Behind the Scenes of BookFunnel with Damon Courtney

Lead magnets, advanced reviews, author cross-promotions, and more...

Are you ready to unlock the secrets to building an engaged readership and securely sharing your work with the world?

Join us as we welcome Damon Courtney, creator of BookFunnel to the show. In this interview, we unpack the platform's fascinating features that help authors track reader engagement, deliver digital books, and create compelling reader magnets. From aiding budding authors with their newsletters to managing advanced review teams for established authors, Damon enlightens us on the plethora of ways BookFunnel is beneficial for authors. Authors are even using this platform to coordinate book promos and build a community of 'true fans.'

Damon Courtney is the creator and CEO of BookFunnel, an ebook and audiobook delivery service for authors and publishers. As a lifelong software engineer, Damon is an expert in just about everything technical and can offer unique insight on publishing as it relates to software and technology. He is also the self-published author of his very own Fantasy trilogy and continues to spin stories in his head that he hopes to some day get around to writing.

Follow Us!

Damon Courtney
Website: https://www.bookfunnel.com
Email: support@bookfunnel.com

The Author Wheel:
Website: www.AuthorWheel.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AuthorWheel

Greta Boris:
Website: www.GretaBoris.com
Facebook: @GretaBorisAuthor
Instagram: @GretaBoris

Megan Haskell:
Website: www.MeganHaskell.com
Facebook & Instagram: @MeganHaskellAuthor

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:37

Hi everyone and welcome back to the AuthorWeal podcast. I'm Greta Boris, USA Today Bestselling Mystery Thriller.

Speaker 2: 0:45

Author and I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy adventure author, and together we are the AuthorWeal. So this week we are incredibly excited to be hosting Damon Courtney, who is the creator of BookFunnel, on the show. We've talked about BookFunnel so many times because it's quite honestly like the one tool that I never questioned buying.

Speaker 1: 1:09

I never questioned that bill ever. I think it was the first tool that I ever actually bought, I mean except for maybe Scribner, yeah.

Speaker 2: 1:18

Yeah, yeah, I was actually very early. I was in the first under first thousand subscribers to BookFunnel. It was my little acclaimed affair.

Speaker 1: 1:28

Wow, can I touch you Next time you're around, Right, yeah, Anyway.

Speaker 2: 1:36

But yeah, it's a great tool for writers at really all stages of their career, because if you're just starting out, you can use it to help build a newsletter, you can get your free lead magnet out to get people on your list and let people download it and do group promos. But experienced authors use it with massive success too, because if you have a big advanced review team and things like that, it helps you keep stay organized. So we're going to talk about all of that and much more on the show. But before we get into the details, Greta, what's been going on?

Speaker 1: 2:10

Well, as you well know, I have been very immersed in making our new website, as you have been. It was a lot of work, but hey, I am super happy about it. I feel like it's very simple, very streamlined. It's really straight to the point. We kind of decided we're not bloggers and we don't have a blog anymore. It's really easy to find who we are and what we do, so I'm really happy about it.

Speaker 2: 2:39

Yeah, I am too. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised at how easy so for listeners. We're switching over from our Squarespace website to a new platform called Podia, which has actually been around for a few years. But they started out as a course platform, so eventually we are going to migrate our courses over there as well, but since then they've also developed website tools and all sorts of other tools, so it's kind of like an all-in-one platform for people who are trying to be coaches and entrepreneurs and sell courses and books and things like that. So it's kind of perfect for us.

Speaker 2: 3:18

Yeah, it's kind of perfect, but I was pleasantly surprised at how easy it is to use, and so by the time this interview airs, it actually should be live, and so we're excited for you to check it out. I can guarantee there will be changes and tweaks and updates over the coming weeks and months. Right now it's kind of the basics right, but we've got the bone structure there. It's built out. It should be pretty good. So yeah, and it's nice to have clarity on our messaging again.

Speaker 1: 3:52

Absolutely. It was a lot of work, but I like it. Y'all should go look. So, then, the other things that are going on with me is that I'm always get every week it's like, yeah, but I'm still working on book six and the more edition series. I mean, books just take a dang long time to write.

Speaker 1: 4:09

So, yes, that I am doing, and I will not bore you with any more details. And then the other interesting thing, though, was that we had a fabulous conversation with our podcast producer In fact, we'll be airing that episode in a couple of weeks and he gave us some really interesting ideas, and so one of them is that we are going to record a series of nanorimotips for you guys. They'll be released as many podcast episodes between episodes, maybe like between our major episodes, and we'll be releasing them starting this week, this Thursday, and whether you're actually doing nanorimotips or not, even if you're just trying to get a book written, these episodes are going to be quick tips designed to get you ready, keep you going and help you end strong. So I'm excited about that.

Speaker 2: 5:07

Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1: 5:10

Yeah, so what are you up to?

Speaker 2: 5:12

Well, so, in addition to all the author-reel stuff, I am very excited I got the physical rewards for my fiction Kickstarter mailed on Tuesday of this week, as we record this, so that was a huge leaf. It was a bit of a slog, right, like I didn't even have that many boxes to ship out, ended up being like 30, which, ok, actually that's kind of a lot. It is, yeah, but it's not hundreds or thousands like some of the big, massive Kickstarter's out there. But, that being said, it was still a bit of a slog. I did it. My daughter helped me create the boxes and everything, and we got everything put together and wrapped and made it all pretty. So that was a process this weekend. That's pretty much what I spent my weekend doing that and watching football.

Speaker 1: 6:08

How much wine did you drink in the process of making your boxes?

Speaker 2: 6:12

Zero actually.

Speaker 1: 6:13

Oh wow, I'm impressed.

Speaker 2: 6:17

Yeah, mostly because I was doing it in the morning.

Speaker 1: 6:19

Oh, ok, well, I would have been a little worried about you if you were drinking your wine.

Speaker 2: 6:23

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: 6:25

We saved that for when we sent our books out.

Speaker 2: 6:28

Yes, which, by the way, I have the books in hand and the bubble mailers in hand, so we will be doing that soon too. And then the last thing I did want to remind you all of, actually, is that the Right Anyway Summit is coming up next week Actually this week, as this will air. So our presentation is our new mini course why you Need an Author, missions Statements and that will air on October 18th at 4 PM Pacific. So the summit itself is free to attend live. Or you get 24 hours to access the videos, I think, or you can purchase the All Access Pass, which gives you, I think, lifetime access to the videos, and there are 25 speakers and presenters. Some of the events are live, some are prerecorded, like ours, but it's going to be very interesting.

