Give away books for free – but not for free!

One tried and true method that has been used by new authors for decades has been to give away your book. A lot of books! Typically, the new author who really wanted to succeed would give away a thousand or more books. Most probably the first run, hardback, super expensive books will be the give away and this then becomes an expensive proposition.

Instead of printing a short run at a very high dollar cost per book and then having to take the time to ship them one at a time, try something different and even more effective.

Research has shown that readers of eBooks are voracious! They buy and read a lot of books and then they talk about the books that they read. The population of eBook readers is huge and there will be an ample number of reviewers who are worth far more to you than casual acquaintances that you meet, your friends, your family or even those anonymous people who work as book reviewers for major newspapers and magazines. In today’s world, a reviewer with a well-followed blog will do more for your book than a printed review in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. And, there are many more Internet reviewers than aging, failing newspapers with a diminishing circulation.

One specific strategy that has worked well for us that not only makes your book available to the most powerful Internet reviewers everywhere while also opening up an amazing side-effect promotional channel is to initially price your book on the Kindle at 99¢. This accomplishes two things. Your book is now available for review and at 99¢ it’s basically free. Amazon DTP will not let you price a book less than 99¢ so you can’t go any lower on the Kindle. You can email a link to those to whom you consider giving a book and ask them to download it. It’s 99¢. It’s the cost of an iTunes song downloaded to an iPod. If a prospective reader of your book won’t drop a buck on it, they won’t read it if you give it to them gift wrapped in gold. This is a great qualifying test that doesn’t cost you an arm and a leg. Instead of thousands of dollars in printing and distribution costs with very dubious results – you’d be amazed at how many people will tell you that they will read your book and then never do so – you can make your book instantly available to people around the world. By the way, Amazon will pay you 33¢ for each book downloaded to the Kindle. You won’t get rich, but it sure is more economical than paying $6 or $7 per book plus shipping.

The neat side effect of your 99¢ Kindle pricing strategy is the attention that it commands. This pricing, however, places you automatically on a lot of cool listings that promote exciting new books for less than a buck! We have conducted many tests of this strategy. At 99¢ books are downloaded in surprising numbers. We have tested moving the price up to $2.99 (at this price point, the author gets 70%, not 35% and it is very tempting) and the numbers fall off almost completely. We have then backed the price down to 99¢ and the sales take off again. If you wish to try this strategy, we have learned that you must keep your price at 99¢ until you get sales numbers that support a belief that you have a substantive following of readers. When you get this critical mass that you are seeking with your 99¢ strategy, you can raise the price with one quick interaction with Amazon DTP.