When promoting your self-published book, consider offering additional valuable content. This tried-and-true technique can drive readers to a service you provide or to other books you are selling.

Your book already is valuable content. But after the reader finishes it, you only can hope that the reader takes the next step of hiring you for the service you provide or for buying additional books. Instead, now that you have their interest, offer them something beyond your book, something that sends them to a place where they can learn about your services or where they can see your other titles.

This valuable content might be a free sample chapter, a video, a blog or a podcast. It is provided to readers as a “bonus” for having purchased your book. It gives additional information beyond what is in your book.

For example, suppose that you are a website designer and penned a nonfiction book about what businesses should include on their Internet pages. You might include a link to a video or a podcast that discusses writing such content; this video or podcast would subtly mention that you offer web design services and provide contact information for you. Or you might provide an additional free chapter from a book about how to write content for a website, which you also authored.

A spin on this is to enlist readers in improving your services or products (read “books” here). Rather than have a reader stew about a spelling error that you missed when editing your book, instead reward them for “finding” it. To that end, you might include in the book a page that says, “If you spot a typo, let us know for a free gift.” The gift might be a set of bookmarks promoting your titles or could be a discount on the purchase of your next book.

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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past decade, I’ve helped more than 300 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the 7 Minutes a Day… writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.