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Working on the freebie’s freebie

Working on the ad for my audio book to go inside the front of the Kindle version. I found these great free mockups here.

mockup of workbook and audio book (CD)

mockup of workbook with audio book (iPhone)

The CD one is more obviously an audio book, but the phone is more modern. If you were reading the Kindle book, which would you be more likely to click in order to sign up and get the audio book?

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Why my old book isn’t getting me opt-ins

Existing cover–I love the image but not the typography
One of the big theories I’ve heard a lot is that you should have one book perma-free on Amazon and use it to drive people to your email list by offering another free gift inside the book if they sign up. I set up exactly that system years ago with my happy book, yet I’ve gotten almost no signups as a result. I even had a buddy try to improve it, to no avail.

Why did this not work? I’m finally looking into it. Here’s what I’ve been surprised to find:

  • The ugly weird book cover my buddy added to the book without my permission is still showing up as the cover when people download the book! What??? I fixed the sales page a couple of years ago but apparently never fixed that! Seriously, self?!
  • The Kindle version got knocked out of sync with the paperback version at some point, so Amazon’s description says the book is only 10 pages long (i.e., why bother downloading it)
  • The invitation to download the freebie appears only at the end of the book, not the beginning. *facepalm*

Also, I was not at all strategic in selecting keywords or categories, and I knew almost nothing about copywriting back then, so the book description isn’t all that good either. And honestly, I’d like to tweak the cover, too. I love the image, but the type isn’t quite right.

Yay, obvious stuff to fix! This book kind of became my poster child for “ugh,” so I just didn’t even want to look at it. But so far, the actual text is much better than I remembered. And you know what? At least for the first few years, it was getting downloaded like 10x as much on iTunes as Amazon—and the iTunes version still has the atrocious cover I designed when I first wrote the book and had no idea about cover design. Lots of potential here!

I think while I wait for my microphone adapter thingy to get here, I’m going to track down what’s wrong with the page map in the Kindle file and see whether I can still upload a new version in Smashwords (which is how I got the book in iTunes). Of course, I also need to redo the sales copy, keywords, and categories, but I’m strangely in the mood for this weird tech detail. That’s the time to do it!