With ebook sales on the rise and considering the number of ebook readers, tablets, and smartphones that provide readers access to your book why is it that your book isn’t providing you steady income?  Their are tons of reasons why people choose to buy or pass over any given book.  One reason is that we live in a “review driven” society.  We don’t buy shoes, books, clothing, etc. without reading the reviews first.  How do you get reviews if no one will buy your book because it has no reviews?

A lot of authors have taken to giving away their books in order to get reviews.  Hoping that the next book they write will be able to use the free book’s momentum to obtain a reader.  To make sure someone buys it, book two has a price tag of $0.99.  How does that accurately represent the value of your book?  It doesn’t!

There are tons of posts on the web about eBook pricing strategies, marketing tips, and ideas how to get reviews.  This post won’t cover any of them.  Have you considered giving away a chapter of your book rather than the whole book?  Have you considered selling your books by the chapter?  It’s a different strategy but if a reader is hesitant to try your work and you prefer to get paid for your work, this is a nice compromise.

A service like Bit By Bit Books will help you break your novel’s chapters into salable units.  The website is designed for authors to write their books on the website and sell each chapter as they go.  The site requires the first chapter of every book be free, but after that the each chapter’s price is up to the author.

One reason you haven’t seen this concept before is the fees that payment providers charge the company consume almost all revenue for author and business.  Bit By Bit Books has solved this problem by only accepting bitcoin, although after you initially set up your account, you never realize that you’re using bitcoin as all prices are in U.S. Dollars.

In case you don’t know, what is bitcoin?  Bitcoin is simply the equivalent to cash, but it is used online.  You need to open an account with a service that provides you with a bitcoin wallet.  Just like paypal, you can link your bitcoin wallet to your bank so you can buy bitcoins and start using them anywhere they are accepted both in real life and online.

Isn’t bitcoin dangerous?  It’s just as dangerous as cash.  Cash can be stolen.  So can bitcoin.  Cash has been used to purchase blackmarket goods.  So has bitcoin.  Bitcoin is not back by a commodity.  Either are U.S. dollars (remember, we aren’t on the Gold Standard anymore).

Doesn’t the value of bitcoin fluctuate wildly?  Not really now that Overstock.com, OK Cupid, WordPress, Lord & Taylor, and many other big name stores accept it.  Sure, in the course of a day the conversion between a dollar and a bitcoin may change by $0.05 – $0.25 but typically the next day it’s back to where it was.

So instead of giving away your whole book, try selling it, chapter by chapter.  It’s a great way to stimulate sales and get reviews.

 

 

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