This! I noticed a long time ago that the key to successful books is word of mouth. In fact, back when they were brand new, I first learned about Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games by word of mouth. I think the best attitude that a writer can have is the desire to write a book that is worthy of being loved and talked about by readers.
To be fair, the first HP book had a a substantial marketing campaign ($50k was substantial at that time for a middle grade book). While it can appear that HP was successful just due to word-of-mouth, it may not have gotten there without Scholastic's creative strategic efforts to amplify interest. If they hadn't dones such an extensive outreach campaign to teachers, librarians, bookfairs and bookstores, it's possible you may never have heard of Harry Potter. I've learned of this from the person (David Farland) who recommended Scholastic choose HP out of like 75 books, and suggested such an outrageous marketing strategy to them (such as the midnight book release events). Now, of course their marketing strategy would have gone nowhere without a good book! (And regular releases . . . )
@JRoseBooks I actually have read David Farland's Million Dollar outlines and some of his essays. He does have smart insight. However, he also recognized how a lot of success is due to how a story resonates with readers. If the amount of marketing measures the most success, then every well marketed book would be just as successful as Harry Potter.
Giving away free copies is fine, but I've heard for years that if you do so, most of the time, they'll be snatched up by book hoarders, and never read.
That's unfortunately true. I've held a lot of giveaways, mostly through Amazon, and while the number of copies downloaded has often been heartening, the subsequent feedback and sales have not. To download a free eBook is a no-risk proposition. Reading it? That takes time and commitment...things not everyone is willing to devote to an unknown writer.
Thank you for your wisdom! I am going to send "YOU" my book! Yes! A physical copy. I hope you enjoy my book as much as I've enjoyed listening to your videos. Thanks for being you! Susan ~ Michigan Author "Love Notes From The Other Side" ❤️ 🎶
I love this idea. Being one of the of your advanced readers (I’m still in the middle of the book and will probably finish over the weekend) I get the drive to read the book because 1.) I’m familiar with you and your work through this channel and Story Grid and 2.) you gave me a specific day to complete it and submit a review by. This 2nd part helps, as I recall I got a e-copy of a book a friend who gave it to me and asked for an honest review. But they never gave me deadline date as part of the agreement. So as a result, I never finished the book, and I never wrote the review. So I’d think, in addition to handing out free copies to people you think would read the book, it’s probably important to set a deadline for them to submit a review in exchange. Wondering how that works with Amazon’s review policy. (Actually, I just realized I don’t know exactly where you asked us to submit reviews. I’m guessing it was Amazon. But maybe it was somewhere else?) Also, I’m wondering the criteria you use to hone in on who are the real people who would read your book are, so you are not just giving books away willy nilly with no plan or strategy. Can you go into more detail sometime about this strategy? How to find advanced copy readers up in the thousands if need be. Ultimately, it would be great to hear how your figures go for THE SHITHEAD. How many did you give away. How many did you receive reviews back. How many you sold as a result. As you are as much of a teacher as you are an author and book marketer-seeing the transparency of how that works will be so educational for beginning authors.
Great concept. Would you mind sharing how your sales go based on this strategy? I'd love a realistic view of how many copies were given vs. sales, for instance.
Brandon Sanderson has been giving the first 25% of his books away pre-publication, which when your books are 460,000 per book is the size of a book itself. On his previous book, not only did he publish the first quarter online, but he published the first quarter of the audiobook on TH-cam as a playlist, chapter by chapter, as we got closer to the release date. It was epic!!! And I told my eldest, who reads with me, that he should absolutely do that for the first in the series to introduce newcomers and get them hooked. And then he did exactly that! Sanderson has epic business acumen. I think I will steal that tactic. I am definitely hoping to make videos for the first six chapters because much of that content is the best in the book and because Chapter 4 is the chapter I most want everyone to know. I want Chapter 4's message to be free.
I think this is great advice, and I was already thinking about this for my first novel. My problem is who to give it to. As far as I can see there are three overlapping target groups. 1 - People who will actually read it and generate word of mouth even if it's only to one other person, 2 - People who would like to be ARC readers, and 3 - People who will read it and take the time to leave reviews (on Amazon or Good Reads perhaps) But it all starts with that group 1. How do I find them?
I've already tried this tactic with my first book. Yes it is effective but have down side. It is sometimes hard to make people read your book because they dont have time, they have other books on the list etc etc. But among all the marketing tactics, this one is good I'll admit that. Thanks for the video!
