Free Book Marketing & Promotion for Authors | Little Free Libraries

About this video

Dale documents a free book marketing experiment: he promoted over 31 indie author books through 29 different Little Free Library locations across Columbus, Ohio, covering over 60 miles on foot with his wife Kelly. He explains that Little Free Library is a nonprofit promoting neighborhood book exchanges in publicly available bookcases, with locations in 120 countries and 150,000 registered bookcases, and that placement costs an author only the price of a proof copy. Rather than let gifted print books from authors he has met over his years on YouTube sit unread — he reads ebooks and listens to audiobooks, and clips out autograph pages for a scrapbook — he carries them in backpacks over multiple days through neighborhoods including German Village and Franklinton, propping each book up for prime placement and noting unmapped boxes he finds along the way. One placed book, The Lost Empire, was already gone the very next day, which he takes as encouraging evidence the books enter circulation. His success metric is simply how many books get taken, and he plans to revisit the locations in 3 months to see which books are gone and move any that remain to a new location and audience. The walk also surfaces practical friction: mapped locations that are hard to find, blank pockets with no libraries for long stretches, and one library inside a hospital emergency room that required going through security.

Key takeaways

• Over 31 indie books were placed in 29 Little Free Library locations across Columbus, Ohio, over 60-plus miles on foot
• Little Free Library is a nonprofit with locations in 120 countries and 150,000 registered bookcases; placement costs only a proof copy
• The metric is take-through: revisit in 3 months, count taken books, and relocate any that remain
• At least one placed book was taken by the very next day, an early sign the books circulate
• Gifted print copies the creator will never read are better used as free exposure for indie authors

Episode details: published July 13, 2024 · 28:51 long. Summary written by Self Growth Videos from the episode itself. Business results and any income figures mentioned are Dale L. Roberts’s own claims, shared for education — they are not typical or guaranteed.

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