Happy Sunday, WG2E-Land!
Many of you have emailed, Facebooked or Tweeted me asking how you can get the word out about your FREE Ebooks.
First, let me say that I totally believe that the #1 Reason I’ve become a Top 100 Bestselling Author on both Amazon and Nook, as well as hit over 300 Bestseller Lists on all platforms (including Apple, Sony, Kobo and more), is due to my strategy…
The First One is On Me
What this means is that every new reader I get is able to enjoy my debut release – which is also the first book anchoring down all my series – for FREE, regardless of the platform he or she Ereads on.
Plus, the First One is On Me is Forever…not just for five days at a time or less (because of KDP Select) or a month at most (on Nook First).
I began this strategy in September 2011, and since then I’ve had over 200,000 downloads of that FREE Ebook alone as well as gone from 5,000 sales (as of August 2011) to now over 100,000 sales of all of my other titles.
Almost a year later, over 10,000 new readers per month download the FREE Ebook that started it all for me – BOOTSCOOTIN’ BLAHNIKS!
Note: I’m counting these peeps as “new” readers because most people do like to read series in order, so they’d be likely to have not read any of my other fiction stories yet and probably came across me when browsing various platforms’ FREE Ebooks Lists.
But here’s the thing…
Not all readers know enough about Ereading yet to find me in the FREE Ebook Listings on each platform.
So…
What if…
I made my First One is On Me into more of a campaign-style approach?
Meaning…what if…I had these superfab postcards to hand-out everywhere I go?!
Let’s hear it for my A-mazing Assistant Sam the Intern!!!
Did she nail this design or what?!
I can order around 500 of these beauties from Vista Print for around $150.00. And, I’ll be using them everywhere I go…the grocery, the bank, my fave restaurants, libraries, lobbies, doctors’ offices, hotels, etc.
Up till now, I’ve always handed peeps my business cards, which are also fabulous thanks to my DH (Darling Husband) and get a ton of buzz and provide great conversation openers.
But…
When I hand out my business cards, I pay attention to what hooks people, and it’s my caricature as well as when I tell them “the first one is on me!” They immediately want to know more about what’s FREE and how do they get it. So, I try to explain it to them.
With these postcards, I can now give them a superfab fun “look” at what I’m treating them too, and I really do think it will boost my sales to an entirely new Ereading Audience. Of course, I’ll keep y’all posted on that too! 
I will also use these at various conferences and signings for autographing as I can simply take my Sharpie to the back and personalize ‘em.
It’s Your Turn, WG2E-Land: What if…you tried your very own The First One is On Me Campaign? What are your thoughts on this approach? What questions do you have for me about this technique?
The Best of The WG2E and The First One is On Me Wishes — D. D. Scott
Great info. On wed my post here is about where to advertise your free ebooks. It’s got some great resources on it, courtesy of Karin Cox!
WooHooo, Sibel! I can’t wait to read your Wednesday post!!! This will be the perfect addition to what I’m doing with the “First One is On Me” Campaign!!!
I did this, following reading your success at it, DD, and wow, what a result. My first Angel ebook is still slowly increasing in downloads. On SWords in December it was only 12, but now after making it free for ever, it has gone up to 4922. As you say, I also see it as new readers to my work, and hope that they like what they have read enough to want to buy the rest of the series and all my other ebooks. I love the postcards. I have some for my Angel series but not like that. Have to add in writing that the first one is free on me. I also have business cards, with my own website on one site and the Angels on the other.
Bravo, Julie! U Go, Girl!!! Here’s to watching as your FREE Ebook begins to boost the sales of each of your new releases too!
I do think those words “The First One is On Me” are just magical to readers’ ears and do get them to one-click buy!!!
i’m anxious to try the first one free on a permanent basis, but wasn’t sure if i should before having at least # 2 in the series out
when # 2 is ready (soon) should i go to free or 99¢ on # 1 ?
or should i have the main series first, ie, 3 books?
i do plan to do add-on books with characters introduced in the first 3, so that would be an extended series?
i tell ya, this is one problem that’s kinda fun to figure out
thanks d.d.
It is fun to figure all this out, isn’t it, Adan? Cheers to that!
I do think it definitely boosts the success of the First One is On Me Approach if you have something else ready for your readers to buy. You want them to finish that FREE Ebook and feel so tickled that they got your first one for FREE and loved it that immediately they then buy everything else you’ve got.
While they’re reading the new books, hopefully then, you’ll have something else new and ready for them when they finish. Ideally, you want to keep your readers in books so to speak.
At the minimum, you’d want to not make them wait long, perhaps two to three months at most so they don’t forget about you.
Does that help a bit?
definitely helps! thanks
and glad you mentioned the 2-3 mth in-between period as a max time if possible, that might turn out to be a good amt of time for me
thanks again
U betchya, my friend!
Excellent idea, Dee Dee.