I'm doing exactly as you advised. I'm sharing my pre-print copy of Hammerhead, a collection of short stories, with my network. The feedback has been encouraging and is certainly helping me with my next novel. The challenge I have is that the readers within my network are well aware of the subject matter. The book is, however, meant for those who are not aware of it. So, how do you break through the bubbles and echo chambers that permeate the online world? By the way, I'm loving your book the Shithead, it resonates so well.
I will try this advice! My first book sold really well due to marketing efforts of my publisher. But the second book was not pushed as much and you can see it in the sales. For the second book I used story grid as well as a story grid editor and I looove how the book turned out. However, my publisher expected a purely non-fiction book like the first one and not a "big idea book". So I was very sad to see that the sales were way behind the first book although the second book is much better written. I am excited to order more copies and send them out into the world to get things moving :) Thanks Tim for all your valuable work!
I'd love to read and compare your two books, but does this new one have a lot of curse words in it? I'm pretty turned off by the title and am afraid it's a hint of what awaits in the text.
This video was super helpful, thanks! I self publish children's books and would be very interested in giving away free copies, especially to schools, libraries, etc. Do you have advice on where I should look for businesses/organizations that promote or spread word of mouth info about books authors donate?
I just published a Bible study and the publisher provided me 50 free copies for this purpose. Sure enough, I got an email today from someone saying that if I would provide a copy they would pass it along.
Yes, thats good point. I think its very good idea. The dengaure with giving free copy is that you will spend money on publishing and give it the book for free. What will happened when book in your thoughts is good but not many people could buy it.
I'm skeptical of which publisher hands out so many copies (=money) for free? Without any guarantee, so as far as I would guess, regarding that they are most often very conservative, you'd need much luck to find one to do that. But the idea in itself I find worth a try, I just think it wouldn't work for any setting/genre, let's say western, because the market isn't that big a priori.
Many traditional publishers won't do this, but it's short sighted not to. Most books can be printed for ~$3 a piece so it's much cheaper than other forms of advertising. And, of course, ebooks are free. And I've seen it work for lot's of different genres so don't write it off so quickly. - Tim
@@StoryGridThanks for the reply. I'm going to memorize it when time comes because it makes great sense. I hope the time will be this and next year. I'll just need to find an American publisher (I'm German) at best. How hard can that be? 😂
It's a lot easier to just click a buy me link than get into piracy especially when you know the book is going to be in a readable format and not some broken PDF file with no formatting.
So if it's easier to get a person to buy the book than read it, and now you are giving away copies so they don't even have to make the effort of buying, why would they make the effort to read it?
While I am curious at how this worked out so well. I have tried the give it away strat, and it doesn't work. People have been doing the give away shit since Amazon first started letting authors give ebooks away. I have heard over and over and over in the industry how that doesn't work, and there are years of experience behind a lot of people who have tried and failed. I think this is a rare fluke, not a stable idea. This will, once again, put a financial burden on new authors as they throw their money at various ideas on how to sell their book, which will ultimately fail.
Do I seriously hafta be the first one in the comments to ask why you didn't drop us some free copies of The Shithead at the end of the video? Come on Tim, you can trust us, we promise we'll read 'em real good. Just a few thousand copies, and to keep things fair, we'll all send you free copies of our books, of course. Who wouldn't want a few thousand struggling writers' novels, hm?
@@StoryGridI’ll consider it but like you said, it’s easier to get people to buy a book than actually read it. So I’m trying to actually read all the books I own but haven’t read. It’s a long list of books
@@quigglyz Lol... he's given nothing "for free". He's made no one publishable with these videos. His channel is nothing more than a marketing tool. To get writers to buy his classes, promote his books, promote his publishing business, while he makes ad revenue by monetization. If I need to "grow up", you need to wake up.
Question: how do you give away digital copies of a book without someone else taking the digital copy and selling it themselves, or even printing it and selling it themselves?... Sorry, this might be sort of a layman question, but what is the process of giving away free digital copies?
I use Bookfunnel.com for this. I also just send people PDF and EPUB files. As for worrying about people printing/selling copies... see the part of my video about piracy. - Tim
@@StoryGrid Thanks, Tim. I realized that part of the question was idiotic after I wrote it, but I hit the button anyway. My bad. Thank you for the link.
