Should Authors Give Their Book Away for Free?
EPISODE NINE
The idea of authors giving their book away for free to help grow their audience has been a hot topic for years. Jenn and Marcus discuss both sides of the argument and share alternatives to giving your book away for free.
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Transcript
JENN: Welcome to the Book Marketing Simplified podcast. I'm Jenn Hansen dePaula.
MARCUS: And I'm Marcus dePaula, and last week, Jen sent out an email to our subscribers, asking for you all to let us know what you need the most help with.
JENN: We received a ton of really, really great questions, and this one stood out just because it is a topic that I am passionate about. And I know many authors struggle with this question. So, this is from Karen and she's a new author of two books. She's receiving advice from people saying to either sell her book for 99 cents or for very low price point, or to give it away for free, just to get it "out there."
MARCUS: And that's common advice. Even Amazon, I think, encourages you to do that.
JENN: Yeah. And she's asking if that's wise, because it seems unfair for all of the hard work that she's put in. And she's self published so it's costing her to get the book out there already. And so she was looking for suggestions and the best affordable ways to market her book.
This is something that I have been talking about for years, because I do not necessarily agree with that idea of just giving your book away for free hoping that that's what's going to catch on with your marketing.
So there are a couple of things I want to discuss with this mindset. The first being that yes, there are times when it is okay to give your book away for free. If you have media opportunities, if you need to get some reviews out there, if you have a contest or a giveaway, there are definitely times when you can give your book away for free and that's not a big deal. That's part of the process. But where we get into trouble is when we mainly use giving the book away for free as the main marketing idea.
And there are two schools of thought here on giving your book away for free. It really breaks down between nonfiction and fiction. With nonfiction there are many business owners who use their nonfiction book as ancillary product. Meaning that they have a business or a product or something that is bringing in revenue that's their main money maker. And they use their book to promote that.
MARCUS: So they are a consultant or they're a public speaker or some kind of business...
JENN: Business owner. And they are getting their ideas out there and the book is the vehicle for that. And they see the book as being kind of their way to share their ideas, to broaden their audience and to drive more business to their company or to whatever they're promoting.
MARCUS: Because ideally people buying a book will offset the cost of actually producing this piece of ultimately was marketing content.
JENN: Absolutely. And so if that's what they want to do, and they're using that as a way to drive business, I understand that. And that was totally their prerogative.
MARCUS: Even if they don't make the money back, they just write off as a marketing expense. That's fine.
JENN: Yes, that's fine. But fiction. It's just a completely different beast. When I see authors say, "I have to get my book away for free?!" It's like the life drains from their eyes.
MARCUS: Like they're cutting off one of the limbs and giving it away.
JENN: Exactly. And I always go back to you and never asked an architect, "hey, can you give me those plans for free to see if I like this?" You would never ask other professionals to give their work away for free to see if they like it or not.
So with fiction writers, I do not come from the school of thought where you need to give your book away for free. There are many other ways for you to market your book to grow your audience without giving it away for free.
MARCUS: All right. So for nonfiction authors, there can be times that it makes sense to give your book away for free. But for fiction authors it's a lot more complicated. Before we get into the alternative marketing options that you have besides getting your book away for free, can you just talk about why it is that people recommend you give your book away for free and clarify that for our listeners?
JENN: The idea of giving your book away for free is kind of a tactic to rank higher on Amazon. They think, "okay - if I can just rank higher people will see the book and latch onto it."
MARCUS: And in the fiction genres that can be a really futile, total waste of time.
JENN: Because it's so overcrowded. Because there are so many books out there. Readers are overwhelmed with options. There are some people that go through all of the free books - they kind of weed through them. But those are few and far between. It's not this avalanche of readers that are just glomming onto that. Because people want to be assured that, okay, this book is going to be worth my time. That it's going to be good. So the Amazon effect is one of the reasons.
The second is what I classify as hope marketing. It's where we just want to get it out into their hands and we hope that they actually read it. But I want you to even think about your own Kindle, the books on your Kindle or the free books that are lining your bookshelves, that you have never even cracked open.
MARCUS: Like the ones you got as gifts from people.
JENN: Yes. Or because you did get a free book and it's been living on your Kindle for eight years. It does not even cross your mind to read it. I look at giving your book away for free as just, "okay, I'm doing something. I'm getting it into people's hands and that's all that I can do."
MARCUS: And it's probably the easiest thing you could do because it takes hardly any effort to change that price.
