thru the 27th of Dec. I am giving away book one of "The Legend of Vanx Malic - Through the Wildwood" on Amazon.
Gaining Reviews
Some authors feel that if they give their books away, it
will encourage the reader to write a review. It is much like an understood
commitment.
Crime and Horror Author, Jade Varden - @JadeVarden
had this experience.
I’ve had good results in that
I managed to give books away, but I did not gain a ton of new reviews because
of these giveaways... but I did improve communications with the book bloggers.
Looking for Exposure
This was the most popular reason for giving their books
away.
Mystery & Thrillers Author, Dave Folsom - @davefolsombooks
explained the promotion worked in practice but
the outcome was hard to measure.
I have used both the
Goodreads Giveaway program and Kindle’s Free Days. Both resulted in a large number of responses
and considerable exposure. How much this affected the sales that followed is
difficult to measure… my main goal was exposure … Unfortunately, this is a slow
uphill battle… the only minor obstacle was Amazon’s exclusivity requirement.
Mystery Writer and the host of HBS Author's Spotlight
blog, James Moushon - @jimhbs is
looking for exposure starting soon.
I am starting my first
Promotion December 19 for 3 days through Amazon Select for my mystery novel,
‘Black Mountain Secrets’. My main goal is to get exposure for my fiction writing,
get reviews and develop an audience. The Jonathon Stone Mystery series is a
life long dream of mine that I want to share with Mystery readers.
YA Mystery & Thriller Author, Maree Ward-Russell - @mibbymw
gained exposure but didn’t get the bump in sales
she wanted.
My only experience has been
with KDP direct … My goal was to get
myself ‘out there’ in terms of people getting to know me. At first it went well
with 2000 downloads in the first 2 days. Problem is if you give that many
copies away free, there is no incentive to buy and I found I had a slump in
sales straight after.Paranormal Action-Adventure and Short Stories Author, Troy Blackford - @TBlackford3 is just starting and he wants exposure.
I've managed to give away thousands of copies … My main goal was getting the work out there and hope people would like it and perhaps spread the word.
Best seller/rankings
Some go through the Free Book Promotion drill to get a
higher ranking and in some cases gain the bestseller tag.
Award-winning novelist and speaker, Pamela Burford - @PamelaBurford
got both with her promotion and a bonus with her
backlist sales.
I made my fun foodie romance,
‘Too Darn Hot’, free beginning in September. My purpose was to rise in Kindle's
best-seller lists and to prompt sales of my other books. This was my first
freebie promo and it succeeded on both fronts...readers have liked the book
enough to buy my other backlist romance, ‘Snowed’.
International Best Selling Author, Stacy Eaton - @StacySEaton
had the increase in the rankings that she wanted
and more. Plus she continued the marketing push after the freebes with added to
success.
I put 'Whether I’ll Live or
Die' up free for 2 days last month and gave away over 8,000 copies in 5
countries.
All in all, my experiences
with listing my books for free on Amazon have been good. This last giveaway was
the best and I loved seeing the numbers roll in. I climbed the rankings to the
#21 spot on the Free Kindle Books list.
After I came off my free
days, I continued to rank in some of the categories for almost two
weeks.
My goal is always to get my
story out there into the hands of readers...there were times I did not promote
my free day as well as I should.
YA Romance Author, Emily Tippetts - @EMTippetts
got exposure and sales but she realized there
was more too it than just providing a free book.
I've given books away for
free through Amazon's KDP Select program. The first time I did this was March 1
of this year with ‘Someone Else's Fairytale’, and the book shot up to 13th
overall in one day. I then ended the giveaway and the book had a strong sales
surge and climbed to 194th overall. The surge then subsided to about 20 copies
a day...one of the main drivers of a giveaway is people seeing the book high in
the rankings...make your giveaway last longer….For about three weeks I had a
good sales bump - nothing extreme. I never climbed past 8,000 on the site, but
it was noticeable…. It isn't enough to make the book free, you have to get the
word out to people who are looking.
Branding
Another reason for giving a book away is to create or
improve your brand. Branding sells books in the future.
Award-winning speaker and a bestselling
author, Devin C. Hughes - @DevinCHughes has a two edged sword here. One side is book sales and
the other is promoting his speaking tour.
I give away quite a few books
to a variety of folks who attend my events … I giveaway books to promote me and
my brand.
Pre-Promotion plan
The days leading to your free promotion should be heavy in your planning schedule. This
is the period leading to the start of the sale.
1.
Get your blog out there to your followers. I plan on
having three blogs posted two days before my promotion begins, all with links
back and forth plus to my Amazon buy page. You’ll see related posts on the eBook Author’s Corner, the HBS Author’s Spotlight and the Jonathon Stone Mystery Novels
blogs.
2.
Start tweeting like mad, they say. I will dig into the
tweets I created in my planning stage and start tweeting at regular intervals
each day for the next two weeks. Notice I am not going to stop when the free promotion
is over.
3.
List with other blogs – the more listings you get the
better.
Now Let’s Give It Away
It’s time for your scheduled free days and to put your plan
in motion. Contact your promotional sites and support groups. Timing is
everything.
Amazon will do their thing but you need to keep working. It’s
time to post on your Facebook pages, tweet the world,
contact the groups that you belong to and get it rolling with your support
groups.
Like Melissa Foster - @Melissa_Foster
from the World
Literary Cafe suggests: “Get authors in a cross promotion group and tweet
like crazy (and thank them for it).”
