Introduction

Hey authors,

It’s 2023, and soon 2024!

But why do we still see so many indie authors running free book promotions? Wasn’t that a popular strategy back in 2015 that’s no longer effective? So why do we still see tons of free Kindle books on Amazon?

The simple answer is that it still works.

And if you look closely, you will notice these authors all have the same thing in common:

They all have published lots of books!

In other words, these are authors who have been in the publishing game for a while. And free book promotion is a long-term strategy. It acts as the first piece to a greater marketing plan.

New authors who just entered the game will not know this. They often see other authors doing it and popular blogs preaching it. And they do it too.

But we all know that’s not enough to bring the same result.

So in this article, we’ll walk you through all the whys and hows. That way, you can also maximize free promotion’s true potential and build a large fanbase in 2023.

That said… let’s get started!

Readers First

New authors focus on acquiring sales. Experienced authors focus on acquiring readers.

Isn’t that the same thing?

Not really. Focusing on getting more sales will often get us to think short-term. Making us worry every day about why our book is not selling. And that anxiety will turn us into internet spammers where we constantly copy and paste the link of our books into online groups.

The funny thing is those groups are usually packed with other authors doing the same. Months later, we feel stuck. We don’t know why people don’t want our book. And we take it personally.

Okay, I’ll stop here. You get the picture.

Now, the long-term approach will force us to plan and collect data. We need to know what we don’t know. And find out whose feedback we should value more. Not all feedback is the same.

So by focusing on acquiring readers first, what we are doing is we are creating a group of people whose opinion matters to us. And their feedback will help us make more informed decisions down the road. And that takes the form of covers, initial drafts, descriptions, titles, etc.

So far, this sounds deep and vague, right? Most online articles stop here because they mention all the right things, and they feel smart. But what’s next? There isn’t a next, this is where all those articles will leave you hanging.

But not us, Team Dango goes deep!! Get ready because we’re going deep.

Why Free Book Promotion?

Have you ever been to a food court and asked for a sample before making a purchase decision? The idea is the same in the book world.

Whenever you try to acquire a new reader, please know that you are a new author to the reader too. Meaning they don’t know you, your characters, your world, how you write, etc. So before they commit their money and hours of their day to your book, they want to know if it’s worth it.

A lot of online retailers like Amazon allow readers to preview around 10% of the book’s content. But it’s not enough to develop that trust with a new reader.

Remember! This is a game of TRUST.

So giving out one of your books for free will help you develop that trust. And if they love your book, they will seek you out and try to find more books written by you.

And that’s what we want to happen.

Positive Effect of Free Book Promotion

For this section, we will use Amazon as our setting, as it’s where most authors sell their books.

Now, there are two ways to run free book promotions. You can use Amazon’s 5-day free promotion feature, or you can set your book to be permanently free on all platforms using a price match method, which you can learn more about here.

The benefit of free promotion is that people like free stuff. And it will allow your book to gain exposure fast! Your book will get lots of downloads really quickly, which will help your book climb the Amazon category rank. And your book will appear on the “also bought” section on the Amazon sales pages.

The online marketing effect will compound. It will then lead to more people discovering your book. Also, offline, thousands of readers will now know about your existence. And if your book is amazing, they will share it with their reading friends. The good old-fashioned word of mouth marketing will slowly go into effect.

But how do you keep them?

Gain Trust and Keep Their Contact

Ever tried filling a bucket with a hole in it? Sounds dumb, I know.

But that’s what lots of authors are doing when they run free book promotions. Too much attention is placed on getting more readers and not keeping them. That is why new authors often find themselves in an endless cycle of trying to find new readers for their books.

We can solve that problem with a simple email sign-up page.

Create an email list using email services like Mailerlite, GetResponse, etc. Then create an email sign-up page so new readers who like your work can join your email list to get future updates. That way, if you ever have new releases or other projects, you’re one email away from your readers.

Remember, right now, you don’t own any of your readers. Amazon, Google, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Kobo do. It’s their platform. We’re playing by their rules still. So it’s important to build our list of readers that we can access at any time.

And building an email list is how we do it.

Sell Other Books

Remember in the intro, I said one of the common themes among all the authors that run free book promotion is that they have published lots of books?

Let’s talk about the benefits of that here.

Having lots of books published allows you to cross-promote your books. Have you ever flipped to the end of a book? What do those pages often have?

Ads for your other books!

What experienced authors do is they will put all their other books’ information and links in the back of their free books. So it makes it easy for thousands of new readers to keep reading their work.

It’s all there for you at the back of the book.

Instead of having to pull out your phone. Go to Google and type the author’s name in. And scroll around for other books by the same authors.

Too much work.

Remember, time is precious, so always try to make it easier for your readers to discover and buy your books.

Find Your Readers

Now you know the reason why authors do free book promotions, let’s move on to the next logical question: Where do I promote the books?

Of course, just making your book free is not enough.

You need to find a way to let people know about your free promotion to get the snowball rolling. And to do that, below, I will list out some free and paid options.

Before you read the list, I want to manage your expectations first. Free options can be effective, but the exchange will be your time and effort. And it often revolves around making relationships with people who have an established group. It’s not impossible for them to promote you for free. Usually, be nice, add value to them, and ask.

Free Options Include:

• Facebook Groups (Relevant to your genre! Not saturated with other authors)
• Reddit Communities
• Discord Groups
• Cold Email Mirco-Influencers & Bloggers

Paid Options Include:

• Facebook ads
• Email Promotion Sites
• Paid Influencer Shout-outs

I want to keep this list short. What I have above are the most effective channels to acquire new readers in 2023. When starting out, I recommend focusing on mastering one channel to acquire readers instead of doing 10 different things.

We often see authors in forums where they said they had tried them all, and nothing worked. Usually, that means they might have a different problem. It might be the product, the packaging (aka cover), no demand for the genre, etc. Or simply trying to do too much and never going deep in any of them.

Okay, I’ll stop. Too much truth bomb in one article. If you’re still reading, you’re a real G.

Conclusion

There are many ways for authors to build their initial fanbase these days. Make sure you find one that makes sense to you and stick with it. When trying a new strategy, give it your all for at least three months. Then reflect and see if it’s giving you the result you want.

We recommend free book promotion because it is a tried and true method that has helped lots of authors build their fanbase.

But remember, this strategy is just the beginning. It will help you gain readers but as with most things in business, what keeps the fanbase coming back is the quality of the product and what happens after they discover you. We will write a new article about that in the future.

For now, take care of yourself and stay focused.