Speaker 2: 7:27

There's some really interesting people on the summit, including Gabriela Pereira, who we interviewed in the past, and Sue Campbell, who's organizing it, who we also interviewed I think she was our very first podcast interview and a bunch of other people. So check that out. I will put the link in the show notes and so you can join in the fun there. One peaceful disclosure we are, as presenters, also affiliates, so if you do click our link. We will earn a commission from your purchase, but at no cost to you, no additional cost. So just full disclosure on that. But, like I said, we are presenting, so we honestly believe in this. I think there's a lot of great people to learn from, and I'm going to be attending quite a few of the or watching quite a few of the presentations as well.

Speaker 1: 8:17

So yeah, and you don't forget, you can go to everything live. Yes, but if you want the all access, pass. That is the link, that is the paid version and that's where we would get an affiliate. Exactly that's it.

Speaker 2: 8:35

All right, ok, well, I think that's it for now. So today we are so incredibly thrilled to have Damon Courtney on the show with us. We have talked about his service, book Funnel, so many times on the show and we finally get to pick the brain of the creator, so I'm really excited. But in case you don't know, damon Courtney is the creator and CEO of Book Funnel, an e-book and audiobook delivery service for authors and publishers. As a lifelong software engineer, damon is an expert in just about everything technical and can offer unique insight on publishing as it relates to software and technology. He is also the self-published author of his very own fantasy trilogy and continues to spin stories in his head that he hopes to someday get around to writing. So welcome, damon. How are you doing?

Speaker 3: 9:26

I'm doing fantastic. Thank you guys for having me.

Speaker 2: 9:29

Of course. Of course it's funny. We've been talking about having you on literally since day one of this podcast and we're like, OK, we've got to wait until we have enough of a backlist. That it's actually like.

Speaker 1: 9:42

Worth his time.

Speaker 2: 9:43

Worth your time.

Speaker 3: 9:44

You've got to build up the suspense a little bit right.

Speaker 2: 9:46

Yeah, now exactly.

Speaker 3: 9:48

Exactly.

Speaker 2: 9:49

So thank you so much for coming on the show. You know we, as I said, we've mentioned Book Funnel so many times. It's literally one of my favorite products out there for the writer. I think pretty much every writer in the industry should be a Book Funnel subscriber. But before we get into all the details on what that is, tell us a little bit more about yourself and kind of how Book Funnel got started and what your path was to bringing it all together.

Speaker 3: 10:20

Sorry, I've been a software engineer my whole life. I say that when I was seven I started coding. I wasn't a software engineer, I was just learning how to program, but that's when I started, when I was just a little kid, and so my entire career that's been my job. I love building software, I like solving problems, right, and I've also been a storyteller not somebody who ever wrote to me the idea of when. I looked into it, way back when, and it was like, oh, you write a book and then you query and you find agents and you do all this stuff. And I'm like, ah, that sounds too bureaucratic, I don't want to do all of that, right, but I have played Dungeons and Dragons my whole life and I am what is known in the world of D&D as the forever DM, meaning that I am the dungeon master of my group and have been for over 30 years now. We still play with the same guys, the same group of people that I've played with since I was a kid, and so I was always writing stories in my head. That's what I talk about when you play D&D. It's really just interactive storytelling and then, as the, I'm the writer who's writing the story as we go along.

Speaker 3: 11:30

So when I discovered indie publishing, I immediately was like, oh, that I could do that. I would love to write a book. It was always sort of that secret dream, like I could write a book, maybe. And so I really jumped in and I started writing and I ended up publishing a fantasy trilogy which, despite the fact that it did not get a lot of sales, I'm very proud of it's still. I still have gone back and re-read it a couple of times and, you know, kind of went solid. It's not a bad thing, right.

Speaker 3: 11:58

And Book Funnel came about because I needed what Book Funnel did, which was that I was building a mailing list. I had written a short, I tried to write a short story that ended up being a 25,000 word novella, and now I was going to give it away as the sort of reader magnet to get people to join my list. And what Book Funnel does didn't exist. You couldn't. You could email people, files, and that's mostly what people did, and I just didn't see that that was going to be successful. For a lot of people, in fact, if you listen to some of the really, really old podcasts, this was Book Funnel has been around now Like we. We launched eight years ago this month, in October.

Speaker 3: 12:35

So it was October 2015, when we first opened up and said hey, you know, we'll take your money and we'll do this job. We think we've solved this problem and, you know, we did a pretty good in the early days. We hadn't solved it quite as well as we thought we did, but we very, very quickly, you know, iterated and optimized it and made it what it is today. So it just didn't exist. I went out to build it because I needed it for myself and once I had invested all this time in building it, I thought, you know, I bet other people, I bet other authors, indie authors, would like this too and would be able to use it. And that was it. We put it out there into the world and said, hey, if anybody, if you know you find this useful, you might want to, you might want to give it a try.

Speaker 2: 13:18

Well, and it is. It is so useful and I have to say I have to brag a little bit because I happened to know that I was number. I think I was definitely under a thousand, your thousand. I was one of your earlier subscribers. I think I was around number 700, plus or minus a little bit. You looked it up for me once I think we did look it up.

Speaker 1: 13:37

I don't know where I came in, but I can tell you that I was traditionally published. When I joined Book Funnel because I all of a sudden recognized the fact that I felt like I turned over my book to somebody else. I turned over everything and now I had no agency. I was just sitting around twiddling my thumbs like waiting for something to happen you know, and then I recognized the fact that, well, I could try to build my email list.

Speaker 1: 14:08

I can't run ads on books that doesn't. There's no ROI there if you try it. But I could start to build my email list and there was like how? And of course I've always had a lot of indie author friends. I was like what do you do? And everybody screamed Book Funnel at once.

Speaker 3: 14:23

They were like what the heck's that?

Speaker 1: 14:25

And it was, yeah, it was fabulous, and I've been a. Now I scream it at people Book Funnel. Of course you know.

Speaker 2: 14:35

You need to send a book to somebody. Book.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Funnel, yeah, but I have to say I think Book Funnel may have been the first like subscription thing that I like broke down and paid for. You know, when you're like brand new and you're like I don't want to spend any money on anything, I'm like, oh no, this is worth it. So, yes, it's totally amazing. And before Megan and I continue to just like fangirl all over the place what we should do because there may be listeners out there who are like, what's book funnel? Like I was, I can't imagine it these days, but I'm sure you're out there or you've heard about it, but you're not 100% sure how you would use it we should go through all the different things that book funnel does, and so I was thinking, iteration wise, the first piece of it that you created was the delivery, was that correct? So tell us more about that, so how others can use it.

