I’m running short of time today, so I figured I’d come here and post one of the emergency drafts I occasionally store on Patreon specifically for this purpose. Except, of course, Patreon is currently restructuring their layout, and access to the drafts folder seems to have disappeared completely on the web interface.
So, instead, here’s a little insight I offered up to a fellow author recently when they asked for next steps when giving their books away for free wasn’t leading to read-through sales.
What strategies can you use after free promos aren’t leading to a readership?
The least satisfying answer is probably “time and more books”, but it’s the secret weapon in the indie arsenal.
Everything we do to appeal to readers basically boils down to two core tactics: decreasing the cost to the reader so they’re willing to take a chance on a book, and increasing the value of the book so they want it bad enough to buy it.
Value isn’t a monetary thing — it’s more what the book means to the reader and why they want to read it. If decreasing the cost to nothing doesn’t find the readership, you’re onto increasing value. There’s a bunch of ways to do that: reviews increase the value of a book, as does refining blurbs and covers to appeal to your ideal reader a little more (If you’re sending a lot of traffic at a free book and it’s not converting, this is probably your starting point).
But a deep backlist increases value too – we’re predisposed towards authors who do a lot, because if we enjoy I book, there’s a lot more to engage with. Books that don’t take off on release can take off five or ten years later, simply because the readership that wasn’t there for them upon release discovers them. Each new release feeds people towards your backlist, even if it’s only happening by one or two people a time.
There’s other slow build things that increase value too: content marketing/newsletter lists, building up a presence in appropriate reader and writer communities, publishing/appearing in things that aren’t books (articles, podcast appearances, interviews, etc), going to events and building a network. Anything that builds your reputation as an author, even if it doesn’t immediately translate into sales.
The downside is that its slow. The upside is there’s an awful lot you can do without a huge amount of extra cost, and some of the stuff (like content marketing) can feed into your list as future books if you approach it the right way.
And you’ve got decades to make money from your current books, so slow and steady pays off in ways other businesses would kill for.
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And really, what you have there is basically the Brain Jar publishing philosophy in a nutshell, except for the fact tht we generally only have 5 to 7 years to make a profit on a book instead of the decades I have with self-published works.
Of course, publishing other people makes it far easier to build up value around the work than publishing your own stuff…