The Give Away is done but we’re not
We need to keep marketing and as one of our contributors
suggests: “Don’t lower your price. Keep up the momentum for a few days. If you’re
free days ended before the weekend, keep up strong promotion efforts (through
social networking) through the weekend.”
Results is the objective
Authors want results for their hard earned time and effort.
Here are some opinions from our prized authors. Beware, sometimes the
expectations exceed results.
Award-winning Mystery Novelist, Dani Amore - @authordaniamore
explained her results this way.
It's been an interesting
experience giving away books for free.
Probably in relation to the amount of time and effort I spent promoting
the free books, my results have been varied...modest spikes in sales of other
books, and maybe a few reviews...
Experienced Fiction and Non-fiction Author, Erik Christian - @SimplyAfterDark
commented on how his strategy paid him in
results.
I love the free promotion
offered on KDP. I try and split up the 5 days free into two segments. It has
helped sales considerably, as you can see from my rank of "Drunk" which was free just
a few days ago.
Best Selling Author, Patrick
Hatt - @PatHatt24 echoed the same results.
My experience in giving them
away for free has been it helps a ton, depending upon how it is done... I
have always gotten sales of my other
books and sales of the free book when its free period was over.
Best-selling Mystery & Thrillers Author,
Jake Needham - @jakeneedham had good results but sees a change he can’t explain.
I've done KDP Select
give-aways of two of my titles and have had rather interesting results. In
April, I offered free copies of ‘THE AMBASSADOR'S WIFE’ through KDP Select and
nearly 40,000 copies were downloaded…In the months immediately following, the
total sales of of my titles jumped…In November, I tried KDP Select again with ‘KILLING
PLATO’. In the three days that free copies have been available, just over
15,000 copies were downloaded worldwide.
Since both offerings were
therefore more or less the same, I really have no idea if the offering of a
title for free through KDP Select has become less effective as a promotional
tool since last spring.
Writer of Fiction Novels, Non-Fiction and
Children's Books plus the founder of the'Indie Chicks' writing group, Cheryl Shireman - @cherylshireman
had good results but she questions the carryover
to future sales.
Amazon Select can be a good
way to attract short-term attention to your novel, but I am not sure what
long-term effect giving away free copies will have on sales… [all I know is] a
lot of readers were exposed.
Obstacles
Mystery Writer and the host of HBS Author's Spotlight blog, James Moushon @jimhbs ran head on into the exclusivity of the KDP program.
The obstacle I had was with my first book, ‘Call Off The Dogs’. When it was published, I rushed out and placed with all the online retailers. That was before Select was the main method of choice for book promotion.
Now I tried to go back and
make ‘the Dogs’ exclusive so I can promote it free through Amazon. Unfortuniately
some of the minor retailers will not unlist the book and have priced it at
zero. Amazon won’t let me enter the program until the issues can be resolved.
Some people just don’t give it away
Some of the authors questioned for this blog see free
promotion differently. There are two ways to look at this you know. I just lost ‘x’ number of sales or did I gain
potential readers for my next books. Fortuniately you can measure the free
downloads and future sales are hard to determine.
Action-Adventure Thriller Author &
popular publishing industry blogger, Joanna
Penn - @thecreativepenn had mixed feelings: one for non-fiction, one for
fiction.
I have used KDP Select for my
non-fiction book 'How to love your job or find a new one' … giving it away for
free was always about getting more readers... for my fiction, I prefer a paid
promo, as I end up making more money and also get more targeted buyers. I no
longer have my fiction in KDP Select.
Historical Fiction Author, Ron Fritsch - @RonFritsch
looked at his reading base and said no.
I've never offered them free
to the general public. I don't think the persons who might read my books would
be impressed with a giveaway.
Mystery & Thrillers Author, blogger and
book editor, Amy Metz - @goosepimpleisms had a different problem. One that many authors are
faced with.
I haven't been able to offer
my eBook for free because my publisher controls the pricing.
Conclusion
Will there you have it. We have learned a lot from our
contributors but the question still is: should I or not? I think goals,
schedules and planning can’t hurt and being prepared is a must. Also, working
the Internet for all its worth is a required and you should keep selling after
the promotion. It is better than just throwing it against the wall and seeing
what sticks. Also, we learned that free books are not for everyone.
George Strait’s
song keeps singing in the background. Don’t get caught singing his last
line: “I can’t even give it away”.
Questions
What has been your experience with Free Book Promotions?
HBS Author's Spotlight Contributors
The author comments are excerpts from a survey conducted by
the HBS Author's
Spotlight. You can view the author’s complete answers on the
following blog: Free eBooks – HBS Author’s Spotlight Survey.
There question was: What has been your experience in giving your books
away free? Have you been involved in other types of giveaways and how did that
work out? What was your main goal in doing this? Did you run into any
obstacles?
Follow me:
Follow Me on Twitter:
@jimhbs
Check out the Jonathon Stone Mystery Novels:
Call
Off The Dogs
Or newly released: Free starting 12/19/12 for 3 days
Black
Mountain Secrets
Spells: Ten Tales of Magic
Beltane: Ten Tales of Witchcraft
Storm Dancer
The Devil Eats Here
Six Historical Tales Vol 1
Writing Scary Scenes
Scared: Ten Tales of Horror
Six Scary Tales Vol 3
Haunted: Ten Tales of Ghosts
Six Scary Tales Vol 2
Six Scary Tales Vol 1