Speaker 3: 15:32

Yeah, sure. So when it started it really was, you know, I was building a list. I had a reader magnet, and the reader magnet is just the free cookie that you give. It says, hey, here's a short story, here's a bonus chapter, whatever. Thanks for joining my list, here you can have it.

Speaker 3: 15:47

And so the first thing that we built was just the delivery process to help people get that book onto whatever device they happen to be reading on, whether it was a Kindle or an iPhone or an iPad or an Android, whatever it was. That that was the original process that we built and that was the the genesis of the idea, right it just I needed to be able to make that easier for readers. So you know, when you put your book up on Amazon or Barnes and Noble or Cobor, any of these stores, people buy it and it goes directly to their app, to their device, whatever it is they're going to do. But that that wasn't a thing you could do with as an indie, where you could just sort of send a book out to people in some way. So the delivery process was first, actually the first feature that we built after a book funnel launched in 2015,. So that's where I was able to get into it. Actually, the first feature that we built after Bookfinal launched in 2015 was a feature we called Certified Mail, which is for advanced reader copies delivery, and that was very different. Right, we had the original feature, which was just a landing page people would go to and it would say here you can download my book over here. People didn't want that for their arcs. I don't want everybody in the world going to a page and getting my book. I want very specific people. These people on my list want to get. I want them to get my book. I don't want anybody else to get my book. So we built Certified Mail and that is where you give Bookfinal a list of the email addresses you want us to send the book to and each person on that list gets their own individual personalized download link. That's only just for them and once they get their copy, that link dies and they can't use it anywhere else. So that is something that only they're going to get their copy right.

Speaker 3: 17:28

And we started adding on more features as authors would come on board. You know, when I try to explain it to people who really don't have never heard of us, don't know why they might want to use us, without getting into all the features that we could do, because in eight years we've added a ton of features that we built but the core of it is anywhere that you can imagine that you might want to send an e-book or an audiobook to a reader outside of the sort of traditional store system. That's where Bookfinal comes in. So you're delivering your reader magnet to people that join your list. Bookfinal sends the book and then helps them get the book to their device E-book, audiobook, whatever it is. You are doing direct sales from your own web store and you want somebody needs to deliver the digital goods. That's where Bookfinal steps in. We do that delivery. You send out advanced reader copies. You join group promotions and build your list and send the books out that way.

Speaker 3: 18:24

You want a gift to copy? Say you just want to send a copy to a reader on their birthday of a book that you have a digital book right. All of those are the kinds of features that we've built into Bookfinal to allow Indies. You know we used to say we wanted to give Indies the power to be on par with what the big publishers were doing, but the truth is big publishers can't do this stuff right. We're actually way out in front of what traditional publishing can do. They don't go around gifting books to people. They don't bump into somebody in an airport and hand them up a business card that's got a QR code on the back where they can go download a free book. That's not a thing that's out there, right. So Indies are actually ahead of the game in a lot of this stuff because of some of the tools that not just Bookfinal but other software providers in the industry have built.

Speaker 2: 19:13

Yeah, I want to touch on a couple of the features that I think our audience will be the most interested in, and the first one is actually the ARC copies that you mentioned. That was one of the first things that I used it for, and so back in the day because I actually have been around long enough that I remember what it was like to try and get free books to readers before I started using Bookfinal- I won't say before Bookfinal existed, because you probably were already around but I didn't know about you yet.

Speaker 2: 19:44

but it was still early days and it was a pain in the butt. You could give a PDF or a Word doc, but obviously that could easily be copied and shared across anybody anywhere. And then trying to side load things onto the Kindle device was just a nightmare.

Speaker 2: 20:03

And if your reader wasn't techie enough, then you had to lead them through the process to get it done. It was huge pain, so hence Bookfinal, which is awesome, through the ARC program. The thing I love that yes, okay, you can send the book to your ARC team, but not only that, it's watermarked and you keep track of who's actually downloaded it so I can go back in and remind people hey, did you know you haven't downloaded this book yet. Or hey, let's remind you to actually review the book when the book comes out. And you built in all those features, which was just, it makes the whole process so much smoother, so kind of.

Speaker 1: 20:48

Can I add one more thing to that too? Is it because I was just in a little Facebook conversation the other day on an author's site where somebody was saying oh yeah, I sent ARCs out, but you know how that goes, how many of them are really going to review, and I'm like, wait, hello, back up the truck. Do you not know you can do this through Bookfinal, because the reminder emails? It's a total game changer because, as we've had some experience today, people forget things, but getting those emails, you know pre-scheduled, so I don't even have to remember when I'm in the middle of a book launch to go, oh, I have to email everybody.

Speaker 1: 21:24

And then I pre-set it up and it goes, and I will have between 50 and 75% of the people I send the ARC to will review the book, and it's closer to 75% because I do realize then that some of them are in other countries, so I'm not always seeing it right away. You know what I mean. But I launched with a lot of reviews now and that was not the case before I started doing that. So it's a huge help, it's a game changer. So your question, megan. I'm sorry, I just had to intersperse my little thought.

Speaker 2: 22:02

Well, no. So, given that that was kind of one of the earliest features you actually developed and I think it's gone through a few iterations, as I recall, over the years with you know expansion of the service.

Speaker 2: 22:16

But I guess I'd like to talk a little bit about the security on that and how you've been able to do the watermarking and make sure that you track. You know who's opened things and what and why. That's kind of important. So when you were going through the process of development, what were you thinking as the developer for Book Funnel? Does that make sense? Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3: 22:39

So the I mean, like you know, we had the download pages, which was our first I won't even say feature. It really was what all Book Funnel was when we first launched. And then, like I said, within a few weeks, we of course we were we had people signing up and then people if you've ever used software before, especially if you're really friendly and you let people know that you're a small company, they don't hesitate to reach out and email you and say you know it'd be cool, it'd be really cool to book funnel did this, and I agree, like in those early days, we were all I mean we still do that. All of our features today are always built on what our authors are asking us for, and so when it came to advanced reader copy delivery, it was a different equation, right? Again, if I send out just a link where anybody can download, I might send it to my art team, but nothing really stops them from sending it to their friends, who send it to their friends, who send it to their friends, right? So we wanted to build something that was was more secure. So everybody gets their own individual link, which is how, of course, we actually know what you're doing. In our system. Each person gets their own individualized little copy, and the first thing we built in we built in hidden watermarks. Really, from the very first time we launched, we had those and those were. They were just little watermarks that we it's hard. They're not even really called watermarks technically, but they're really just little bits of data that we've we've put inside of the files so that whenever the reader gets them, if that file ends up hopefully not, but if it ends up shared somewhere on a piracy site or it's thrown into a Facebook group or something like that, we can track down who sent it. We know who we sent that book to originally and we can track down the person who sent it.

