If you've self-published a non-fiction ebook, for example a technical, management, programming, or how-to book, you can sell hundreds of copies to a corporate buyer in a single purchase.
(You can actually sell hundreds of copies of any Leanpub book in a single purchase,but most companies don't buy novels!)
The hard part is finding a corporate buyer and convincing them to buy your book for their employees.
Believe it or not, but with Leanpub, the easy part is the process the company can use to buy and distribute hundreds of copies of your ebook to their employees!
You can read about this amazing feature here and share that link with a potential corporate buyer. There's also a short video here.
Don't be shy! If you've written a book that can help a company improve its performance, they will want to hear from you about it.
Building a List of Potential Corporate Buyers for Your Ebook
The first step in selling to companies is to make a list of all the companies you think might be interested in buying your book.
You'll want to use a spreadsheet (or use an app with similar functionality) to manage the list, and note your progress in approaching the companies, and completing sales with them.
Once you've set up your spreadsheet, you'll want to start building your list. Set yourself a target to begin with, like finding 20 companies.
All you want to do at this point is get high-level information about each company.
A good place to start is not by searching the web, but actually listing companies you already know of.
Don't hold yourself back! If there's a giant company, like Microsoft or Amazon or Google, where you think there are teams that could benefit from your book, they're potentially reachable by you, even if it might seem intimidating or even impossible to get through to them at first.
If you have a corporate budget of your own, and you're interested in arranging a bulk discount purchase with a Leanpub author, you can learn how to contact them here.
Finding Contacts at Each Company
Finding the right person to contact at a company can actually be a lot easier than you think!
Start by asking people in your personal and professional networks if they know who the right person is for you to contact at a company, and if they'll connect you to them.
Cold contact approaches can work, but starting with people you know is best, since you'll be introduced to the potential corporate buyer with your contact's implicit or explicit recommendation.
And make sure to track who you've contacted in your spreadsheet!
You can also find people to contact using LinkedIn. For smaller companies, you may be able to find suitable contacts from the About or Team pages on their websites.
Writing Your Email to the Company
When you're writing your email to approach the company, remember the number one rule: personalize it.
While everyone has their own approach to these sorts of things, our strong recommendation is that you do not use any tools to automate this process.
You do not want to come across as a spammer. You want the recipient to know it's really you, the author, contacting them specifically.
You will also want to provide them with a personalized, free coupon link, so they can get a free copy of your book to assess. You can learn about creating Leanpub coupon links here.
Related Article: Can I create coupons for my books, bundles, or courses, to give them away for free or at a discount, as part of a promotion?
Here's an example of how you might want to contact someone you met at a conference:
Hi Angela,
My name is Sam, you may remember we met at the SoftwareTestingCon 2024 conference last month, where I gave a talk about recent advances in using AI for testing software.
I'm reaching out because I've written a book called "AI and the Future of Software Testing", and I wanted to see if you'd be interested in purchasing copies of the ebook for your team, with a discount of 50% off the minimum price.
I think the book might be a great fit for your team, since it goes over the latest AI tools and techniques for software testing in detail, along with a theoretical explanation of what is happening now, where things are heading.
I'll be keeping the book up to date with new content, and anyone who gets a copy will be able to access all the updates for free.
Here' a coupon I created for you, so you can get a free review copy of the book:
If you're interested, please let me know, and I'll make a 50% discount coupon link for you, which you can use to purchase multiple copies, and distribute them to your team via email.
If you're curious how the multi-copy purchase works, here are Leanpub's instructions:
How can I buy multiple copies of an ebook on Leanpub, and then distribute them to people via email?
If you want to upload the ebook file to your corporate library, or share it with your employees in a similar way, rather than using the multi-copy purchase process above, please let me know and we can discuss next steps.
If you have any questions, please let me know!
Kind Regards,
Sam
Note the key points covered in the email:
- Introduce yourself
- Say something specific about the recipient
- Explain why the book is useful to their company or team
- Give them a free, customized coupon with their name (in this case /angela), so they can get a copy to assess its value for their company or team
- State the offered discount from the book's minimum price (50% is an eye-catcher)
- Link to instructions about how the purchasing process works
- Offer them an alternative process for their purchase (e.g. they just buy one copy for 100 times the price, and then distribute the ebook to their employees internally)
- Give them a chance to respond with questions
Managing Replies
Some people will reply to your email asking for the discount coupon link, or with questions.
And of course, some people won't reply at all. (Don't be offended!)
In your spreadsheet, you'll want to have a column regarding each company's "Status", where you add a line for every event, e.g. "Email sent", "Replied With Questions", "Purchase Complete".
That way, you'll avoid annoying anybody by forgetting the details of your interaction with them.
A Note About Pricing
You will want to make sure your book's minimum price is high enough to make a deal like this possible. We recommend a minimum price of at least $20, so you can offer a 50% discount at $10 per copy.
If you have any feedback or questions about this article, please email the Leanpub team about it at hello@leanpub.com!
If you have any questions or thoughts on writing and self-publishing with Leanpub, please join our global community of authors in our Authors Forum here!
Are you interested in self-publishing, and creating your first Leanpub book? Here are some quick tutorials for our most popular writing modes: http://help.leanpub.com/en/articles/3088382-quick-walkthroughs-for-getting-started-on-a-leanpub-book
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