Product Sampling in Writing - By Sean Michael Paquet

Hello everyone! So if you haven’t already seen my post on my Face Book Business Page where I offered up three free chapters of my book “A Game of Gods,” please check it out. Now I will explain why I did that. Do I think it’s a good book? Yes. Does it have a beautiful artsy cover that conveys a message? Yes. Do I hype it up a lot and talk about my product? Absolutely! However, dear reader, often that will matter very little in the business of writing. Why? I am a relatively unknown writer in a genre that is saturated with books just as good as if not better than my own. I freely admit that. So what makes my product unique? Why should you spend your hard-earned money to buy it? Enter a concept known as “product sampling.” Any reader who expresses an interest in my book can get a free sample of its contents before buying it. This is a common and reasonably useful promotion and marketing tool. You, as the writer, want to give your prospective audience a taste of what your product is all about. So the easiest way to do that is to provide them with a couple of chapters to chew on. It gets your work out there without having to divulge the entire story, and also creates interest from prospective readers.
Additionally, readers will talk to each other about what they have already read. If done correctly, product sampling can have an exponential effect on increasing sales as well as adding followers to your reader cadre. Remember, you don’t want readers to just buy your one book. You want them to buy the next one and the one after that. Giving readers a taste of your product works well to ensure that customers will return and make further purchases on your new material as it becomes available.