Make first book in your series permanently free

Perhaps the greatest challenge facing self-published writers is getting their name and book title in front of people. That’s especially difficult when hundreds of books are published every day. One long-term solution to help overcome this problem is to make the first book in your series permanently free.

When you give away a book for free, you’re likely to generate a lot of interest. If you’ve ever done free book promotions days on Kindle DP, for example, you’ve probably seen dozens if not hundred of your books get downloaded. So if you have several books, especially a series of them, why not always offers one for free?

The goal is to get potential readers to sample your work. If they enjoyed reader the book you’ve given them for them, then they’ll hopefully:
• Purchase your other books in the series
• Tell others about the book; they in turn will sample it for free and purchase your other books in the series
• Check out your web page or social media pages and begin to follow you
• Post reviews of your books on Goodreads or Amazon

Of course, all of this assumes that in your ebook you’ve included information about and links to the next books in the series, have links that take readers straight to your social media pages, and that you have a page asking for reviews with links to those websites.

The best part of this strategy is that a component of your marketing effort is now largely on auto-pilot – you’re not making public appearances, not writing guest blogs, not constantly devising clever tweets to pump up book sales.

Regardless, so that people know about your book you’ll want to include promos for the free book at various websites. For example, you might include a promo on your blog pages, your website pages, and in all of your other books. You’ll also want to send out a note about the book on occasion via your social media sites. But again, once these initial promos are created, they can be run largely on auto-pilot.

Note that you should only do this with ebooks. While you can give away paperbacks for free, costs incur, and that will greatly reduce the profit from your sales and even reduce your writing time for the next book in your series.

Professional Book Editor: Having your novel, short story or nonfiction manuscript proofread or edited before submitting it can prove invaluable. In an economic climate where you face heavy competition, your writing needs a second eye to give you the edge. I can provide that second eye.