Come listen to – or watch – Episode 11 of my podcast, 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. Today is a short episode, and I’m sharing my first impressions of BookFunnel. Transcript and link to the Spotify podcast episode below. The podcast is also on YouTube (video below).
Episode 11, on Spotify: https://spotifyanchor-web.app.link/e/bM0uLTZOlBb
This podcast episode is available on YouTube as well. Find it here: https://youtu.be/fyjsrP7UtlA
Transcript
Welcome to 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. I’m your host, T.L. Brown, but you can call me Tracy. Let’s get started.
Hey there. Today’s episode is going to be pretty short. I wanted to talk about BookFunnel. BookFunnel is a website that authors can join to build their email newsletter list and send out advanced reader copies of their books. They can also send out excerpts and reader magnets to entice people to join their newsletter list. They can join other authors in promo events and sales events. I won’t go through all the features because if you go to bookfunnel.com you can get all that information.
I joined at the mid-list author range, and you can pay monthly or yearly. Monthly is currently $15.00 [CORRECTION: $10.00 – I chose an addon which brought my total to $15.00] U.S. dollars, and if I were to do it for a year, it would be $100 U.S. dollars for an annual fee. Because I wasn’t really sure what the site would bring to me in the way of benefits, I decided to sign up for the monthly charge versus going with a full annual fee.
I have to say that the site is very easy to use; that is one of the first things that I noticed. I was able to follow the instructions – I think they were very clear – and upload not only a full copy of my ebook as an epub file but also a sample of my audiobook Door to Door. And I can use this tool to send these items to current newsletter subscribers, or I can join a promotion, and as part of the caveat to receive an ebook file or a sample of an audiobook or whatnot, I can set up a rule that they must sign up for my newsletter to receive that benefit.
Once again, I think it was very easy to use, and those are the pros. $15.00 a month is not a lot of money. $100 a year is not too much money. I know we all have different budgets, but either way, I thought, “okay, doable for the tool since it’s easy to use and it seems to be pretty robust.” Those are all the pros that I can list so far. There are more.
I could create multiple landing pages. I could create rules around if somebody clicked a link and they wanted to download a book, but they had previously downloaded something from me and the unsubscribed – I can set it up that they can’t resubscribe [and get another freebie from me].
There are all kinds of little nuances, and I like the options that BookFunnel gives.
I was surprised by some of the group promotions. I began to go through them, and I specifically stuck in the genre of mystery and suspense because I was focusing on my first book Door to Door, which is a paranormal mystery. What surprised me is there are many different rules, and they are not necessarily BookFunnels rules, but other authors’ rules. I was a little surprised by some of them.
I would find a book promo event for a newsletter sign-up: Join this group of authors, and promote the landing page that features all the books on it. There was no minimum current newsletter subscriber number. (Some of them do have that.) Everything looked great. I’m ready to join, but then I get to the bottom of the list, and it says please, no paranormal mysteries. It’s not like something you tick off and [BookFunnel] displays that text for you. It’s the author’s rules.
Now I get it. We all have our own promotions, and we all have our own rules. Maybe somebody is like, “WOW, I don’t want my book to be associated with a paranormal mystery.” Okay, totally get that. That’s your stuff.
Another caveat under different promotions: no bare chest on the covers. Again, I get it. Some people don’t want their newsletter subscriber list, maybe, to look at bare chests – I’m assuming men – on the covers of books.
It was a challenge to find book promos [that were coming up in the timeframe that I planned to trial BookFunnel] that I could join where I met the criteria and it made sense for me. I went through all of them. I even went to look at the sales promos. At first, I thought I was just interested in the newsletter promos.
I would like to see authors stretch their tolerance – I guess that’s how I would put it. Not everybody likes a bare-chested cover. Okay, sure. However, how do you know that your reader who loves you doesn’t also read books with bare chests? So, you might be doing your reader a disservice by limiting who can join your promotional event.
Again, I get it. Maybe you have religious practices that do not support nudity in art. (I’m grasping here, but I think you see what I’m saying.) Everybody has rules, but as authors, let’s try to support each other, and let’s try to be inclusive and include all kinds of people.
I’m not sure what I think of BookFunnel yet. I’m going to do a part two. I’m going to give it a month or two, maybe three, and just see what it’s like. Probably two months at the very least. And you know, I hope I can create some promotions that are more open and maybe say: yeah, you know what? I want all kinds of people to be participating together because let’s lift each other up. Not everybody’s art is for everybody. That’s okay.
So, these were just my thoughts. Check out BookFunnel. Let me know if you’re on BookFunnel, what you think about it, what you like, what you don’t like, or what you like or don’t like about what I just said. Anyhow, I hope you’re all doing fabulous. Thanks for listening. Have a great day!
This has been 12 Minutes (or less!) with the Author. Thanks for listening to today’s episode. Hope you can join me for the next one. Until then, this is Tracy, AKA author T.L. Brown signing off.
Leave a Reply