When I self-published my novel last year I gave a lot of copies away. At first glance, it seems and sometimes feels a little counter-intuitive to give books away. I had just put a lot of time, money and energy over the course of a year into creating and publishing something that meant a lot to me. Was it really a good idea to give 10 copies away? Give a hundred copies away?
It was.
When I say give copies away, the first visual I get is tossing books off of a cliff or into an ether and watching them float away, never to be seen or heard from again by me. But that's not how I approached it. I took a page from the inbound marketing playbook and thought of the copies I was giving away as enticements to get new readers beyond the one person I was giving a book to. In essence, I thought of the copies I gave away as a way to get the word out and build a street team. Here are three approaches I used that worked.
1. Goodreads giveaways: On Goodreads, a social network where people post about books they have read and liked, you can register your book and make it available for giveaway. I signed up and said I would give away four copies. Then Goodreads did the rest. Over 300 people clicked on their link to register for a chance to get a free copy. Goodreads kept track of them, then chose four winners, then sent me the winners. I got their addresses and mailed off the books. Those readers will post a review on Goodreads when they read it. The result was that hundreds of people saw my title and heard about my book, and I'm in line for up to four reviews. It ended up costing me about $50 to pay for the copies and the mailing, all to reach hundreds of people in my target market.
2. Extra copies: When people I knew bought my book, I would sometimes give them an extra copy. I asked that they give it to someone who they thought would like it. It's been successful. I would say I've given away about 20 copies in this fashion, and I've gotten good feedback and some reviews on Amazon from those "extra" readers. Rather than thinking about this as a way to give out "free" books, I just thought of it as giving a friend two books, each for half price. For $8 (the cost of my book) I got another copy out there, and it came with the recommendation of a friend when it was given.
3. Readings: At one of my readings I gave away copies of my book and signed them for people. This was the most financially tough one for me, as it cost about $100 to give away that many books. But the experience of a person getting a free book from me, with an autograph and a little interaction to go with it, was great for word of mouth awareness. If I had been offered some stellar street marketing for $100, I would probably have jumped on it. This was essentially the same thing. I gave the copies to people who had already been interested enough to come to a reading, and they had a great reason to tell their friends about the free book they got from the author they met.
What do you think? Have you seen any other creative book giveaways like this?
Image courtesy of Cut to Pieces via flickr
4 comments