JENN: But what you want to focus on is showing your readers why your book is worth their time and why it's worth the investment buying the book. Because when you are excited about a book and when you have anticipation, you will gladly pay the $10.
MARCUS: Not just that - you gladly tell your friends that they need to pay the $10.
JENN: Exactly. And when a reader invests in a book. Even if the $6 book or a $7 book, because you have invested into that, you put priority on that. There needs to be anticipation built. And that is the purpose of marketing and using social media to connect with people, to build that anticipation, to create that interest.
You're setting your book apart from all the others to say, "this book is worth your time. This book is going to entertain you. This book is gonna inform you." Whatever the purpose of your book is, that is what you want your marketing to focus on.
MARCUS: All right, so what can authors actually do instead of giving their book away for free?
JENN: We want to think about the process. So you have your social media. How are you going connect with them? Are you gonna build some anticipation? Are you gonna share a little snippit from your book? You want to connect with them. And again, that's why you want to know who your ideal reader is. What they respond to.
MARCUS: All starts with the ideal reader.
JENN: All starts there. And when you know those details of your ideal reader, you'll know what kind of sections from your book to draw from. You'll know what to share, and you want to drive them to your website.
Instead of just getting them the book, you can give them certain downloads. You can give them certain pieces of information that kind of create that anticipation to make you want to know, "oh, I want to know more about this." Most publishers want to give away only the first two chapters, whereas sometimes it takes more than two chapters to really get the hook of the story. So maybe even an extended amount of chapters, like saying you get the first four chapters because you want to leave them on a cliffhanger where they say, "Oh gosh, I need to know what's happening next."
But in return, you don't just give it to them. You actually get something back, which you can't get when you just give the book away for free on Amazon itself.
Yes, you get their email address and that is your golden ticket for marketing.
MARCUS: And we talked about this in a previous episode.
JENN: Yes we did. So if you did listen to that, be sure to listen to that about the importance of newsletters. But when you have their email address, you can continue to nurture that relationship and you can give them more insight and more connection to you as the author. But also talking about things from the book that can continue to build that anticipation. And that is where you can sell. Where you are allowed to do more of a push for them to go buy your book.
MARCUS: This approach that you're laying out, follows your overall mindset of instead of trying to look for opportunities just to sell things to people, or to get your book in people's hands free, that you are leveraging your creativity and what you've spent so much time creating and crafting, and so much money actually formatting and being out there on your platform to build these lasting relationships with readers. And then hopefully you'll build up a community of people that will actually help you market your book for you.
JENN: Absolutely. It's being intentional. It's not about selling a book. It's about building a career. And the marketing process is not a short one. It's a lifetime. And the lifespan of your book is infinite.
You can talk about this, right? You're not limited to a short amount of time to market your book. So remembering that this is a process. And even if it doesn't latch on right away, keep at it because the consistency is what is going to help you to see the added sales and the growing sales. So keep at it and don't just think about it as a short season. This is something that's going to be a longer process.
I think also the idea of giving your book away for free is kind of like marketing as an afterthought. You need to put as much effort into marketing your book, as you are writing it, thinking about it, not as a drag, but this is about connecting with people that are interested in the same things that you are. Marketing I know it comes as an afterthought for many people, but thinking about how can I connect with people rather than just selling them something.
MARCUS: And you can be doing that even as you write the book. Like you mentioned a lot of times, it's hard to get people hooked in just the first two chapters. So what can I, as the author put into those first couple of chapters that - even if they went across it on Amazon - is going to say, "yes, I have to buy this book right now."
JENN: Absolutely.
MARCUS: Okay. So don't necessarily give your book away for free, especially if you're fiction author. But you want to strategically find ways to offer something that will help you build your connections with your readers. And like you said, you've been talking about this for years. There's actually a blog post that you wrote in 2014 and it lays out the alternatives to giving away your book for free and what others can do.
So what's the "make it happen moment" for this episode.
JENN: The "make it happen moment" is to go to the show notes and read this blog post on 15 different alternatives that you can do instead of giving your book away for free, that you can apply to marketing.
MARCUS: And you'll find the show notes for this episode bookmarketingsimplified.com/9. And if you haven't had a chance to ask us a question, we welcome them anytime. So just to keep emailing us, keep contacting us on social media.
JENN: We want to know what you're struggling with, and we want to know how we can help. So send us your questions, let us know what those frustrations are that you're facing. And we can talk about it. Thank you for listening.
MARCUS: And we'll see you next time.