One of the best ways to keep readers interested in your books is to give away “valuable” content. For example, in your ebook, you might link to additional articles about your book’s topic or its main characters. These articles would appear on your book’s website so that readers who purchase paper versions can read the URLs and locate them, too. Others who stumble across your site then can enjoy them as well, and the articles then would serve as an enticement to purchase your book.
There are a variety of “valuable content” options awaiting you. If writing fiction, you might include:
• Unpublished short stories involving your characters
• Biographies of your characters
• Chapter of your next book
• Map of community used in your book
• Recipes of dishes eaten by your characters (if food is important in the story)
If writing nonfiction, you might include:
• Articles related to the topic but not included in your book
• Worksheets that take readers step-by-step through a process described in your book
• Tutorial guides to topics only touched upon in your book
• Photo albums of places or objects mentioned in your book
• Videos taking readers step-by-step through a process outlined your book
Obtaining this extra content usually is easy. Often when writing you’ll strike out passages, sections or chapters because they’re poorly related to the book or because they go in a different direction than you intended for your book. Never delete any of this but instead mine through it for valuable content that you can ad. In other cases, you might experiment with a new social media platform, such as YouTube, and that first video you create can become valuable content.
One important rule to follow when offering valuable content is to ensure that it is of quality. If that unpublished short story is poorly constructed or the article doesn’t offer information any different from what is provided in your book, it’s not really valuable to the reader. In fact, you wasted the reader’s time. Create a memorable experience for readers, however, and many of them will purchase 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 15 years, I’ve helped more than 350 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.
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