Build Your Business with a Free Book

Book sales are one of the most common measurements of success, but it is not the only way you can use a book to create massive success. Free books, given strategically as part of a bigger picture plan, can be hugely profitable and really smart. Business Building if you're thinking of giving a free book to grow your business and brand, well, this video is for you. Hey there, I'm Julie the book broad. I I'm a four time author and one of those books actually topped Amazon for print books. And I'm the founder of this fabulous full service book publishing and book marketing company, Book Launchers. My book Self Promote and Succeed goes deep into the issues with only focusing on book sales. If you wrote a book to grow your business, that measurement neglects the fact that there are a lot of ways a book can help you grow your brand and business and many involve you not making a single cent from your book, but on the back end. Well, Cha Ching. Or at least it could be Anikh Sengal inspired me to create this video when he shared in a Facebook group this headline how I did a $13 million launch thanks to a free book. And he went on to say a free book led me to the biggest product launch of my entire 20 year career. It all started with a free book and I eventually generated $13 million of gross sales from one launch. Yep, $13 million when the cart was only open for 10 days. In that post, he outlines exactly what he did to make that big launch. If you're into online marketing and not following Anik, you probably should head over to one of his Facebook groups and join in the fun. He shares amazing content like that post almost every single day. Now, I'm not here to share what Anik did because, well, I don't have permission to teach what he taught, but also because his his business isn't yours. So thinking that you can repeat exactly what he did just isn't possible because it's going to be totally different. But I am going to share why I think more nonfiction authors should think strategically about free books. And I'm not talking about book bombing free books. Did you read Self Promote and Succeed where I talk about the book bomber? If you didn't, you can get Wait for it. Yeah, a free copy of the audiobook version of the book@self promoteandsucceed.com for free. Yep. Head on over there now and download the book totally free. Or you can buy a physical or ebook version, whatever you like, wherever you'd like. But my first tip is to think about what your bigger picture goal is and how your free book would fit in. Oh, and I'm not talking about that free plus shipping gig that marketers use. There's nothing wrong with that. I have a bit of an integrity thing with it because if it were really just shipping it, it would be the cost of media mailing, which is more like $2.99 or $3.99 if it's domestic. But those free plus shipping offers are more like $7.99, which allows them to recoup the print costs and ad costs and all that stuff. So it's really not free. Just pay for shit. Regardless, let's take my example. I just offered you self promote and Succeed in audio version for free. Why? Well, my number one goal with that book is to grow our author community. We have some big initiatives planned in 2024 and the bigger our audience is for the release of those initiatives, the more successful those will be. I would rather give you the book than make $4 from you buying it, but I never get to connect with you personally, so I'm giving it away for free. In exchange for you opting in to receive our bi weekly newsletter as part of our launch letter newsletter, you'll also get invited to our two hour deep dive that we have every month that are complimentary just for our community. You'll also get tips, tools and the latest information on the publishing industry that every author should know about. And of course, from time to time we'll also invite you to work with us at Book Launchers if of course it's a fit to work with a full service self publishing team. If your goal is platform growth, free books given to the right people can work really well. If your goal is to get speaking engagements, you could search certainly be offering to sell books at the back of the room and negotiating to get them included in your speaking contract. That can work really well to boost your income. However, if you're trying to just grow that business or become a consultant and grow consulting business, well, if you're in a room full of decision makers, you may just want to ensure everyone in the room gets your book in their hand, even if that means giving them for free. Because free books to the right people can be so, so impactful. As an example, I spoke at an event earlier in 2023 and I gave their VIP group copies of my book Self Publish and Succeed for their gift bag. It was 50 books and nothing happened for months. But then last month I had a call with someone who received the book in their bag and they picked it up, they started to read it, and voila, now they're working with book launchers. We have given books out at conferences for years as a way to generate more connection to our company and have people contact to work with us. It is a slower process because it takes time for a book to work. People take it home and it sits on a shelf or in a bag, and then one day they pull it out and they start to flip through it. If you've done a good job, you'll find that people start contacting you from that. We have found that to be really true of conferences like NSA National Speakers association, but so many conferences. All right, so let me break this down into a quick list for you. Number one, Free books. Use them as a lead generator. You can run ads to them. You can give them away on your social media, promote it on your website. Give them a digital version like the ebook or the audiobook, so you don't have high costs and can instantly deliver it in exchange for an email address. Two Free books. Giving physical books when you are speaking or when you are running a booth at a conference, don't book bomb people with your book. As in, don't give it to people who don't care about it, don't know who you are, and don't know why they would read it. Give the book strategically so it's going in the hands of someone who actually cares about the content in the book and will get value from this gift. Number three, free books given to people who can share the book with people. Like through the VIP bag that I gave the books to the conference organizers for that VIP group gift bag. The VIPs in the group are all people who would greatly benefit from writing a book for their brand and their businesses. And they also are potentially great referral sources for book launchers. My goal in giving a book to each of them was that they would read even a little and then connect with us for our service or give the book to someone else that they knew that would be a good fit to write a book with us. All right, Number four, using those free books as currency. In many cases, I've given books to an organization in exchange for exposure or access. My favorite deal of all time was back with my first book, More Than Cash Flow, where I gave books to the Canadian Real Estate wealth magazine. They gave the book away to anyone that subscribed to three years of their magazine. In exchange, I got ad space in that magazine. The book was promoted in a lot of places to build demand and value for their audience. And I got a lot of great speaking spots at their national and local events. Number five Give books away for impact. Some people have written their book to give back. As a result, they donate their books to local shelters, prisons, or places that help teens or troubled youth. Or they give all the proceeds away to the organizations they care about. They aren't doing it for any purpose except impact. And that's powerful too. Just a word of caution about free books. They aren't free to you. There is a cost to you to give away books. Not just print costs or distribution system costs or an ad costs if you're running ads, but also in the time, energy and effort you put into giving them away. Be strategic about it. Make sure you're giving them to people who will value the book or who will give it to someone who will. Oh, and none of this works if your book sucks. In Anik's words, he says, guess what doesn't happen if I write a crappy little report? Okay, Anik actually used a bad word, not crappy. But what he says is Robert Kiyosaki doesn't happen. Robert also promoted his book launch and that led to his biggest product launch of all time. Which leads me to the last thing before you give away books. Get your funnel ready. If your funnel's not ready, giving books away for free is not going to create value. Unless you were number five, doing it for impact. Your funnel could be free book to a webinar. Sell something. In my case, it's free book. Would you like to book a call to chat with us about helping you write and market a great book to build your business? You can go here and then we offer you the service if it's a fit or Free book to newsletter, invite you to join one of our upcoming classes or in 2024, be a part of our new initiative, which I'll tell you about real soon. Ultimately, it comes back to creating massive value for your audience. You have to know who that audience is and why they need you. Then you can give them a copy of your book because you are helping them with something that matters to them. What do you think? Have you been afraid to give too much away for free? Or maybe you've been giving it away for free, but not strategically. Let's chat about it in the comments below. And then YouTube says this is a video you must watch next. And this video is all about other ideas to grow your platform as an author. Both are great. I'll see you there.