Freebies

Let’s face, it everyone likes something for free. Unfortunately, depending on your genre some audiences expect a freebie of some kind before purchasing your book.

This doesn’t mean, however, that you have to give away a holiday for two in the Bahamas or tickets for a night at the opera. Freebies can come in all varieties, and if you are creative, the cost to you can be minimal or even free.

Bearing this in mind, consider creating something digital that can be easily downloaded from your website or a platform such as BookFunnel (see next month’s newsletter).

Here are a few examples of the kind of freebies you can offer your potential readers:

For fiction:

• Free subscription to your newsletter
• Free subscription to your podcast (should you have one)
• A sample chapter from your book
• A novella prequel
•  An exclusive lost chapter (one that didn’t make the final cut)
• Information about your main character such as a dossier of personal information that isn’t included in the book
• Illustrations of your characters
• A poster-size printable image of your book cover
• A signed printable poster of you, the author
• Etc. etc. etc. (whatever you can think of)

For non-fiction

• Free subscription to your newsletter
• Free subscription to your podcast (should you have one)
• A sample chapter from your book
• A free consultation (depending on the nature of your topic)
• Illustrations or photographs
• Discounts on your products/services
• Discounts on passes or tickets to certain events
• Etc. etc. etc. (whatever you can think of)

The aim of giving away freebies

The end goal of giving away freebies is to get readers to purchase your books, but even though this may be your end goal, don’t go straight for the jugular, you’ll need to achieve this in a roundabout way. So, for example, don’t post something like this: ‘Buy my book and I’ll give you a free ebook’. Instead, try something more like this: ‘Subscribe to my newsletter and receive your free sample chapter of my latest novel’. The idea is to draw your audience in and gradually increase their interest.

So, basically, the whole idea of the freebie is to attract new subscribers to your mailing list, after which they will hopefully purchase your books and become fans.

A word of warning

Be aware that there are people trolling the internet purely looking for freebies. They’re not actually interested in your book. This is one reason why you need to make sure the items you give away have no actual monetary value and are only relevant to potential readers who will be interested in purchasing your books.

As mentioned earlier, next month we’ll be discussing the download platforms such as BookFunnel that you can use for getting your freebies and ebooks to your readers.

Until then, keep an eye out for our next blog post and have a great month.

Write on …
Andy