Post 3 of 26 of The Self-Publishing Series

 
The days of being teased are over
Do we really want to play the warehouse food sample game? I appreciate that you want to show me a bit of your book but you’re going to give me one chapter? First, it’s not hard to write one good chapter. Second, giving away a chapter of your book is like giving someone one digit of your phone number (Tweet That). Is it really your number? Sure. Does it move the relationship forward? Not really. My advice is to be stupid generous and see what happens. We’ll get to that later.

Why your free chapter has absolutely no value
Giving one chapter away has lost its value because of, you guessed it, Amazon.com. I can download a “free sample” of every book in the Kindle library and Amazon doesn’t require me to join your email list. I also get to see the reviews of other people who have already purchased the book to help me decide if I want to download that free sample.

What else you should give your readers
Two things are usually happening in the exchange for the chapter. Most authors, if they’re smart, are using the bait of a free chapter to get your email address. As the book gets closer to release or when the author develops other products related to their book they can communicate with you. The first benefit of the free chapter is creating a relationship. The second goal of giving away the chapter is to sell more books at launch. This is where I think authors miss an opportunity. If authors really want to sell more books at launch they must out give Amazon. They should give away different forms of those chapters (audio specifically) or some of those products they were going to deliver later.

Here’s an example.
Click here to see the example