Pay With A Tweet: Why Give Your E-Book Away For Free?

Free can be a very tricky thing. One cannot deny that free is fabulous for the receiver, they have no risk. It’s like Christmas without having to give thought to what you should give back, or being invited to have tea with the Queen without having to perform a single act of bravery or without aging to the point of spontaneous decomposition. For an indie author, giving away your work for free is about the only way you can guarantee a glance at and perhaps a curious download of your novel which otherwise would be an Arthurian legend. You know, a completely immoveable sword stuck fast in stone until the golden hand of Arthur (or luck) comes along. In the writing world this golden hand of luck is also known as the occasional reader who will pass their enjoyment of your novel onto their friends.

Why would you give away something for free, on the off chance that that person will remember to tell their friends, their relatives, their pet goldfish? This question has stopped many an author in their promoting tracks. People are forgetful creatures, and if they are like me, they download the free copy (just so they don’t forget the name) add it to the end of the 20 book long queue (which constantly gets updated with new books from favourite authors) and by the time they get to reading it, telling their friends in a visible, public way, is the last thing on their mind. Hence authors get caught in this Catch 22. Free is how you move forward, but people are notoriously lazy and absent minded, and unwilling to pay for an unknown book from an unknown author.

You can save the applause for later, but I have found a fantastic strategy that allows free and promotion in one neat package without 500 downloaders nicking off with your work, never to return. I am talking about the wonderful website, Pay With A Tweet. Basically you can create a button for your webpage, Facebook page, blog, or author profile that allows people to download your product (and in our case, e-book) for the price of a tweet. The reader can change the tweet to whatever they wish (from your cool, entertaining, carefully worded one), but they cannot change the link that leads to that Pay With A Tweet button. Therefore, to get your free novel, they have to tweet about it first. Even more exciting, the creators of this facility have also developed a pay with a Facebook status option as well.

Twitter is a phenomenon whose social power has barely been tapped. Twitter is used by every well known company, department and personality in the world. NASA has Twitter feeds for several of their projects and tweets have even come from outer space. The LA Fire Department spread information about the 2007 fires via Twitter because the news channels weren’t fast enough, and that could mean a life saved or burned. The general public see social media as a way to ‘keep the bastards honest’ as we say in Australia, meaning keeping big companies honest on everything from the quality of their service to their offer of a free product. As such a tweet or Facebook status from a friend is seen as a true testimonial of a product or group to their trusted circle. Pay With A Tweet can help authors in an unprecedented way, allowing them to take advantage of the ‘free’ phenomenon, and get a guaranteed promotion from it at the same time.

Imagine the possibilities! This is how you integrate readers in such a way they become part of your campaign. It is a tool people will use over and over again and willingly tell their friends about it in exchange for what you have, their entertainment. One press is currently using the Pay With A Tweet website in a great way. Keyhole Press have several books for sale at an average price of $12.99 OR you can pay with a tweet. What is a person going to pay? The money, or get $13 of value for the price of a measly tweet? I can readily believe that readers will promote before they read without a thought, because they don’t have to pay for it. Then the viral marketing truly begins. Keyhole provide no synopsis, no genre, just a brief, 10 page pdf excerpt of the file. Just enough to give the reader adequate confidence to go ahead and Tweet for the download.

From there you can easily track the URL to see how many people have Tweeted your book to the world, all because you gave a reader something for free. Instead of paying with money, your readers are paying with social advertising. And you didn’t even have to buy them a drink to introduce yourself.

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The Pyjama Money Bender

There are a lot of things you can do in your pyjamas. Sleep… write, read, make dinner, eat dinner, have a party with a bunch of eight year olds, take out the garbage, go to the local store for a snack, impersonate John Lennon, sleep… It had never occurred to me that you could sell things in your pyjamas (other than more pyjamas) let alone books. Ten years ago connecting with someone on the other side of the world, in real time, without the ten year lag between sentences, was only dreamed about. But a lot has changed in ten years (not in the least pyjama fashion) and one particular piece of technology has got me hotter under the collar then a paedophile at a Wiggles concert.

You may have heard this little word I have been bashing about for the past several months, Webinars, the future of reader/writer communication. A webinar sales presentation reaches out and talks directly to the audience, entertains them, answers their questions and demonstrates the presenter's personality and style, unlike a website or e-book store which are impersonal and static. You can do them from home, they cost you almost nothing to set up, you can make money with them easily, they work in any market and you can do them in your Pyjamas.

I have something very special for you in this blog post, an excerpt from my interview with the webinar guru himself, Steven Essa. In this extract we talk a bit about what webinars are and why they are the internet marketing tool of the hour for e-books.

Listen below for some great info.



If you are smart, you will do whatever you can to catch his special webinar for authors.

In this live, once off webinar, not only will you be trained in how to set up a webinar but you will also learn the biggest reason why people fail or succeed online. Also, you will learn why unsupported e-books and products DON’T work.

And Steven is doing this for free. That’s just how awesome he is!

It's true, this webinar is only going to be run once and it’s free! Steven is a busy man and I am honoured that he has found the time to talk to us about how to run a webinar. If I could make a quarter of the money he does selling my e-books, I will be a happy woman.

No matter what genre you're in… Webinars are the FASTEST-growing, most profitable means to market yourself to a local or global audience…

Join Steven and myself for a very special webinar that could make the difference to your e-book success this year.

When: Wed June 15th
Time: 8:00pm-9:30pm Australian Eastern Standard Time (Sydney)

Click here to register!

https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/973353286