Speaker 3: 24:14

Over time, though, you know, authors were asking for more protection, especially on arcs more than anything else. Right, because this is your brand new book. It's not even out there to the public yet, and the worst feeling in the world is to find that it's been pirated by somebody who was on your, your trusted arc team. And you know, maybe they didn't even do it on purpose, maybe they were just like oh, I shared it with a friend because she loves books too and I thought she would love it, and then that friend went and, you know, uploaded it somewhere, shared it with the world, right? But it's just such a gut punch that your brand new book you haven't even published it yet, you haven't made $1 on it yet and already it's out there for the whole world. So over time we were looking at those and saying, well, how can we make that better?

Speaker 3: 24:59

So the second thing that we added actually was just last year was so visible watermarks, what we call social DRM. Drm is digital rights management, but social DRM is really just a shaming thing, right. So you can go into Book Funnel and you can say hey, anybody who downloads this copy I want to put on the title page, on the, at the bottom of the epilogue, at the bottom of the prologue, you can pick the chapters, you can have it at every chapter if you really want to. I want to put a little message that says this copy was specially prepared for you know, damon at bookfunnelcom, and that's it. And then we'll insert that in so that as the person downloads their copy, all of those little nuggets get inserted everywhere.

Speaker 3: 25:40

And again, it's sort of a shame thing, like don't you go and share it, because we're going to know who you did it right, but beyond that, a few years ago about three or four years ago we launched our own app for ebook reading and then for audiobook listening. Eventually, when we launched audiobooks, and then over time that we have improved that app and it's just gotten better and better and better, to the point I read it in every night, right, any books that I get, even if I buy them. I buy most of my books on Kobo. I will take them from Kobo and then I will put them into my book funnel app, because that's how I prefer to read all my books. I'm a really picky software developer and so everything about our reader is exactly the way I like to read.

Speaker 3: 26:20

But one of the features that we launched last year was also what we called restricted delivery, which what that does is. It allows you to really, you can use it anywhere in the system, but it's really especially good for ARCs, and what it allows you to do is say here I want to send this book to everybody, but they have to read it in the book funnel app or within what we call our cloud reader, which is anybody could. You can go to mybookfunnelcom and you can read any of your books right there in your browser. You can listen to any of your audio books right there in your browser, so you can do it from the browser. You can do it from our app, which is supported on iPhones and androids aplenty right. What's nice about that is they don't get a file that they can download, they don't get a Moby, they don't get an EPUB, they don't get a PDF, they don't get a thing that they could then potentially pass on to somebody else, and this makes it so that, with your ARCs especially, they have to read it in our app. They have to read it in the cloud. What's kind of cool about that is because they're in our ecosystem.

Speaker 3: 27:20

We not as Greta was talking about like, we know when you've viewed the link that you were sent. So everybody gets an email that's here. Here's your ARC copy. They click on that link. We know you viewed it, so we put a little check and so if you, the author, are looking at your certified mail campaign, you can see these were sent, these were viewed, how many people have viewed their links, meaning they got the email, they opened it up and they looked at it, and then, of course, how many have actually downloaded the book, and you can see all of that data.

Speaker 3: 27:48

When you use a restricted book, though because the everything remains in our ecosystem we can not only show you that the book was delivered. We continue to show you what percentage of the book read through that they currently are. So if you've sent out a certified mail campaign with a restricted book, we can show you your readers exactly like oh, wow, she finished that book in one day. Like in the day she received it, she read the whole thing. So you can actually not only track when they downloaded it, but how far through the book that they've read, because you know it's the kind of thing that Amazon would never give you right, they're never, ever going to tell you what your readers are doing with your data.

Speaker 3: 28:25

But as far as book funnel is concerned, those aren't my readers, those are your readers. You know you're paying me for a service, but that's not my data, it's your data, so I don't have any problem giving you. Now, you know there's a lot of other personal data that we have that I we don't hand out and we don't give back to authors. And, of course, book funnel never does anything with our reader data. It all just sits there for our authors to have. But it's kind of neat, you can. You can actually use certified mail for audio books as well and do the same thing. It'll tell you how, what percentage of the book everybody is listening as they are going through your arcs.

Speaker 2: 28:56

Oh my gosh See how long have I been using this and I did not know that.

Speaker 1: 29:03

I did not know that either.

Speaker 2: 29:05

I knew you could send certified and make watermarks, but I did not know you could restrict it and then track how far they are in the book for arcs.

Speaker 3: 29:14

I mean that's.

Speaker 2: 29:14

That's incredible. That's such valuable information, Like for anybody out there who who maybe doesn't realize how powerful that is. One of the things I always ask my art creators is where did you first stop? How?

Speaker 2: 29:27

long did it take you to read the book? Were you engaged the whole way through on a scale of one to five, right, you know, one being you barely finished it and five being you couldn't put it down. You ignored your children in your chores to keep reading. I literally asked that, but with this I guess I don't have to anymore.

Speaker 3: 29:48

No, you can actually go back to your campaign and export each day what was going on. You can even sort the table by percentage red. You can actually see like, oh wow, these 10 people. They finish the book the day that they got it or within two days. Then here's a group of people that are stuck at the 28 percent mark. Then it's a few days later and they're still not picking it back up and reading again, and whether they would be willing to tell you that or not, right, right, because some readers you want honesty and you say give me honesty. But a lot of people are like, give me honesty, but like don't be really honest.

Speaker 3: 30:23

And so a reader might be like oh, you know, I've just been busy, I haven't had time, and that is sometimes true. But if you're also seeing that a lot of people aren't quite making it past the 30 percent mark, then maybe there's something about the book that's not grabbing everybody.

Speaker 1: 30:36

Yeah, or something at the 30 percent mark you need to look at too.

Speaker 3: 30:41

Right.

Speaker 1: 30:42

A specific spot in the book that it's fascinating. I did not know that. Well, I don't make it that they have to read the book on book funnel, you know they can read that they can download it whatever. But that would be interesting if I had a little art team and they said how many of you are willing to read on book funnel, then I could like really track it. That's fascinating.