@@StoryGrid I didn't miss it. What I'm saying is that today it's 10x, in 6 months it's 7x and three years from now it's 1.2X because everyone is assuming that books got to be free. We're essentially devaluing our craft by making it free.
@@KyraCathcart. I think you missed the point. If everyone does it, we are telling readers that our work's value approximates zero. Is this what you want?
Hey story , really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with more Quality Editing in your videos and also make a highly engaging Thumbnail and also help you with the overall youtube strategy and growth ! Pls let me know what do you think ?
This! I noticed a long time ago that the key to successful books is word of mouth. In fact, back when they were brand new, I first learned about Harry Potter, Twilight, and the Hunger Games by word of mouth. I think the best attitude that a writer can have is the desire to write a book that is worthy of being loved and talked about by readers.
To be fair, the first HP book had a a substantial marketing campaign ($50k was substantial at that time for a middle grade book). While it can appear that HP was successful just due to word-of-mouth, it may not have gotten there without Scholastic's creative strategic efforts to amplify interest. If they hadn't dones such an extensive outreach campaign to teachers, librarians, bookfairs and bookstores, it's possible you may never have heard of Harry Potter.
I've learned of this from the person (David Farland) who recommended Scholastic choose HP out of like 75 books, and suggested such an outrageous marketing strategy to them (such as the midnight book release events). Now, of course their marketing strategy would have gone nowhere without a good book! (And regular releases . . . )
@JRoseBooks I actually have read David Farland's Million Dollar outlines and some of his essays. He does have smart insight. However, he also recognized how a lot of success is due to how a story resonates with readers. If the amount of marketing measures the most success, then every well marketed book would be just as successful as Harry Potter.
I've had success joining a large group promo, which I marked my 4th book free. I've seen consistent sales on the series for 3 weeks now.
Skip to 6:48 after the intro. As usual, this is very longwinded.
Giving away free copies is fine, but I've heard for years that if you do so, most of the time, they'll be snatched up by book hoarders, and never read.
In my experience, this is what happens most of the time.
I joined a “stuff your kindle” and will never ever understand no circumstances do that again.
That's unfortunately true. I've held a lot of giveaways, mostly through Amazon, and while the number of copies downloaded has often been heartening, the subsequent feedback and sales have not. To download a free eBook is a no-risk proposition. Reading it? That takes time and commitment...things not everyone is willing to devote to an unknown writer.
If a reader doesn't reach for a book, they're not truly interested.
Thank you for your wisdom! I am going to send "YOU" my book!
Yes! A physical copy.
I hope you enjoy my book as much as I've enjoyed listening to your videos.
Thanks for being you!
Susan ~ Michigan Author
"Love Notes From The Other Side" ❤️ 🎶
I love this idea.
Being one of the of your advanced readers (I’m still in the middle of the book and will probably finish over the weekend) I get the drive to read the book because 1.) I’m familiar with you and your work through this channel and Story Grid and 2.) you gave me a specific day to complete it and submit a review by. This 2nd part helps, as I recall I got a e-copy of a book a friend who gave it to me and asked for an honest review. But they never gave me deadline date as part of the agreement. So as a result, I never finished the book, and I never wrote the review.
So I’d think, in addition to handing out free copies to people you think would read the book, it’s probably important to set a deadline for them to submit a review in exchange.
Wondering how that works with Amazon’s review policy. (Actually, I just realized I don’t know exactly where you asked us to submit reviews. I’m guessing it was Amazon. But maybe it was somewhere else?)
Also, I’m wondering the criteria you use to hone in on who are the real people who would read your book are, so you are not just giving books away willy nilly with no plan or strategy.
Can you go into more detail sometime about this strategy? How to find advanced copy readers up in the thousands if need be.
Ultimately, it would be great to hear how your figures go for THE SHITHEAD. How many did you give away. How many did you receive reviews back. How many you sold as a result. As you are as much of a teacher as you are an author and book marketer-seeing the transparency of how that works will be so educational for beginning authors.
GREAT QUESTIONS!!
Are they called "copy readers?" They proof?
Great concept. Would you mind sharing how your sales go based on this strategy? I'd love a realistic view of how many copies were given vs. sales, for instance.
