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How To Ruin Your Own Book Promotion (or maybe not)

Mike Cane tipped me to a promotion that Derek Sivers, founder of CDbaby, is running right now for his book. Mike thought that Derek had made a huge mistake, but I’m not so sure.

There is a page over on Derek’s website where he is promoting his book. If you buy the print or Kindle edition, you will get a code that will let you download 241 MP3s of songs by artists that Derek likes.

The code can be found on the copyright page, and Mike pointed out that you don’t actually have to buy the Kindle ebook to see the code. The copyright page is at the front of the ebook which means you can get the free sample and then see the code.

Mike thought that was a mistake (the code shoudl be at the back of the book), but I disagree. It doesn’t matter where the code is – so long as you can return the ebook. If the code had been in the back of the ebook, someone could buy it, get the code, and then return the ebook. There’s slightly more work involved, but they still get the free MP3s.

And besides, this is a simple promotion. There’s no way to really make sure someone bought the book. This means that you have to accept a certain amount of cheating, and I’m sure Derek already figured that out.

 

 

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Comments


bob June 29, 2011 um 3:27 pm

Well, for 8 bucks to get a book and some music I bought it.

I’m sure some folks will try to get it for free but hopefully the idea will progress. It would be neat to get full size pictures in a touring book or stuff like that.

A couple months back Rolling Stone had something similar but not for free.


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