The big 2025 vision of 50,000 free books distributed to new readers is underway. I'll occassionally give you and update on how it's coming and what I'm learning through the process.
I've been scaling up the digital method for book distribution and have gotten some exciting results. Here's what those numbers look like, including our January downloads so far:
That's 8,080 new readers who now have an FGI book in their Kindle library. The goal is to expand to other books in the coming months as we try to increase that up to our 2025 goal of 50,000 books distributed.
Also, our initial cost estimate of $25k for 50k books seems to be holding as we've learned a few new things about distributing free books. We don't have the full costs for January in yet, but in December we experimented with distributing two Bible study books, one memoir, and one fiction book. Here's what we learned.
In case you're wondering, the cost comes from a combination of the cost to advertise the free book and the conversion rate (the percentage of people who have clicked the ad who follow through and download it).
Our Bible study books are most densely packed with the grace message, but they are more expensive to distribute than other types of writing. This is useful info since our main goal is not really about the numbers but about distributing a grace message to a large audience. We've learned that we should combine fiction books with Bible study books in our distribution plan to keep below our target price of $0.50 per free book distributed. This will ensure that we are both hitting our goal and also connecting our most effective grace tools with readers.
I'm excited to have started the year and begun growing our distribution numbers. How cool is it that each of these numbers is a person who can be deeply affected, even experience life change, by coming in contact with a true grace message?
As is the case for every writer, it's easy to get distracted by a million little tasks... like distributing books. Considering the New Year's resolutions, I have a goal of writing at least some every workday this year. The goal is always to work on a Bible study book, a memoir, a fiction, and a blog. The final weekday writing block will be given to miscellaneous writing needs. I hope this schedule will help me stay on task, in producing great FGI materials that we can reach more people with.
It's exciting to be doing this work. I often say, "Thank. you, Lord," for letting me do such incredible and fulfilling work. I pray that it will reach those who need grace so badly.