Speaker 2: 31:04

So here's another question for you, then, and maybe this is my feature request for the day. But the other thing that is frustrating for me is that, like when I send out the files, right, some readers like to read it on their Kindle, some read it on their Nook or online or whatever. Some want to do word files. Do you track filites or anything like that? Because if you could have your art team or your beta readers actually go through and say, oh, I really liked this quote or, you know, just have highlights or things that then they could pull from or that you could see as the author, you could almost like instantize that's not a word, but you know what I mean the entire like beta reading process, not just arts, not just for reviews, but actually for the critique and the feedback as well. Do you have?

Speaker 3: 31:59

anything like that. Or is that feature? No, is that feature in the works? No comment.

Speaker 1: 32:07

Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2: 32:09

I like this. I like where this is going OK.

Speaker 1: 32:11

I know that's because that could be.

Speaker 3: 32:15

So we have a lot of power. When you're reading within our app, we, we know what you're doing right, and Amazon too. That sounds kind of creepy, but the truth is like you're using my system, so I have that. I have that data available to me and so, of course, unlike other providers, unlike other stores again, we don't consider that our data, so we consider that your data. So, as we have that, we want to make sure that we give that back to our authors in ways that is meaningful, so that you can do something with that. Yes, that is. That would be a really cool feature if somebody built something like that, megan.

Speaker 2: 32:51

It would be a fantastic feature.

Speaker 1: 32:54

Ok, like the beta, the beta reader program, you know, yeah, yeah, I've seen.

Speaker 3: 32:59

I've seen a few beta reader. You know there are a few different software out there that can do the beta, that try to do the beta sort of thing. The problem that that I have with those that I've seen is that they all sort of require you to read a web page, right, they don't. They don't act like an e-reader. You don't get all the features that you're used to having, right, I only read in bed at night. I get in bed and I have about an hour before I go to sleep. That is my downtime, that's my leisure time. I sit and I pull out my phone and I do all my reading and you know our app reads like a reader, like you would expect. Right, some people like to do the whole scrolly thing. I do the little page turns, I tap. You know I do tap, tap, tap and that's how I prefer to read. So I've seen some of the beta software is out, the software that are out there that are designed so that you can get sort of beta feedback and things like that.

Speaker 3: 33:45

I don't enjoy reading things on my computer. I'm often surprised how many people do we get? A lot of what? Little old ladies who just love reading on their laptops and I can't imagine having my big laptop like sitting in my lap and reading a book. That doesn't seem leisurely to me, but maybe it's because my laptop is a work thing for me, so if I have it open I feel like I'm working.

Speaker 3: 34:07

But the the bookfrontal app, when, when a feature like that, if it were to be developed or added, you would be able to just drag your finger and highlight a thing just like you would any other time, and then all of that kind of data would be shared back with the author, like you'd be able to highlight and say, oh, I found a typo. And then you know what would be really cool is like I don't need to tell you that 50 people found the same typo. I can just say, hey, obviously you have a typo here, because 50 people are willing to tell you that you have a typo. Or, yes, highlight and say, just, you know one of the it. It's one of those things that seems stupid.

Speaker 3: 34:42

When it first came out, right, so texting, right, you know we had texting. And then, you know, the iPhone and smartphones came along and texting got a whole lot better because we didn't have to type on little numbers. But then, you know, apple came out with the whole. Now you can just tap on a thing and respond with a little heart, with a little thumbs up, a little thumbs down, a little ha ha right, sort of thing, and you're like that really necessary, couldn't we just couldn't you just have replied, and now I use that all the day time.

Speaker 2: 35:06

Like I just.

Speaker 3: 35:07

I highlight and I say you love it, or thumbs up or whatever, right. So how neat would that be to just, like you were saying, highlight a quote and just give it a heart. I don't need to type out a whole thing, I just I wanted to tell you that, man, I love this quote. Or man, I love this dialogue right here. That would be really cool if somebody built that.

Speaker 2: 35:24

It would be amazing yes.

Speaker 1: 35:26

And because I have a certain segment of my arc team that I call my typo hunters, and it's an ever growing group and they are all reading in different ways on different devices, and so it's like I always prepare myself that I am going to have at least one day and I line up all their emails and I go from one to the other to the other, to the other, Because I have to find the thing, and then a lot of the time they're all telling me the same one, but you just got to double check. And then every once in a while I get one from somebody who they don't even give me page numbers or chapter headings. They're just like give me the sentence. It's like it's a bug. How do I find that sentence?

Speaker 2: 36:15

Control F. What are you talking about? That's how I do it.

Speaker 1: 36:20

Right, it's crazy. So anyway, yes, that would be an incredibly helpful feature. I echo Megan's If somebody created that, I would be happy to tell you what.

Speaker 2: 36:34

So the next, the next feature that I wanted to talk about, because I do think this is incredibly useful, particularly for newer authors who are still growing their backlist, but also their, their audience and their readership. Let's talk a bit about the group promos feature and functionality, because now I will say, like I go through periods where I join a ton of the of the promos and then I stop for a while and then I come back and I do a ton of them again and then I stop for a while, and I do that for reasons. I have reasons for this, but in general, the group promos, the way I use them are, is as, like, you joined the group promo Everybody shares with their list, and then you use the book funnel landing pages. But let's talk a little bit about the development on that and how how that's helped authors network.

Speaker 2: 37:27

So where did that come from? How did you get that started? What was your inspiration? Was that? It Was that a interview where somebody said do you do this and you went not yet? Or how did that come about?

Speaker 3: 37:42

That came about mostly because we saw authors were already starting to do this.

Speaker 3: 37:47

Right, and this is the kind of thing where where, when I first built Book Funnel, authors were out there sending books to readers by just sending them a Dropbox link or a Google Drive link with an ePub and a Moby.

Speaker 3: 37:59

And it's like, if you see that happening, you're you're already looking at a thing and you're going OK, that's the wrong way to do it. So people were out there, authors were out there building sort of their own. They would, they would set up a page on their website, right. So you, they, you would say you'd have some Megan Haskell dot com slash promo and you would set up a promo and you would ask all these other authors and they would give you their book funnel links. And you're creating like a page in WordPress with book covers and all of this sort of stuff and it's just. It's just a page that has all these different book covers for everybody. So we saw that authors were already out there doing this. They were doing this on their own websites, and then you'd have like I don't know how to build a web page, I can't do that right.

