BOGO (buy one, get one) offers are very popular with
consumers, so the University Press of Kentucky decided to give the promotion a
try. Book owners who submit a photo of themselves holding their hard copy of a
book from the press will receive the e-book version for free.
“It’s a great way to increase brand loyalty and to
increase awareness of us as a publisher,” Mack McCormick, director of
publicity, told Inside Higher Education.
The University Press of Kentucky has 476 titles with e-book
versions. The press went with the loyalty program because it felt readers would
appreciate the free electronic version of a title they already owned. There is
a cost to sending the e-books, but McCormick said it was minimal.
The University of Chicago Press has been offering one
free e-title each month since November 2009. Those titles are often the first
one in multivolume collections or a feature work of an author with a recently
released title. Between 2,000-4,000 readers download the title each month, but
since the University of Chicago Press owns the digital asset management unit,
there is no cost to providing the electronic version.