Steve Higgs

Free: what a wonderful word. Most of the time, when I sell a book, it costs me something. I advertise on Facebook, Amazon, and BookBub and pay to promote my books on subscription services such as Written Word Media and The Fussy Librarian. That costs me money, but that’s okay because I have a big back catalog and achieve enough organic sales from the new readers my marketing and advertising attracts to make the investments thoroughly worthwhile. 

But what if you have only a few books, or the income from your efforts is not yet at a level where you feel that spending money on ads is viable? In this scenario, you need to be doing everything you can without spending money, or you need to be spending small amounts in places that will generate sales. 

There are several immediate options, but we’re going to focus on two: newsletter swaps and promotional platforms.

Newsletter Swaps

You need to get your own newsletter set up first, and if you have done that but only have twelve subscribers, you are not offering much value to the people with whom you might swap. Let’s assume you have at least a few hundred loyal fans and email them once a month or more. There is nothing stopping you from reaching out to another author in your genre. If their covers are like your covers or their content is like your content, they will be a good target, and your audiences ought to be interested in the work you are swapping. 

This costs nothing other than the time it takes you to find the author’s email address—probably on their website—and message them. 

Target the big names; you have my permission. Chances are JK Rowling won’t answer, but you never know if you don’t try, and there is no reason not to be persistent, provided you can achieve that without being annoying.

Promotional Platforms

There are several promotional platforms you can explore to market your books. BookFunnel and StoryOrigin are the first that come to mind, but there are others out there. With these platforms, you can arrange newsletter swaps with other authors in your genre—meaning you can avoid the approach described above if it makes you feel like a stalker. You have to pay to play, but the fee is only $10 to $20 a month, depending on which tier you choose. 

Here, you can also join group promotions. Typically, someone organizes a promotion and invites authors to join. You can narrow your search by genre to find those your titles suit and filter by type of promotion: free, sales, Kindle Unlimited (KU), etc.

Search by genre to find group promotions tailored to your work, then filter your search by the type of promotion to see results like this search in the Urban Fantasy category.

Joining a free group promotion means you will give away a book and have it linked to your newsletter sign-up, so your subscriber numbers will grow. With a sales promo, your book can be at full price or discounted. For each of these and KU promotions, collaborating authors will send links to their newsletters and social media following. 

If there are twenty authors with an average of five thousand followers, that’s up to one hundred thousand new readers seeing your story in one group promotion.

In group promotions, your title will populate on a landing page alongside the other books in the promotion. This is what you will share on social media and with your newsletter, and what readers will see when they follow the link.

There is no limit to how many group promotions you can join, so imagine the exposure you can get for the price of a cheap lunch, especially when you consider it an investment that will bring you an income. 

Steve Higgs