I stumbled across a post on LinkedIn today. The title was:
Book Giveaway: We are giving away 4 copies of this book! If you are interested, just send me your email and it will be sent to you as an Amazon gift!
Interestingly, there were a few responses (already) from people hoping to get a free copy.
This reminds me that an author really does need to think outside the box in an effort to build an email list.
Even if you offer to give away 10 free copies — which wouldn’t cost you a whole lot — it’s a great way to get people to give you their email address.
Let’s say you offer to give away 10 free copies to people selected randomly among everyone who enters their address before such-and-such a date.
You could possibly collect over 100 email addresses during that time period. That’s 100 people that you can email regularly with information about your upcoming book, news about your book being released as a Kindle, etc… In short, it’s a ready-made list of people interested in your writing that you now have the permission to reach out to regularly.
I love this book giveaway idea. If you have any others that you’ve used in order to build your email list, please share them!