Have Readers Loan Your Book Out For More Sales

Here's something light and easy to chew on for the weekend. It's a simple marketing tip that seems to somehow go against the very fiber of the writer, and sometimes even your fans who want to see you succeed. But if you do a good job at encouraging its practice, you will reap rewards 10 fold down the road. And best of all--it's free!

Simply, encourage your readers to loan out their copy of your books to their friends and neighbors. In the same vein, rejoice when a library picks up a copy of your book for the hundreds or thousands of people who will check it out and read it for free.

For many authors, this sounds counter intuitive. The first thought is, "I am missing out on royalties and sales numbers. If someone wants to read my book, they should pay for it."

I am the first to tell you that an author is due every royalty on a sold book. I also believe that you put in a lot of work on your book and you deserve to be paid for your work. I really do. I am an author too, remember?

But I am also a marketer. I am looking for ways to get my work in front of many people to get the most sales I possibly can. So I look at the lending of my book, or the borrowing of my book from a library as an investment in an inexpensive marketing plan. What better way to build up the word of mouth buzz around your book than to have actual readers talking about it to their friends and family.

How would you like to overhear this conversation at your local Starbucks:

"Man, I finished a really great book that my third cousin, twice removed loaned me last week."

"Really, what was it?"

"It was a book written by Tony Eldridge called The Samson Effect. You have got to read it."

Now, replace my name with yours and replace my book title with your book title. How does that sound? What would be the power of word-of-mouth exposure if everyone who bought your book loaned it out to 1 person, 2 people, 3 people? And what if 20% of those people bought it and loaned it out to 1 person, 2 people, 3 people?

The results would be amazing. If you are calculating the lost royalties on all those people who borrowed your book, then you are missing the royalties on all the people who bought your book because of the exposure those borrowers gave to you. And the truth is, if you cultivate a readership that feels safe in loaning your book out, you will walk away with more net royalties than if no one loaned out your book. Make sense?

What you are doing if you practice this tip is something bigger than selling books. You are building a brand. You are creating name recognition. You are investing into something worth more than the immediate sale now.

And if you are still hung up on the lost revenue, think of it this way. Let's assume you are losing $3.00 per book in sales when someone borrows your book. (That's assuming 100% of those people who borrowed your book would have bought it if they hadn't borrowed it--highly unlikely). You can make this figure personal to you by replacing the amount you make per book. But at $3.00 per book, let's say that a few people loan your book out 100 times. That's $300 you are out, right? So, is $300 worth the price of an ad campaign that takes advantage of word-of-mouth advertisement? Is $300 worth the price to enhance your name recognition? I say an emphatic, "Yes!" And the great thing about it is that you get all that with no real money out of your pocket.

So encourage readers to loan those books out. Rejoice when a new library gets a copy of your book. Heck, donate one to them and get the tax write-off for it (consult your tax adviser before taking ANY tax advice from me). And be happy that more and more eyes are reading your book while you are creating more and more fans to help you tell others about it.

Tony Eldridge