Speaker 3: 38:40

And so immediately we said OK, there's a need for this. We already have all the book funnel links. We're book funnel. So at first we just built a bundle page where you could just kind of paste a bunch of links in there and we would do that. And then we very quickly saw well, then now people are on Facebook and they're going hey, I'm trying to build up a promo, raise your hand if you want to join. And we were trying, we were seeing all of that happening and when, ok, we can solve that problem too. We can just give them a place where they can communicate with each other and people can join in. So that was I mean it's again, I've said it before, but all of our features really come about because either our authors are asking directly like saying hey, you know, it would be cool if it did this, or we are seeing trends in the industry and we look at what they're doing and go. We can solve that problem more elegantly than what people are doing right now.

Speaker 3: 39:30

And so group promos came about because some authors were asking us for it, but really more than anything, they were already out there doing it. It was just really hard to do, right. Somebody had to be the web designer, somebody had to own the domain, and so it's already. You're kind of not going to. You know, I'm joining your promo but I'm sending my traffic to Megan Haskell dot com, which is, you know, you're a lovely person, but it's not a place where people will be like, oh, I've been to that site before, I know what that is.

Speaker 3: 40:01

Whereas reader trust, book funnel trust among readers is very high. They know exactly who we are, they know what we do, they know that where their books are going to go, they know how to use our system. So there's a lot of trust. When they see there's a page on book funnelcom, they go oh okay, I know what that is and I know what that's going to be. And so we built the group promos feature so that just to make a lot of that easier.

Speaker 3: 40:24

Then we started seeing how nice it was. We have a lot of authors on book funnel and man, wouldn't it be nice if they could just sort of work together, find each other right? That's the biggest problem. You have all the you know. If you think you know all the genres of books out there. You can't even imagine how many there are, and I mean, we've been doing this for eight years and even genres that eight years ago were sort of and nobody really. Yeah, what is that? That's not a thing, right? I was actually talking to a friend yesterday. Cozy Fantasy is now like starting to come into its own and become a thing.

Speaker 3: 41:00

Legends and lattes by Travis Baldry he's got his second book coming out Orconomics by Jay Zachary Pike. These were like fantasy, but not end of the world fighting to kill the bad guys, sort of fantasy, more like a. Oh well, you know, my life at the venturing is over and now I have this cute little community that I'm building, but it's still dragons and ogres and wizards and stuff, and that was not a thing years ago and now it's barely a thing. But that the same thing was true of paranormal cozy mysteries. Cozy mysteries, you know, we had Agatha Christie long back in the day and then traditional publishing went and nobody wants to read those anymore, except that people did. There were lots of people out there who still wanted to read them and Indies came along and said, well, I want to read those books and if nobody's going to write them, I'll make them so.

Speaker 3: 41:48

But once they started doing that, how do you find other cozy mystery authors? I write paranormal cozy mysteries and I need to find others because your readers are like my readers and if we can find some way to share it, then we can both find some way to share it and we can both find some new readers from that. So we built the board, what we originally we called it the. They were bundles, book bundles, and so it was like the book funnel book bundle board, because we love alliteration and it sounded really cheesy. Now it's just group promos, because that's really what it is.

Speaker 3: 42:17

But it's just a great way to find other authors who are writing the kinds of books that you're writing, and if you join in with them, that means that their readers are already predisposed to liking your books because you write small town, clean Christian romance. Well, guess what? All 30 of these other authors they write the same thing and even if each of you only has a small list, you have a lot of crossover. You have a lot of that. Their audience has never seen your books before and readers are always looking for new books to read. So you can now be on book funnel. You just click group promos and then start scrolling through it. There are thousands of promos that you can find in all different genres to join in.

Speaker 1: 42:57

I'm in one right now.

Speaker 1: 43:00

I have to schedule it, send it to my list. Yeah, I think I used primarily book funnel to build the first few thousand readers you know on my mailing list. I think I'm trying to even think if I use I think I did one or two from other book platforms like that. I will not be named in this interview but I always came back to book funnel being my favorite for many reasons. I think that one of the things that I love about it is that you can look at the other authors. You know, the longer I've been doing this, the pickier I get about who I'm going to send to my list of readers, and so I can look at the book covers. I can look at a preview page. I can see who's in that promotion and I can kind of decide is that a group of authors that I feel is close enough to me and similar enough that I, or professional looking enough? The covers are professional, looking enough, whatever my criteria happens to be that I am happy to send that to my readership. So that's another great feature, because early in my early in my writing career in fact it was my very first published book I asked my publisher if I could do this author cross promotion and it was one that was on some of these websites and everything.

Speaker 1: 44:35

And she said, yeah, sure. So it said it was I write murder mystery and suspense and stuff. So it said it was for romance, romantic suspense and just plain old suspense. So I was like, really, you know, because it seems pretty diverse to me, and she said, oh no, it's good for everybody. You can be on it. You couldn't see anything. So I paid my money, I sign up. I'm sorry, this is a rabbit trail. This is why Book Funnel is so helpful. Anyway, so I pay my money, I sign up. I do that. The day the promo comes out, I'm like, no, absolutely no, it's all naked men, chests.

Speaker 1: 45:18

All of it and mine is called the Margin of Lust, but there's no lust in it. I mean it's a total misnomer. It's being retitled and repackaged, but because I was writing the Seven Deadly Sins. So, for years I got also bots on Barnes Noble with Gay Erotica, which mine is. No sex in it, it's just a murder mystery. And then I would get bad reviews because people would be like upset because there was no sex in the book. So people.

Speaker 3: 45:50

It says lust, but there's no gay sex.

Speaker 1: 45:53

Exactly, there's no any kind of sex, so it was just a nightmare.

Speaker 2: 46:01

It's more that she's not getting any. Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1: 46:06

It's called the Margin of.

Speaker 1: 46:07

Lust, because she ain't getting any Right so but the point being that is such a helpful tool so that when you can actually see a preview page and you can actually see the authors in advance that you're talking about cross promoting with, I mean that to me is invaluable. After my horrible experience that took like three letters from my publisher to Barnes Noble to get me out of the dirty book section. Like, if you write Gay Erotica, please don't be offended. I don't think your books are dirty, I was just an expression. Sorry, just throw that in.

Speaker 3: 46:48

So and that's that's the thing is is, like, all the promotions, all the group promos on book funnel are organized by authors just like you. So, which means some of them and some of them are really good at it and some of them are really strict with their rules and they say, hey, no man chest covers nothing that's not safe for work. This is a you know they're very tight with it Like this is for suspense and thrillers. So if you submit anything that's not anywhere in that genre, you're going to get kicked out and you will find, you know, the more promos that you do actually make in the way that you're doing it. I think it's pretty healthy. You use it for a little bit, take a break for a little while, use it for, use promos for a little bit. Running one promo a month is not terrible.

