Opportunity and Idea for Financing Your Book

I have suggested using advertising in our books in past SharingwithWriters posts. Many books—especially free promotional booklets and e-books—are perfect for paid ads and ads-in-barter, especially when the ads are focused on the book’s target audience. I have a couple in my The Great First Impression Book Proposal booklet, and Great Little Last-Minute Editing Tips booklet.

 Now the LA Times reports that Amazon will sell ads and place them in some Kindle readers and that they will then sell those readers at 18% less than the ad-free device ($114.00).  So ads will help Amazon and help subsidize the cost of the Kindle for readers, too! And their customers will be able to choose frugality over valuable ads and offers--if they're that foolish. (I just bought a Kindle and wish I’d waited. You know how frugal I am. I want those deals!)

So, if you decide to put ads into your books, how would you do it?
~Put the ads in the backmatter of your book.

~Accept only professionally produced ads.

~Accept only ads that would interest your target audience. Be prepared to refuse some with the “not quite right” phrase that literary journals use to reject submissions.

~Limit the number of adds to just a few.

~Encourage ads that give discounts or freebies so that the ads are seen as an added value by your readers. When utilized, they may even end up making up for the cost of the book (yours!) the reader just bought.

PS: Anyone with a product (yes, we hate to think of them that way but books are products!) or a service that would appeal to readers of The Frugal Book Promoter may e-mail me for details of how we might partner on something like this in the future. There are more books in HowToDoItFrugally series coming. Spaces are limited.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson, author of This Is the Place; Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered; Tracings, a chapbook of poetry; and how to books for writers including, The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won't; The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success; and Great Little Last Minute Editing Tips for Writers . The Great First Impression Book Proposal is her newest booklet for writers. She has three FRUGAL books for retailers including A Retailer’s Guide to Frugal In-Store Promotions: How To Increase Profits and Spit in the Eyes of Economic Downturns with Thrifty Events and Sales Techniques. Some of her other blogs are TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com, a blog where authors can recycle their favorite reviews. She also blogs at all things editing, grammar, formatting and more at The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor . If your followers at Twitter would benefit from this blog post, please use the little Green widget to let them know about this blog: