For this week’s ebook review, I’m going to diverge a little from the standard of picking an ebook to read and then commenting on it. I want to bring to your attention one of the best uses of using ebooks for marketing that I have ever seen: Tor‘s ongoing efforts to giveaway free copies of its books in ebook format.

Every so often, there’s an announcement on Tor.com (along with the site’s email newsletter) that a new book is available as a PDF. Without fail, it’s a Tor book that was published in print a few years ago, released in a PDF that is essentially identical to the printed layout of that book.

So far, those PDFs have lead me to buy three of Tor’s books in print — and I’ll be picking up at least six more as budget permits. As far as marketing goes, Tor’s approach is brilliant.

The secret is that every book Tor has released as a free ebook is the first in a series. They’re all well-written, often-recommended books with equally good sequels. As soon as I finish one of these ebooks, I immediately want to grab the sequel and find out what happens next.

There are lessons to be learned from Tor’s approach, namely that a free ebook can pay off. There must be some incentive for a reader to want to buy some sort of follow up to that ebook, be it a sequel, a class or whatever else you can think up — but the method works.