👉 harness this power

Lots of new readers around. View in browser Hey, I've been hard at work cleaning up 600 blog posts and a million words of content on my website. Most of that was so out of date it was recommending my favorite quills, or the top ten monks to illuminate your manuscript (you won't believe Brother Six!). The overhaul isn't just about resurfacing buried gold but also involves publishing brand new articles for you as well. I've just published a new post on my blog – as in a few seconds ago – called 9 Ways To Unleash The Power of Free in 2021. Hot and fresh from the content oven, people. I've spoken previously about how I see the market right now and how it will develop this year, particularly how a new swathe of locked-down readers are consuming books digitally for the first time… and how this demographic is particularly responsive to free offers. Lots of generalities, so here are some specifics for you today. You might know about permafrees and reader magnets but there should be some ideas in this post even for more experienced self-publishers. A few which are great for fiction authors specifically, but others much more suitable for the non-fiction crowd – something for everyone. Well, except for the poets; I still haven't forgiven them. If you are super resistant to giving anything away for free, that's completely your call. You are the captain of your authorship! However, I'd like to try and convince you otherwise, and if you are willing to hear me out on the topic, then I recommend checking out this refurbished post on my site: The Great Ebook Pricing Question. There's nothing new in that ebook pricing post for those of you who have read Let's Get Digital, but perhaps a handy refresher for anyone curious, given how pervasive the price/value myth is – something we are probably seeing a resurgence of thanks to all these new price-sensitive readers entering the market… quickly followed by a wave of savvy authors leading with free offers and aggressive pricing like it's 2011 all over again. Hey, I'll even save you the click. Here's the big takeaway from that pricing post: "Price is not a hill to die on, but a powerful tool for levering your books into the charts, rewarding fans, generating buzz, and expanding your audience." So it goes with freebies. Speaking of huge change, I don't think the publishing industry has fully digested the impact of coronavirus, and what that means for the book business. If I had to guess, it probably means five years of change all at once, essentially pressing fast forward on the forces of disruption that have slowly been eating away at print books, physical stores, and the traditional end of the business generally. All of the killer advantages of ebooks – e.g. endless selection, accessible from your couch, open 24/7 – come into very sharp focus when people either can't leave their homes or are understandably reluctant to do so. And once readers see just how many top-quality books they can buy at very competitive prices, it's going to be hard for most of them to return to the world of print. I just don't see it happening. People will still love to browse bookstores, and will cherish books as physical objects. That didn't change for me when I got my first Kindle ten years ago. I still browse bookstores! I still cherish print books! But I stopped buying them, for the most part. And I've certainly stopped discovering new authors via print – which I think is a crucial point that's often missed in these conversations. Perhaps the most important point of all. If you want to dig into that point further, you can check out this other refurbished post on my site: a retrospective look at The Birth of the Kindle. I also think that a lot of the customer resistance around ebooks surrounds two things which evaporate quite quickly once you pick up your first ereader: the reading experience itself being surprisingly pleasant, and the discovery process for new reads being remarkably intuitive. You sometimes hear people say something like "I prefer my recommendations from humans rather than algorithms" which always makes me chuckle because algorithmic recommendations are basically aggregated human recommendations, but ones specifically tailored to your own individual browsing and buying and reading history. It's not a robot... guessing! I think most readers experience something akin to what I did when I switched to ebooks ten years ago: you start reading a much more diverse range of voices, because your recommendations are now far more bottom-up than top-down. They bubble up from organic reader activity, rather than being anointed by the gatekeepers. It's only when you begin working in the industry that you realize that all those recommendations you previously assumed were organic and authentic – bookstore window displays, "staff" picks, end caps, cash registry offers, book club choices, critic reviews, in-depth features, authorial blurb quotes, books of the month – are often nothing of the sort, but real estate which is bought and sold. Whereas the "Amazon" recommendations are not what Amazon wants you to buy so much, but what its system thinks you will like the most. Ten years into this digital revolution, and I still think that's the most revolutionary change of all – the democratization of recommendations. I think it's also the real reason big publishers hate Amazon. And the reason self-publishers have taken over. That... and our willingness to experiment with aggressive tactics, like embracing the power of free. Dave P.S. Writing music this week is The Kinks with Set Me Free. DavidGaughran.com Broomfield Business Park, Malahide, Co. Dublin, Ireland You received this email because you signed up at DavidGaughran.com. Unsubscribe