The Publishing Chronicles 4: Advertise Your Books for Free

Let me start by saying that these advertising techniques are what I use in my writing career. Many people have mastered advertising on various platforms and receive a great return on investment.

However, you’ll have to ask yourself if that person was a writer or an advertiser? When you dig into advertising, you can spend most of your time monitoring those instead of writing. It’s a choice.

As a writer, you have two choices, release a lot of books or release a few books and advertise the hell out of them. I chose the former way to build my catalog. 

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Welcome back to the Publishing Chronicles (part 1, part 2, part 3), where I brainstorm ideas about writing, designing, and publishing. 

My long-term plan. Let’s start in reverse order today by talking about my long-term writing plan. Presently, I release tons of books as my way to advertise my books. 

Let’s say I build a decent audience over the next five years by releasing a book every day or week. When I finally retire from the military, I should have much more time to learn to advertise.

Therefore, I will have solid sales data for my books, and I will have the time to learn how to advertise the heck out of my books. As I perfect advertising and marketing, I draw an entirely new audience into my book ecosystem. 

As I advertise 5-10 of my top books, I will bring people into my world of (say) over 2,000 books, YouTube videos, blog posts, audiobooks, and Metaverse systems. 

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Since I grinded most of my work over the first five years, I now have a massive library that can carry me for the rest of my career. That’s my plan in a nutshell.

Advertising and marketing in today’s environment. But you came here to talk about how to advertise for free. Here is a quick saying that you should remember, “There is no better advertisement for your book than your next book.”

This statement means that you need to stay top of mind constantly. Let’s talk about how I consistently get new readers into my ecosystem and slowly grow my audience. 

1. Amazon’s new book preference
2. Facebook Group
3. Google/YouTube Search
4. Blog

Amazon’s new book preference. Amazon gives preferred treatment to new books. They say that this treatment lasts about 30 days. I can attest to my new books selling best within the first 30 days. 

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So, how do I use this 30-day window? First, I release a ton of new books on Amazon almost daily. Second, I use the five free day promotion on some of my new books.

I usually daisy chain my new books with the five free day promotion. This means I release a book for free for five days, and on the sixth day, I release another free book. So I release roughly six new books into the free promotions every month.

Older books. Don’t forget I have another 300+ books on the KU program. I re-release my older books for free every day to keep the momentum going. You can release each book for free every 90 days.

Therefore, your first goal should be to cover 90 days with free books. That means you should have roughly 18 books. The result of having 18 books will be that you can offer a free book every day of the year.

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This is the secret to my free advertising program. I always stay top of mind because I always have something to give away for free. I keep a detailed calendar of my release schedule and share my monthly free books on my website. More on that later.

I started releasing books like this after my experience with Facebook Ads and Amazon Ads. These methods work, but they will need to be your primary focus. And once you stop advertising, you won’t have anything to show for it. Doing things my way nets me a massive back catalog of quality books. 

I have over 200+ books in rotation; my new goal is to get to 365 books. This will boost my free giveaways because if someone misses a particular book, they would have to wait a year to see it again. Chances are they will just buy it instead.

Facebook Group. I started a Facebook group before I became a prolific writer. My group is a great place to test ideas, see what is popular, and get more fodder for my writing.

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I can also recycle my past articles and free pdfs to my group because I constantly get new members. I currently have over 2,000 members and grow by a few every day. I will see a massive spike in numbers during the holiday season. 

Eventually, I will start an email list to reach my readers in a new way. However, this takes a lot of time to create content specifically for email. I first learned about the importance of an email list in the book “How to Blog for Profit.”

Google and YouTube Search. Google is the biggest search engine, and using search engine optimization (SEO) can bring free traffic to your ecosystem. I’ll admit I don’t focus on SEO because I am concerned chiefly with my writing. 

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However, that’s why I continue to write book reviews to bring traffic to my site. My search numbers are already triple from last year, and we are only 50% through the year.

It’s important to understand that your site has to gain authority to rank high on the Google results for a search. It takes time to climb the ladder; however, many of your posts will climb simultaneously. 

I am starting to do the same with YouTube by releasing a weekly video. Eventually, I will receive website traffic from YouTube as well. 

Build your blog. Your blog is your home address on the internet; therefore, you should always maintain a blog. Building an audience on a platform (like Facebook) will mean nothing if they block you for a random reason. 

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My blog is the hub for all my content. Across the top, you see links for my Free Kindle Books for the month, all of my Free PDFs, my Book Reviews, and my YouTube videos. 

The ideal way to get free traffic. Ideally, this is how it will work in multiple scenarios.

1. Someone enters from Google Search and sees the top links. They click through my Free Kindle books and download a few books onto their Ipad. They are now in my ecosystem.
2. Someone downloads a ton of my free pdfs and sends them to friends via email. They are now in my ecosystem.
3. Someone finds my books through an Amazon search and clicks through to my blog. They find my book reviews helpful. They are now in my ecosystem.
4. Someone found through YouTube where I offer a free pdf, and they came to my blog. They are now in my ecosystem.
5. Someone finds my Facebook Group through a search, and they navigate to my blog. They are now in my ecosystem. 

It all starts with a search. Everything comes from some form of inquiry. Also, I have a pretty dull Pinterest page that combines all of my books, pdfs, and blog posts. 

By using all these different search algorithms together, I compound the chances of someone finding me content. I’ll be honest; I already have a lifetime’s worth of content. I keep creating because I find it personally satisfying. 

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I already offer 190 free pdfs on the site. I want to get this number into the thousands just because I can. It feels incredible to see someone download 40+ books in one day. When people click through my free pdfs, I also get a sizable advertising payment. 

The goal of your blog. You may wonder why I give away so much stuff for free. In general, 70-80% of people who click through your blog will never return.

How do you get someone to return? You offer free stuff. My free book schedule is monthly. So that gives someone the reason to come back at least once a month. It is almost unheard of in blogging if you can get someone to click through 20+ pages from a search.

I am getting people coming from a search that click-through over 50+ pages. Again, I am not getting massive numbers of searches yet. But, I am doing this for the future. 

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Conclusion. I could keep this article going forever. There is too much to say about the power of compounding and adding value. I see multiple people who join my Facebook group because someone referred my blog to them.

Word of mouth is the most extraordinary form of advertising. That is the value of offering things for free; you reduce the barrier of entry to zero. I envision a day when people collect my books like Pokemon cards.

I can control which books are rare or ultra-rare. I may make some books only available via email list or Patreon. People would need to make a spreadsheet of all of my books so people can collect them like stamps. 

I cannot describe the power of building your back catalog. I can also give my books away to my friends at work. For example, it’s incredible to send someone a book on passive income from music because that’s their passion. 

So what’s keeping you from starting your writing career? I will retire the Publishing Chronicles series for a few months, but I look to continue in the long term. Writing, designing, and creating are life-changing, mindset-shifting events that can change the trajectory of your situation. Good Luck!

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