Speaker 3: 47:30

I see authors that that dive in and when you're first getting started, it's probably okay to join several, but you want to be careful that you're not just joining tons and tons and tons and tons of them. You will exhaust your own list as well as exhausting the list of other authors that are out there. So, giving it a break every once in a while and then coming back to it. But you'll also find organizers and authors that you really enjoy working with, because they always do a good job of making sure that all the books match the right genre, that everybody in the promo has a pretty solid list or has a good reputation.

Speaker 3: 48:01

So Book Funnel tracks your reputation, how many times you are sharing with your list, so that we can then tell other organizers when you join hey, this person they share, right? Because that's ultimately what we want when you join in a group promo. We just want to make sure that everybody is doing their part, even if you have a small list. It's not a crime to have a small list. It's kind of crappy if you say you're going to share with your list and then you don't share at all, and that is the thing that we're, that organizers are trying to avoid. So they can see all of that. They can see your reputation on Book Funnel and how many promos you've been in, and then sort of the average of how many clicks, how many shares you get anytime that you share with your list.

Speaker 2: 48:44

Yeah, so, damon, do you have to have a full length novel on Book Funnel. What else can you share?

Speaker 3: 48:53

Well, megan, actually I'm glad you asked, I'm glad you asked that question.

Speaker 3: 48:58

What a fantastic question the honestly the biggest things that we see on Book Funnel. Nobody's so for a while. There are people we would have some authors that give away a full novel and I will say, if you have a big backlist, it's not a terrible idea to, especially if it's a Book One. If you've got a 10 book deep series, that's, that's backlist. And you want to give away Book One, by God, go for it. You will have a lot of readers who love that.

Speaker 3: 49:23

But that's not what most authors on Book Funnel are doing with their reader magnets. What they're mostly using are novella length or short stories. The biggest thing is you want to try to make it part of what you're already writing. So if you're writing in series, if you have a short story that is in as a part of that series, then that's going to be a really attractive reader magnet to to readers who have already read your stuff. If you have a four book series that you're working on and you have this prequel novella that you've put out there as your reader magnet, that works really, really well as a reader magnet because if somebody's already read your Book One and that the end of Book One. The offer is hey, find out.

Speaker 3: 50:05

I read fantasy, so all my examples are fantasy. But you know, if you read this, this, you know Book One of my fantasy trilogy and it says hey, find out. You know, if you want to hear about the first time these, this duo, ever went on an adventure together, read the prequel and the prequel happens before all of that. And so then people go oh well, I just read Book One and I liked it, so I'm going to go back now. I want to go back and read the prequel and just find out what happened beforehand. But it also works really well if to join in things like group promos, because nobody who hasn't read Book One can still enjoy the prequel and then hopefully be enticed to go. I like these characters. I think I want to go pick up and buy Book One and move on with the rest of the series, right?

Speaker 3: 50:47

So there's two different. You know we see them as two different sort of things. There's sort of the reader magnet, which is this thing works really really well for somebody who's already read your stuff. And then a lead magnet is well, it can work as a read for readers who've read your stuff, but it also works really well for people who've just never heard of you. I'll give you an example of a reader magnet.

Speaker 3: 51:06

One thing that we see lots of authors doing, particularly in romance, as a favorite tool is what we call an extended epilogue or a bonus chapter. So they get to the end of the book and there's a bonus chapter, right, something that happens later. The couple gets there happily, ever after they go off into the sunset, yada, yada. But if you want to find out what a year later they bought them when they bought their first puppy, oh, it's pandemonium, right, and so it's just like a two, three thousand word short story. But it's a bonus chapter that's meant to be tacked on to the end of the book so that readers are immediately enticed to go and get that reader magnet. But it's not a very valuable lead magnet. If you haven't read the book, then the extended bonus chapter at the end is meaningless to you. You don't even know who these characters are, and so something like that works really great as the reader magnet. You put that in the back of your book to help build your list organically, but it's not the kind of thing that you would put into a group promo Other things that authors use.

Speaker 3: 52:04

Now that we do audio books and short audio, we have more and more authors that are starting to do their reader magnets, their short stories, their novellas, in audio, having their narrators also record, you know, at a 30 minute an hour long short audio that they're now offering up to their list. What's really neat about that is that you know if you're big in audio and a lot of people don't have the money to have all their books in audio but if you do have your things in audio and people join your list, you can say, hey, thanks for joining my list. Here is the bonus thing that you get Click here If you wanted an ebook, click here If you wanted an audio. What's neat about that is that you can actually track which way they go. Right, if you send something to me, I'm an ebook reader, I don't like audio books, so I'm going to click that ebook and I'm going to download that and I'm going to read it on my phone. But if somebody who's into audio gets that same email, they're going to click audio.

Speaker 3: 53:00

Now you can start to segment your lists and say, ah, these people over here, these are my audio people when they were offered a choice between downloading the audio or the ebook. Of my thing, they picked audio, and the reason that's important is if you're not able to get your audio out at the same time as you're doing your paperbacks and your ebooks and a lot of authors can't right, they're because they use the money from the sales of that, the early sales of their ebook, to bankroll the audio book that they're going to then produce, or sometimes audible, and all the rest of them are just really darn slow at getting your audio book out there at the same time. So if you're going to do that, then when you launch your ebook you're going to email everybody who's on your ebook list and say, hey, the new book is available, but maybe you don't email the audio list yet. Maybe you want to wait because some of those audio listeners well, they'll go pick up the ebook if it's available, but they would have given you a full price audio sale if you had waited to tell them when the new book was available in audio. But you can do that.

Speaker 3: 53:58

If you start to segment your list a little bit, that gets a little. We all went off in the weeds a little bit there. But when you talk about the kinds of things that you can deliver with BookFunnel and what authors are using. Most of them are not giving away full books and, in fact, unless you have a really big backlist, I don't recommend that at all. Even if you've got five or six books, you probably shouldn't be giving away BookOne.

Speaker 3: 54:18

It's better to give them a novella. What we've actually seen from readers is, if they don't know who you are, if they've never heard of you, readers are really willing to give you a shot of about eight to 10,000 words. So you give them a novella and most readers can burn through that in an hour or so. If I pick up a new book, I only need one, maybe two chapters to decide whether you're going to be the right author for me, whether you write the style of writing that I like and I enjoy. So readers don't need an entire book to figure out that they want to go on and buy your books.