My first book , Reckless Nights In Rome, which has excellent 5* reviews on the ‘Zon and Goodreads went free for ever yesterday on ARe, still waiting for Kobo and for the ‘Zon to price match. Book two’s already out and book three’s coming at the end of September. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Doing a couple of guest blogs this week where the free for ever will be mentioned and my awesome WANA buddied and WG2E buddies are spreading the message.
Am following your advice, oh wonderful one, and shall keep you posted on the results.
CC
http://www.amazon.co.uk/-/e/B007WKC36A
http://ccmackenzie.wordpress.com/
http://www.allromanceebooks.com/product-recklessnightsinrome-905851-149.html
Atta Girl, CC! I can’t wait to see how you do with this!!!
What you’re doing right here is sooo what worked for me:
“Book two’s already out and book three’s coming at the end of September.”
You gotta have something next for them to buy and then something soon after that. Look at it this way…I’m calling this “The First One is On Me,” which implies that there is more than one.
Hi D.D.,
I think the first one free idea is great, and when I’ve got a few more books out there I’m definitely going to do that too!
Meanwhile, if readers are interested in a blog post I did about my recent free promo – 10,000 downloads in 2 days – all the info is here http://joannegphillips.wordpress.com/2012/07/18/free-kindle-promotion-know-how/
including where I listed the free promo and how I got the word out to readers. Jo x
Excellent, Joanne, and thanks sooo much for sharing your post link too! I luuuvvv that we can all learn from each other’s experiences.
Go, Girl, Go!!!
Interesting conclusions, but after 30 years in sales and marketing, I see your results in a completely different manner. First, “free” has little value in the eye of the receiver. Look in your kitchen junk drawer and you’ll probably find a free key ring. Look on your car keys and you’ll probably find one you paid for. Why? You placed a higher value on it.
Second, Giving something away might seem free to you, but Blahniks does have a cost associated with it. Let’s assume you could sell 20,000 Blahniks (I’m figuring the book is a good one despite being unfamiliar with the genre) at $2.99. In other words, your freebie has cost you $40,000. Your name will not appear in as many e-readers — but what if you could reach more people with that $40,000?
Third, advertising budgets of $40,000 will get your name in front of a lot more than 200,000 ereaders. 20 banner ads on a major site will put your name in front of a million or more. That would solve your problem of reaching beyond the ereader population.
Have you tested banner ads on major sites? (Goodreads, IndieReader, etc)
Peace, Seeley James
I respectfully disagree, Seeley, but certainly welcome and appreciate your comments. In fact, I’m over the moon you brought up this point.
You simply can’t use traditional marketing and sales methods to sell Ebooks…actually, those methods don’t work to sell much of anything any more. There are simply too many ads now for anything to stand out that doesn’t immediately treat a consumer first and has a big enough budget to be on primetime.
Traditional marketing itself uses FREE all the time…you just call ‘em “Samples.” I’m simply using a full-size sample instead of a mini version.
FREE, in our current, very horrid economies has HUGE value to everyone, even non-readers, in our case, who might just give our product a try because it is Free. And I know this works ’cause I sold a grand total of 5,000 books in a year before going FREE with book one, and I have now sold over 100,000 books in the year following going FREE. And that’s books SOLD. I made a grand total of somewhere around $5,000 my first year. This year, I’ll make over $100,000.
I can’t reach more people with high-priced ads. Been there and done that and got absolutely no where.
In today’s world, it doesn’t matter how many people your name is in front of. You’ve got to incite them to act on your name and product. Giving them something first to earn their buying power sooo works!!!
I agree with what you’ve said, D.D., and I would add that with ebooks it’s not so simple as to say ‘You sold X,000 books so you lost £X,000. In fact, a lot of people who download free ebooks would not have paid for the book at another time – some people only download free books. Some will then go on to be readers of that author, many others might not. But the point of free promotions for me is to increase visibility. My recent Kindle promo saw 10,000 free downloads, and put my book at #1 in the free charts. When it went back to paid-for, it jumped up the charts, ultimately reaching #46 in the Kindle bestsellers overall (UK). (Prior to this the highest position was 20,000!)
Visibility – now my book was visible to lots more readers browsing for a good read they wanted to pay for, and the more people bought it the higher it went. I sold 2,500 books just on the back of that one free promo. If I hadn’t done it at all – i.e. not given something away for free to those who love ‘free’ – the book would still be languising in the 20,000s, or lower, and visible to no one. And it cost me, in real terms, a fraction of the cost of any kind of marketing that could equal the value of #2 in Kindle movers and shakers, and #5 in women’s fiction – behind only 50 shades!
I’m totally with you D.D. My genre of YA isn’t so prolific on ereaders yet as more adults have ereaders than kids do, but even despite this my ‘First one Free forever’ strategy has worked wonders for me. I also have the the 1st book free as an audio too on podbean and itunes but I think this is going to cause me problems with ACX for listing the other 2 for sale. I’m talking with them about it at the moment and hoping I can work something out.
