The Ten Ways - Samples

Teachers expect to see a book before they buy 30 copies.   So publishing houses agreed and started to send out sample copies.  Since they we have had...

• Sample pages on the internet
• Sample pages available by post
• The whole book sent free of charge to the teacher whether he or she has asked for it or not.
• Sample pages included in adverts

Despite this deluge of samples it is strange that the firms that don't sell samples generally speaking earn just as much by saying no, as those do who say yes.   

This is because what they offer is a promise - a promise that this book is going to double your A level pass rate, or whatever.  It is so good we don't supply samples.

If you have to send out samples you should always send them out upon request and keep the name and address of the teacher concerned.   After about a year of this you will have a neat list of teachers who ask for every free sample and never buy a book.  If nothing else you can at least save yourselves some money by blacklisting them.

I did an experiment with some leaflets advertising a series of books for teachers of dyslexic pupils.  One group of adverts included extracts from the materials.  The other did not.   Otherwise the two groups were identical.  The response rate from those WITHOUT the sample materials was double that of those with.