I think you may be onto something, I know that Joe Vitale allowed Spiritual Marketing to be downloaded for free prior to publishing it in its revised edition as "The Attractor Factor". I gave a huge number of people the original "Spiritual Marketing". When the "Attractor Factor" came out I personally purchased multiple copies to give away and know that a lot of the folks I had given the original freebie to also purchased the hard copy.

I have already have The Irresistable Offer and look forward to sharing the digital version with my friends and clients.

Have FUN,

Coach Larry

Note from MJ: Hey Larry, that's a great example. It's funny you bring up that one specifically as there's a little back story to it most people don't know. Back when one of my old companies was the sole publisher of Joe's digital stuff he offered us to publish Spiritual Marketing. It's the only book of his I'd ever turned down. Of course, he's proven me wrong as it went on to be one of his most successful books later on as "The Attractor Factor."

Mark, I am excited to be a part of your experiment, lets hope others follow your example in their business as well. There is NOTHING BETTER out there for sales and marketing experience than participating in your experiments. Thank you for the opportunity you are giving me to participate and to learn at the same time!!

Mark,
Speaking from a parallel universe ... hmm, yes, I often am accused of living in one, but in this case I mean, back in "olden days" when I worked in the software business, the computer software business that is, I worked for the company that made the second most pirated software on earth. Of course the most pirated software on earth was Microsoft's DOS (that's "disk operating system" for those not familiar with the history of computers), and in fact the first computer I bought ran an operating system from a different company, so being "most pirated" had very little effect on the world's most pirated software's maker in terms of long term growth.

Our company, too, had an excellent run as second most pirated. It lasted more than 10 years, was one of the top 20 software companies in annual sales at the time (although I don't think that counted companies like IBM and Hitachi who were selling very expensive mainframe software) and had more than a million customers who paid to upgrade (often in intervals as short as every 18 months in some cases), and usually upgraded repeatedly too. That meant we had incredible, almost unbelievable direct marketing response rates. When a direct marketing piece was mailed to registered users, we commonly had an 18% (or better) SALES rate (not just "responses" but actual "take" rate).

So is it likely to hurt sales by allowing piracy? In the case of digital publications of writing, it might. But in the computer software business we found that the additional tech support costs of putting copy protection "stuff" in the software, absolutely skyrocketed and customer satisfaction ratings plummeted. So piracy is not always a bad thing, and I, for one, think that all the moaning from Hollywood and the Recording Industry are public posturing to prevent piracy from getting completely out of hand, because I am quite sure that overall the Word of Mouth factor makes them more money than the piracy costs. If that wasn't true, why would they license broadcasters to publicly play their stuff over the air for literally "pennies" in the case of music (depending on the market size).

That's my story and I'm sticking with it until I get a better one.
Stafford "Doc" Williamson
"If you need a simple, reliable way to make money on the internet, you better start listening to 'Doc' Williamson."

Hi Mark,

I bought your book whilst working with the Nitro Marketing guys and also saw how you used it with them in the video, so I'm really excited about gifting this to my copywriting blog readers.

I'm sure they will appreciate it. Thanks for your generosity Mark.

UK Copywriter & Author Carol Bentley

Thank you Mark for bring this issue to our attention. We are finding that piracy in the digital world is inevitable. We have an "All Rights Reserved" web site with permission to copy required and stated. Recently we are finding that visitors are copying pages from our site to their desktop. As far as boosting sales -- any thoughts on this making this happen are welcome since we have adopted a "wait and see" attitude.

I would go about it a little differently. I personally wouldn't give away an entire book. Especially NOT this one. ;-) I love the book and personally paid full price for it, and would pay ten times that for it.

My thoughts are why not give away ONLY a chapter or two of the book.. Whet their appetite for the book then entice them to buy the full version at the end of the chapter/s. You can still do a digital copy of the book.. to increase sales. But, to give away this book in its entirety would be a disgrace to the book!

Just my two cents worth. ;-)

The Firefighting Mom

Mark,

I've been following you loosely for the last year, every once in a while having a look at your newsletters and blog posts.

THAT HAS *ENDED* NOW!

I'm gonna watch your every step like a hawk.

I'm gonna telepathically read your every thought, wire your phone and x-ray your snailmail.

You finally revealed your true identity here: You are an evil marketing madman genius!

Brilliant, really! I love this idea and can't wait so see the results, pal.

Richard

Excellent idea Mark! I love research and testing things. It not only gives you valuable data, and tangible results... but it is FUN! (at least to me!)

I 100% predict that a full free download of the book will increase sales overall significantly. I don't expect a spike, however, but a smooth, steady rise.

And I'm never wrong! So with joy I happily jump in and play in the sandbox with you!

to Fun and Profit!

In Joy!

Amy

Note from MJ: If you're never wrong, you're hired because we have a new opening for "prognosticator" at Mark Joyner, Inc. The last one could not foresee that they were about to be fired.

I agree that the full download of ebook should not be done, maybe 10 chapters downloadable is good enough. Feel that some poeple out there are really cheapos, that just want free this and that. Yeah, this free download definitely be irresistible offer for them. haha.

Mark,

I'm going to take a different angle at the thought of creating a meme around your product versus making a sale.

Also, the notion intentional versus accidental.

First and foremost there is an issue of relevancy...the higher the relevancy the greater the opportunity for the "viral" aspects to germinate.

Can you take two ideas in the form of a book both equally relevant and consumable and expect the same outcome if a meme is built around the first and the second is simply focused on the sale?

I doubt it!

