You’re preaching to the choir, Andre. Karen and I know that better than anyone — and we don’t direct that advice to just “young” writers. It applies to authors of all ages. It’s not an “if you build it, they will come” situation. And, you need more than constant marketing — you need an excellent product, too. You want to create a book that’s so good that others will recommend it to their friends.

Sandy

Otherwise, all I have left to note: Kudos, for being that detailed, and helpful-manyfold, on the topic of promoting our audiobooks!

Thank you!

Thanks so much for helping Wayne and everyone else, Karen!

Sandy

Hi, Wayne! Thanks for the good question.

You would do better to offer only the first X number of readers a free copy of your audiobook.

The only ways you can guarantee that all those redeeming your offer would get a free copy of the audiobook are:

1) After using all of your free download codes, you could buy a gift copy on Audible for recipients.
2) You can use the Audible Send Book feature. However, if people have already received a free book this way from someone else, they wouldn’t be able to get your book for fee.
3) You create a download link on your own web site that points to a zip file of the audiobook’s MP3 files.

I advise against using option 3 above. Your listeners would expect to download the complete book from Audible or another service and immediately start playing the audiobook in an app. They may not know how to unzip the file or load the MP3s. Also, this approach could open up more possibilities for piracy of your audiobook.

ACX offers 25 free promo codes for books with EXCLUSIVE distribution. Once you’ve used 10 of those codes, you can request more, up to a maximum of 100 codes per marketplace. The US and UK marketplaces are different and use different codes.

In order to get up to 100 US and 100 UK Audible promo codes, you could always choose to post your book on ACX with an exclusive contract for the first year and ask Audible to make it non-exclusive in year 2, assuming that you have paid your narrator up-front.

Since you want a non-exclusive contract, another option would be to upload your audiobook to Findaway Voices, which will give you 30 download codes on Authors Direct, or 100 codes if you enroll in their Voices Share program.

Royalty rates and other considerations affect your distribution choices. If you’d like to discuss all of these factors, I’m available for 30- and 60-minute paid private consultations through the “Rent My Brain” link on my Shop page: http://www.KarenCommins.com/Shop

I hope this info is helpful. Best wishes for a launch day that exceeds your wildest expectations!

Cordially,
Karen Commins

Liam, is your target audience using Pinterest?

Sandy