Brandon Sanderson has been giving the first 25% of his books away pre-publication, which when your books are 460,000 per book is the size of a book itself. On his previous book, not only did he publish the first quarter online, but he published the first quarter of the audiobook on TH-cam as a playlist, chapter by chapter, as we got closer to the release date. It was epic!!! And I told my eldest, who reads with me, that he should absolutely do that for the first in the series to introduce newcomers and get them hooked. And then he did exactly that! Sanderson has epic business acumen.
I think I will steal that tactic. I am definitely hoping to make videos for the first six chapters because much of that content is the best in the book and because Chapter 4 is the chapter I most want everyone to know. I want Chapter 4's message to be free.
Sanderson didn't do that before he had a solid, Cosmere-hungry audience.
@@5Gburn For sure. But my bet is that if you asked him if he wished he had done that from the beginning, I am fairly certain his answer would be yes.
Really enjoying your videos on book marketing! They're so helpful. 😊 Hoping you'll make more!
I think this is great advice, and I was already thinking about this for my first novel. My problem is who to give it to. As far as I can see there are three overlapping target groups. 1 - People who will actually read it and generate word of mouth even if it's only to one other person, 2 - People who would like to be ARC readers, and 3 - People who will read it and take the time to leave reviews (on Amazon or Good Reads perhaps) But it all starts with that group 1. How do I find them?
Free has always been my favorite marketing method.
I've already tried this tactic with my first book. Yes it is effective but have down side. It is sometimes hard to make people read your book because they dont have time, they have other books on the list etc etc. But among all the marketing tactics, this one is good I'll admit that. Thanks for the video!
I'm doing exactly as you advised. I'm sharing my pre-print copy of Hammerhead, a collection of short stories, with my network. The feedback has been encouraging and is certainly helping me with my next novel. The challenge I have is that the readers within my network are well aware of the subject matter. The book is, however, meant for those who are not aware of it. So, how do you break through the bubbles and echo chambers that permeate the online world? By the way, I'm loving your book the Shithead, it resonates so well.
Make video content online
This is awesome! Your message is quite inspirational.
I love writing and am currently writing my first book and I need all the help and advice I can get … thanks
The best way write well is to write a lot.
Awesome thank you!!
I will try this advice! My first book sold really well due to marketing efforts of my publisher. But the second book was not pushed as much and you can see it in the sales. For the second book I used story grid as well as a story grid editor and I looove how the book turned out. However, my publisher expected a purely non-fiction book like the first one and not a "big idea book". So I was very sad to see that the sales were way behind the first book although the second book is much better written. I am excited to order more copies and send them out into the world to get things moving :) Thanks Tim for all your valuable work!
Thank you very much, super informative 🙏
What a fascinating subject!
I'd love to read and compare your two books, but does this new one have a lot of curse words in it? I'm pretty turned off by the title and am afraid it's a hint of what awaits in the text.
Yes, it's an adult book with plenty of adult words. I don't think it crosses the gratuitous line but you may disagree. - Tim
@@StoryGrid Thank you, Tim. I'll ask my local library to get a copy and check it out that way - plus, it's still a sale for you!
This video was super helpful, thanks! I self publish children's books and would be very interested in giving away free copies, especially to schools, libraries, etc. Do you have advice on where I should look for businesses/organizations that promote or spread word of mouth info about books authors donate?
I mean let’s be real there is a fine line by how many books you give away. Like you cannot stop selling the book and only give it away for free
I just published a Bible study and the publisher provided me 50 free copies for this purpose. Sure enough, I got an email today from someone saying that if I would provide a copy they would pass it along.
Fantastic!!
Don't you think the sales were from the organizations, buying them to give them away? Great idea though, and I've seen this work too!
Great video! Thank you.
Should I give to libraries?
Yes, thats good point. I think its very good idea. The dengaure with giving free copy is that you will spend money on publishing and give it the book for free. What will happened when book in your thoughts is good but not many people could buy it.
This is genius!
Do more videos about this!
i'm surprised not hearing or seeing any reference about Cory Doctorow in this conversation
Anybody think this would also work for selling art prints??
Sounds good, but trying to find the people has been an issue...
You can say that again...
If you're infamous it's easy to get people to buy your book. The more horrific your reputation, the bigger the sales
"Infamous" means "more than famous", right?
@@toweypat infamous meaning being famous for something bad
@@toweypatI understood that reference.
