Bri Clark from Astraea Press (http://www.astraeapress.com) is my guest today. Besides working for Astraea, Bri is also an author. Bri, we're so glad you could come. And now for that guest post.
People love to get anything free. You could bottle a mound of dog crap call it fertilizer and give it a pretty label and people would fight over it…if it was a free sample. Then depending on its performance, they may buy some, suggest it, or talk awful about it the first chance they got.
Books are the same way, especially with the lovely invention of E-books and blogs. Books are given away as a gift to commenter’s or giveaways and for reviews. I say we as authors need to keep up with how many freebies we are giving away. However, they are E-books we have virtually no loss.
Actually Dear Reader you do. First of all your time costs and you put a whole mess of time in writing that book. Second, your publisher put out their time and resources for that cover, formatting and editing. (Yeah, they had to pay for that.) Third, these are expenses to you that you can claim on your taxes, so you need to know not only how many you gave away but where and to whom. Can we say audit?
Finally, the most important reason to pay attention to your freebies is to make sure the marketing you are doing is worth it. I figure for every book I give away I want to have at least one book that sold. Where did I get this math? Well I’m unknown with little product out there for starters. The more books I release the more books I expect to sale per freebie.
This formula is quite easy, keep up with the amount of freebies you have given away of each book. Then compare the amount of sales you have had on all outlets and compare. If you are giving away more than you are selling it’s time to rethink your marketing plan.
Are the blogs you are sending them too having too little traffic? Are the blog owners not doing enough advertising through social media? Are you posting the same interviews or guest posts all over so people are bored now?
Point is you really need to keep up with these things.
Bri, thank you so much. This post is easy to understand and address a topic all authors should be interested in. Come back anytime.
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