If used wisely, free can pay. That must have been what Ken Wohlrob, Bantam Dell’s director of internet marketing, was thinking.

Last year, the publishing house executive decided to support the release of Faefever – the third installment of Karen Marie Moning’s paranormal thriller series – by using a new media approach. In close succession, the publishing house released a free serialised podiobook version of first installment Darkfever, a mass-market paperback of second installment Bloodfever and a sneak preview of the newly to be released book.

From Book Business Magazine;

“Since we were doing the first book in the series, we didn’t see [the free podiobook] having any negative impact on the new book coming out. (…) The hardcover [of "Faefever"] debuted at No. 3. That’s the highest this author has gotten on The New York Times Best-seller List. The obvious benefit is that we had 60,000 podcast downloads. You can keep it up as long as you want. We had 155,000 of the excerpts [of “Faefever”] downloaded. That’s something else that is still [online]. We’re still generating fans. That’s the benefits of doing these online promotions. They can take off on their own. We did see a really, really nice climb in book sales. It did exactly what it was supposed to do. We took an author that had been established pretty well, brought in new fans, and increased sales above the previous hardcover [in the series]. What we saw was that sales were great for the book and still are.”

This is a very good example of how free content can aid established authors in the release of a new book. But even for authors who are not so established in print yet it can work wonders. With years of hard work, Scott Sigler has built himself a loyal fan base for his free serialised science fiction. And with help of this community, Sigler managed to debut his podiobook-turned-print novel Contagious on number 33 of the New York Times best seller list.

How’s that for free ?