I'm skeptical of which publisher hands out so many copies (=money) for free? Without any guarantee, so as far as I would guess, regarding that they are most often very conservative, you'd need much luck to find one to do that. But the idea in itself I find worth a try, I just think it wouldn't work for any setting/genre, let's say western, because the market isn't that big a priori.
Many traditional publishers won't do this, but it's short sighted not to. Most books can be printed for ~$3 a piece so it's much cheaper than other forms of advertising. And, of course, ebooks are free.
And I've seen it work for lot's of different genres so don't write it off so quickly.
- Tim
@@StoryGridThanks for the reply. I'm going to memorize it when time comes because it makes great sense. I hope the time will be this and next year. I'll just need to find an American publisher (I'm German) at best. How hard can that be? 😂
It's a lot easier to just click a buy me link than get into piracy especially when you know the book is going to be in a readable format and not some broken PDF file with no formatting.
So if it's easier to get a person to buy the book than read it, and now you are giving away copies so they don't even have to make the effort of buying, why would they make the effort to read it?
While I am curious at how this worked out so well. I have tried the give it away strat, and it doesn't work. People have been doing the give away shit since Amazon first started letting authors give ebooks away. I have heard over and over and over in the industry how that doesn't work, and there are years of experience behind a lot of people who have tried and failed. I think this is a rare fluke, not a stable idea. This will, once again, put a financial burden on new authors as they throw their money at various ideas on how to sell their book, which will ultimately fail.
Do I seriously hafta be the first one in the comments to ask why you didn't drop us some free copies of The Shithead at the end of the video? Come on Tim, you can trust us, we promise we'll read 'em real good. Just a few thousand copies, and to keep things fair, we'll all send you free copies of our books, of course. Who wouldn't want a few thousand struggling writers' novels, hm?
Ha, yeah I should have done that in this video. I did it in my last one, but here's the link if you want an advance copy:
storygrid.com/shithead
- Tim
@@StoryGrid Nice! Well that's what I get for missing a video. XD Will check it out, been curious.
@@StoryGridI’ll consider it but like you said, it’s easier to get people to buy a book than actually read it. So I’m trying to actually read all the books I own but haven’t read. It’s a long list of books
Maybe you could use the same philosophy and give away your classes??? You know, for word of mouth.
You mean like the hundreds of videos, blog posts, email newsletters, and podcasts we’ve given away here and on our website? - Tim
@@StoryGrid No... I mean the actual classes.
@@MarkLewis... Cringe. You want him to give *everything* away for free? Grow up.
@@quigglyz Lol... he's given nothing "for free". He's made no one publishable with these videos. His channel is nothing more than a marketing tool. To get writers to buy his classes, promote his books, promote his publishing business, while he makes ad revenue by monetization. If I need to "grow up", you need to wake up.
I am on TikTok and do raffles. So, people win one of my books. The raffles are free.
Question: how do you give away digital copies of a book without someone else taking the digital copy and selling it themselves, or even printing it and selling it themselves?... Sorry, this might be sort of a layman question, but what is the process of giving away free digital copies?
I use Bookfunnel.com for this. I also just send people PDF and EPUB files.
As for worrying about people printing/selling copies... see the part of my video about piracy.
- Tim
@@StoryGrid Thanks, Tim. I realized that part of the question was idiotic after I wrote it, but I hit the button anyway. My bad. Thank you for the link.
That's not a dumb question at all.
Yes question makes sense
Has to be good writing or none of this works.
So write something good?
Great, let's make our books freebies - a mad dash to turn our time, sweat, and tears into shit that people won't see any value in. The new norm, huh?
Did you miss the part where it turns into 10X sales? You give the book away because that turns into lots of people paying money for the book.
- Tim
@@StoryGrid I didn't miss it. What I'm saying is that today it's 10x, in 6 months it's 7x and three years from now it's 1.2X because everyone is assuming that books got to be free. We're essentially devaluing our craft by making it free.
@@SashaZarustinthen don’t do it, simple as that. That’s just a tactic he’s seen work no one is forcing you this is just advice
@@KyraCathcart. I think you missed the point. If everyone does it, we are telling readers that our work's value approximates zero. Is this what you want?
Hey story , really nice video ! I was wondering if I could help you with more Quality Editing in your videos and also make a highly engaging Thumbnail and also help you with the overall youtube strategy and growth ! Pls let me know what do you think ?