business strategy
– people you may already know and people you have
not yet met. Yes, this costs money, but the impact
of a lovely gift arriving at their door will far surpass
the impact of an e-book delivered by email.
Gift your book to potential clients, at events, and
during conversations where you discover a common
link. Books that authors have shared with a fellow
passenger during plane flights have later led to
unexpected invitations to speak, consult, mentor
and more.
You can also promote an offer to give your print
book away to people for a period of time, and ask
them to just cover postage. In return, you are
building a database of contacts who are interested
in your material, know who you are, and who may
then be interested in another easily affordable
service or product you offer later.
Seth Godin, now a renowned author, self-published
Purple Cow after being rejected by publishers. He
printed 10,000 copies and gifted them for the cost
of the postage. Not long after, a publishing company
bought the rights to the book and sold 250,000
copies later that year.
AUTHOR
BEV RYAN
Publishing Manager and Author
of ‘Smart Women Publish’
www.smartwomenpublish.com
Jeff Goins, writer, convinced the publisher of his first trade
book to give away hundreds of copies when it was launched
(something they don’t like to do), and it went on to sell 20,000
copies in the first six months because it was out and about,
and visible.
You can also apply this same principal to gifting a pdf version
of your highly desirable book online for a period of time, in
order to build your email list of interested, pre-qualified
people. You can then follow up with promotions of events,
services and other offers. Callun Rush does this brilliantly
with her free downloadable book, Wealth Through Workshops,
which is the easy entry point to her very successful training
and coaching business. If you apply this strategy, your gifted
book must offer a highly desirable benefit – and in Callun’s
case, it is wealth.