OFFERING FREE CONTENT FROM YOUR BOOK ON THE WEB

If you are trying to sell your book, why would you want to give part of it away free on the Internet? There’s one good reason. Before people buy your book, they want to know if it has anything interesting in it, and if your writing is enjoyable. In bookstores, potential buyers can pick up your book and browse through it, maybe read some of it before they buy. If they’re buying through the mail or over the Internet, they have no idea what the book is like if they don’t get a chance to hold it in their hands and at least read the information printed on the cover.

To sell more books, put a copy of one chapter of your book on your Web site to attract customers. Or at least, put a photo of the cover and include the Table of Contents and some information about what they’ll find inside.

Buyers can read two chapters of my book Portable Writing, which appears at: http://www.booklocker.com/books/2461.html. I don’t know how many books have sold because buyers could read an excerpt, but I suspect most of them have sold because readers got to preview it before shelling out hard-earned cash.