I put my 1st book for free in May 2011 when I released the 2nd book. It skyrocketed from #80,000 to #14 on Amazon overnight. A few days later my 2nd book debuted at #25 on the hot new releases list and hit the childrens bestseller list. Same thing happened when I released book 3 in June of this year.
So far I have had over 120,000 downloads of book one, gaining me between 5000 – 6000 new readers every month and at the moment I have at least 13% sell through. Books 2 & 3 are selling over 800 copies per month and that figure is rising as word of mouth spreads and also my visibility on the ‘also bought’ lists increases.
In fact just yesterday I was talking to someone who was searching for a book on amazon that was totally unrelated to mine but he was shocked to see my book come up in his ‘also bought’ listing. I was over the moon to hear that.
I know this strategy works because my 1st book was out for over a year at 99c before it went free and in all that time it only made $20 in royalties.
I am about to publish my first romance (hopefully this month) under a different name, so I’m hoping I will gain some cross over readers to help gain me some visibility. A lot of my readers are adult females so I’m keeping my fingers crossed. I know how hard it is to break into this market if you are an unknown (which I virtually will be with a different name).
Major congrats on your success and I love the postcard idea.
This is just wonderful scoop here, Alison, and thanks sooo very much for sharing it with us!!! Bravo and congrats on making the “First One is On Me…Forever” work for you!!!
Love all the info above and every day!
How about audio books? Obviously not for free unless maybe for a contest or special gift…but where can they be promoted other than: LinkedIn, assorted FB sites/Twitter????
This is a great question, Elaine! One that I’m working on finding the answers too also!
To my knowledge, you can’t go FREE on Audio Books yet. At this time, you can’t even set the price on them (at least not if you’re using Amazon’s Audible ACX).
I have been gifting a few copies, but that ain’t cheap! LOL!
And so far, I’ve promoted them on Facebook, Twitter, and my websites (I created a page for them on my D. D. Scott-ville site). It does seem like, for now, that the Audible site itself is where most of the Audio Listeners hang.
Great idea….Sam & D.D.! Love it!
Thanks so much, Jeanne! We’re gonna have a ton of fun with them!!!
Ditto what Jeanne said. As if I don’t have enough to do, you go and give me more ideas! I’m also interested in your answer to Elaine about how/where to promote audio books.
I’m still trying to figure out the Audio Promo too, Stacey! It does seem like most of the Audio Book Listeners hang on Audible’s site. They are very active in their reviews on there, for example. But beyond that, I’m not aware of any AudioBook-Centric Sites…how ’bout any of you?
I’ve got this on my Must-Google List…
Another great post with a ton of great marketing tips, I plan to follow your lead when I get at least two books written in my new cozy mystery series. Thanks again DD- you rock:)
I think you’ll have a marvelous time with my “First One is On Me” strategy, Lois!!! Go, Girl, Go!!!
I agree with you DD and what works for you might most probably work for all. I published my first novella, The End of Summer, on Amazon less than a week ago and i got so far 3, five stars reviews. i also ran a 2 days promotion that was deemed successful. I am writing my second book, a sequel for the first one. and i’m considering once i publish it to follow your advice and make the First One Free Forever.
Thank you DD for sharing your invaluable experience with us.
The End of Summer http://www.amazon.com/dp/B008R15GV2?cor=US
Congrats on your debut release, Alex, and yippee, keep crankin’ ‘em out!!!
I do think the First One is On Me…Forever is just a terrific way to continue to build a new readership. And I can’t wait to hear what it does for you!
I am absolutely with you on this one D.D. and I totally agree with your view on marketing Ebooks (i.e. traditional marketing simply doesn’t work).
Now to a couple of questions. Apologies if I have missed this (and I probably have) but where did you offer your free book for download? Goodreads or several places?
Second, I think you just confirmed that one should publish several books (3+ presumably) for the FREE to have an impact. Am I right? How many of your books were published when you started the campaign?
Here’s the scoop on how I did this, Mike:
http://thewritersguidetoepublishing.com/ridin-the-free-way-to-indie-epub-success-as-in-offering-a-free-ebook
Basically, I started by making the book FREE on Smashwords and all the channels I use from them. Then, Nook matched that price followed by Amazon. (Note: It appears that because they have Nook First and KDP Select now, it’s taking Nook and Amazon longer to price match now, and in some cases, they won’t match. It’s at their discretion.) But it’s sure worth it to be FREE on as many platforms as you can!!!
I do think that the more books you have out before you go FREE, the faster and better it will work for you. That said, once you’ve got a couple out with another one coming soon (within a couple months), I’d go for it! I had somewhere around 5 books out when I did this.
I’m looking forward to hearing how this works for you too!