It seems that you would have a great deal of experience and hard facts at your fingertips to make a case one way or the other Mark.

Still, I'll share my take...

There seems to be a huge disconnect between how we live and interact in the offline world with that of the online world...

Take a book you purchase from Barnes and Noble...I have read and then given the book to another as a gift as them to do the same when finished with the book. Simply because we can touch and feel the book this can happen without concern of any infringement of the author's rights.

Take the same book in a downloadable digital form and share it with someone else and suddenly the author's rights has been violated?

I would offer that a book which has been given by a friend will have a far greater chance of being read than one which has been bought or downloaded for free or not.

The more people consume the contents of a given book either in whole or part the greater the likelyhood of the author's message becoming a meme.

Once a meme takes hold it then begins to influence a given culture and it is that influence that will reap benefits for the author the he/she may or may not have planned.

So, piracy in this context is more about semantics than it is about the loss of a sale. The author's perception of this point speaks greatly to their view of the world...limiting or enabling.

With the much anticipated release of Windows 95 we saw the single greatest breach as unlicensed copies of the product hit an epidemic level. Me being skeptic, feel that there was potentially calculated consideration that such a ploy could insure future seats for their newer products. Especially when you give consideration to what I understand to be an 18 month product cycle at Microsoft.

What was the result?

Microsoft progressively began to lock down their products as they released each new version and today Bill Gates is the richest man in the world.

Hmmm...does piracy hurt...only if you don't have a plan to keep growing and building.

Even in the open source arena of software companies are able to give their complete product away knowing that there will be a compelling reason for some customers to engage their support services and additional products enhancements.

Trying to hold onto every dollar or even penny really misses the point of how money flows. We do not determine the value of a product...the market does.

I would offer the closer we are to the market's valuing of a product the less likely we are to experience piracy. Understanding that as the author's meme grows within a given culture the greater the opportunity for it's value to also grow.

The only real question is "does the author know how to take advantage of their market presence?"

Thanks for the great question,

James

Possibility is not an accident, it's a choice!

I think that's absolutely not the case - just giving away a few sample chapters is an old hat. In fact you can read a sample of almost every book in Amazon - does it increase sales? I guess so. But a sample chapter doesn't excite me at all.
Do I like free stuff? Yep. But everytime someone gave something of real value to me, I purchase later on from these people.
However, I had a disappointing experience with sample chapters. I read a sample chapter from a book (and it talked about how you'll learn this and that technique), and when it got the book the rest was just hogwash and superficial stuff that didn't go into detail and wasn't applicable.
I look forward to the results Mark will get from this experiment.

I really like James' comment.
Specially this part, I'm just gonna quote it in case somebody got scared away be the lenght of the post:

"Even in the open source arena of software companies are able to give their complete product away knowing that there will be a compelling reason for some customers to engage their support services and additional products enhancements."

Great point, James!

Mark, you are clearly on the right track. Doing an experiment like this in public sight allows not only your business but the business's of others to benefit from the knowledge gained. Proud to be a part of the research and look foward to the results. Thanks Mark.

Hi Mark,
It doesn't matter if you mean Privacy, Piracy or Privilege, I'm in your experiment.
Loving your book more than a year ;-)
Thank you Velly much for changing my life. Literaly!

In Guy Kawasaki's book, "Rules for Revolutionaries," he wrote a chapter called "Cogita Differenter (Think Different)." While discussing The Revolutionary Thought Process, he outlines its three stages as he sees them.

In stage 3, he talks about industry traditions and thinking different. On page 17, he writes: "One rule of most music groups is to prevent people from making bootleg recordings at concerts. Black-market recordings, most industry people believe, cannibalize sales of the group's CDs, tapes, and records. One group who defied this rule was the Grateful Dead.* They went so far as to provide an area right up front to facilitate recordings by their fans. These recordings spread the word about the Grateful Dead, led to greater concert attendance, and improved record sales as well as created a closer relationship with fans..."

I found when I was active in the natural health niche that giving away my books as digital ebooks definitely increased exposure and sales of the printed versions of the books.

I imagine the method will work in many niches.

I also think it would be especially effective if you:

1. Had your prospects optin with their name and email address to receive the free ebook.

2. Immediately offered some kind of upsell (it could be the printed version of the book or possibly even more effective a printed version or digital download of another related book or product).

3. Followed up with emails promoting the printed version of your book and other books in the series.

"Offering another glass" may be the biggest secret to making this strategy more effective.

I expect your success with the strategy would be multiplied by having other related books on offer.

They can get one ebook free and perhaps the first chapter of other books and you offer the printed version of all your books.

And educate them on how those books will benefit them.

Kindest regards,
Andrew Cavanagh

P.S. Can you say "fish and chips" properly yet?

I found a related article on Slashdot http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/06/05/237251 today by coincidence just after reading this blog. I thought readers might find it interesting.

The summary on Slashdot says, 'David Pogue recently wrote a widely read blog post in which he explains that piracy is the reason he doesn't make his books available in PDF format. But in this article, TidBITS publisher Adam Engst disagrees strongly with Pogue's opinion, using sales numbers from the Take Control series of ebooks (150,000+ copies sold since 2004 with virtually no copying) as proof that making electronic versions not only doesn't necessarily lead to piracy, it may be the best way of preventing illicit sharing."'

The article linked to in the summary is,

No, David Pogue, Ebook Piracy is Not a Given
by Adam C. Engst
http://db.tidbits.com/article/9641

My guess is that NEURO is some form of self-hypnosis program that you listen to reprogram your subconscious.