SFFMP 145: Using eBook Giveaways to Grow Your Audience and Sell More Books
On today’s show, we were joined by Ashley and Maura from Instafreebie. If you haven’t heard about the service yet, it’s a spot where you can upload free ebooks (previews, short stories, and novellas are fine), and it makes it easy for potential readers to download them and load them on their e-readers. You also have the option of requiring readers to share their email addresses in order to download the ebooks, so it can be a way to start growing a mailing list. A lot of our previous guests have used the service, and many authors attest to its usefulness, especially in conjunction with multi-author promotions.
Here’s some of what we talked about on the show:
- How Instafreebie works and how it differs from Bookfunnel, another service that can facilitate giving away ebooks.
- Giving away books (such as series starters) versus giving away short stories or previews of novels.
- Making sure to put your call to action (i.e. buy Book 2 in the series here!) in the back of the ebooks you give away.
- Using Instafreebie (and collecting email addresses) versus making books free on Amazon, Kobo, B&N, etc.
- Whether cliffhangers, at the ends of free novels or previews, work or if the readers are left irritated.
- Using a drip campaign (or auto-responder) to reach out to readers after they’ve shared their email addresses.
- Instafreebie’s recommendation engine and other ways to increase discoverability outside of what you do for promo.
- Organizing a group giveaway and asking them for a plug (submit requests to production@instafreebie.com)
- How newer authors can leverage Instafreebie to build a fan base when they don’t have a big social media presence or mailing list for driving traffic.
- How books are chosen to be shared on the Instafreebie blog for extra promotion.
If you’re interested in signing up for their service, find it at Instafreebie.com.
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Thanks so much for having Ashley and Maura on. I’ve been using instaFreebie since last August to grow my mailing list. Lots of great tips and insights–the “drip” campaign advice is especially useful for me, since I’m expanding the one email one I have. I also think the advice to create a separate IF list from the folks who sign up via the back of the book material is spot on, and something I’ve belatedly done.
Great stuff, thank you. Insightful questions and useful answers.
The only thing is I think I got old without realizing it (50) as your guests look to my myopic vision like they haven’t even finished high school.
But they were great.
🙂
The worst is when your doctors and dentists start looking like kids! Dude, are you sure you know how to use that thing…?