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What do you mean? By giving his book way for free, he was able to get HN attention (and thus get more sales).
by itake 7y ago
What do you mean? By giving his book way for free, he was able to get HN attention (and thus get more sales).
- gnicholas 7y agoRight, but if the message from his blog post is "do what I did, and you'll see similar results", then it's not sufficient just to give away your book. You also have to have a notable story to tell about it, and then go tell that story elsewhere. It's an indirect effect, not a direct effect. Also, if lots of people do this, then the publicity benefit of blogging about it will shrink because the stories won't get clicks anymore.
- geerlingguy 7y agoNote that I did post about it twice (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22589339 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22743353) in the past, when the promo was ongoing, and those posts didn't front page. And I admit, it's not just "make something free and sales go up"—I've probably spent more time during this lockdown working on tying together social media + YouTube videos + book marketing, once I noticed the uptake on the free offer. The strangest thing to me? The 'ignition point' for going from a few hundred to multiple thousand copies of the book being given away in just a few hours was a LinkedIn post that was shared pretty heavily. LinkedIn... seriously!