Speaker 3: 54:55

So an eight to 10,000 word novella they read that and they go, hey, I like this writer, and they jump on. And then immediately, of course, if you're doing it right, your reader magnet should have right in the back a link to then immediately go and buy BookOne, because the only way they got this reader magnet is if they got onto your list. So while in the back of BookOne you might have a newsletter, your mailing list sign up you know that the only way they could have read this reader magnet, this novella, is if you're already on my list. So when you get to the end of that, immediately I want to send you to BookOne on books to read or Amazon If you're exclusive. However, you want to do it because if you got to the end of this and you liked it, you're going to like BookOne, where the story continues.

Speaker 2: 55:40

Yeah Well, and I've used all of those methods myself. I do want to point out one other thing, though, too. That was kind of mind-blowing or game-changing for me. Last time I saw you in person I think we had talked, or maybe it was a couple of times ago, but we had talked about this PDFs, just PDFs, because what I have done and it's been not super successful, but it does help is cocktail recipes. I, as a link in my books, I have the cocktail that she makes and you can go download the recipe with sign-up, and it's just a PDF, and I made it pretty, or at least to the best of my ability.

Speaker 2: 56:21

I'm not a graphic designer, but I did the best I could. I think it was all right. So you can actually, as another add-on to broaden the reader experience, you can offer other digital downloads through BookFunnel for subscription and use that to expand your list and expand that world, that immersiveness of that world. So just another. I mean that was kind of like, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that until we had been talking one day and it was brilliant, and so I really liked that ability as well. So thinking beyond just books but shorter samples, excerpts or other things too. To kind of draw people in is, I think, a great method.

Speaker 3: 57:11

Once you start seeing what other. So I have a talk that I give that I kind of detail reader magnets and things like that, because once you start seeing what other authors are out there doing, you start going, oh, that's a really neat idea. It's not exactly what I could do, but I could turn it into this and do that. You talk about drink recipes. I think that's fantastic.

Speaker 3: 57:32

We have authors that put out cookbooks of their oh, the characters in my little romance. They live in this little town where there's this wonderful little diner and I put out recipes from the diner. Oh, here's the chicken fried steak that you can get from the such and such diner. And each one of those can be just little things that you give and they serve two purposes. One is getting new people onto your list. If people love your stuff, then they go sign up for your list because they wanna get the cute little cookbook or the cute little recipe from your favorite little diner. But if they're already on your list, all of those little things are just one more thing that is helping to move people, move readers, along the path of from a lead to a reader to a fan, to a super fan, and a super fan is somebody who's going to buy everything you write till the end of time, and that is ultimately where we want all of our readers to be right. So I'm a Swifty. I'm a Taylor Swift fan.

Speaker 3: 58:30

My wife and I went to the Ares tour out in LA and she is massively good at just creating massive superfans and so much of it is just her being her right. People like she seems genuine and sincere and so people really like her. But I mean, like I've liked plenty of artists in my life that I thought, oh, I like their stuff, they're pretty good Not many of them and I thought, oh, my God, they're amazing, I am a super fan. But there are books, there are authors that I have read since I was a teenager, that I still read today. I am a super fan. Any book that they publish I'm going to go out and buy, and that, of course, is taken for some of those authors. That took many, many years for me to go from being like, oh yeah, I like their stuff, that's pretty good. If they have a book out, I'll flip through it and see if it looks like I'm interested in it, but once I fall into the super fan category, I don't even care what it is, so I'll pre-order it site unseen. And that is where we want all of our readers to get to, and we have power that, like I think about those authors that I've read for 30 years, I've never talked to those people.

Speaker 3: 59:37

There was no way that I could reach out to Ari Salvatore you know 14 year old me and just be like I really like your books. Now you literally can. He's on Twitter X, whatever the hell we're calling it today. You can just go and send him a message. You can email, you can find his email address. You can just go email people and as Indies, we have the power to foster relationships with our readers that have never existed in history. Right, you really can. Just they can. You know when I was setting up my list, which I haven't written in many, many years, but you can just email me. Here's my email address Drop me a line, tell me how much you like my book. I would love to hear from you. And when you email those readers back and say thank you so much, I'm so glad that you love the book. Hey, here's a recipe. You know, here's a free cookbook. Here is a short story, all of those little things. Just move them one inch closer to that super fan side of the list.

Speaker 1: 1:00:29

You know David Gogren, I get his email. Probably a David Gogren super fan, not of his fiction, but it's nonfiction. I probably need to read his fiction. I never have, but anyway he was talking about that whole movement he does in his book. You know, from something to super fans Rangers to super fans yeah Right, strangers.

Speaker 1: 1:00:50

I knew there was a word I was missing Strangers to super fans. But just the cost. I mean people. We don't stop to think about this. As writers, we're always looking for the bigger audience, the more audience get more, but the cost of getting somebody onto your list to buy your first book is so high compared to the cost of getting somebody who's on your list who already likes your books to buy the next book, like if we just thought even just dollars and cents.

Speaker 1: 1:01:24

It makes so much sense to focus on our readership, on our readership base Plus. It's darn fun, like when I get, because I write this kind of crazy mortician murder mystery. She's studying to be a mortician and she has this weird connection to the dead. When she touches their hair she gets their final sensations Anyway, and it's got a lot of humor in it. I've actually had now three or four different readers email me and say you changed. I was at a funeral of a relative and it changed the whole experience for me because I started giggling because I was imagining your character downstairs in the basement trying not to touch anybody's hair and all this stuff.

Speaker 1: 1:02:17

And one of them said I am less afraid of death. Now, when somebody writes you something like that, what do you want to do? You cannot wait to sit down and write the next chapter of the next book. So I mean just yes, it's a dollars and cents thing and we're all talking business. But just for our emotional sanity as writers, it's like to have that kind of back and forth with your readers. It just keeps you going. It's just an amazing thing and I do love. I do need to do more of that send them a short story. So I do all those things, but not always as consistently as I should, because I get Busy. I got to keep checking my auto responders. What is this auto responder do again?

Speaker 3: 1:03:06

You know that kind of thing, but we all have a limited set of bandwidth, and this is this is something that that my wife, my wife Julie, runs Book funnel with me, and this is something that we're always talking about is we have this much bandwidth, we have this much time to get something done. What can we apply our time to? That is going to be the most valuable. What's fascinating to me, though, is something I've started to do, so book funnel we deliver direct sales from authors, websites and things like that too, which I haven't really talked about, but I was just at the novelist Inc conference Last week, and or maybe it was two weeks ago now. It's all sort of blurred together, but anyway, they I gave a talk about direct sales, and one of the points that that I had that I put up on the screen and I was showing people was you know, there's this Seth Godin, you know made popularized it, but it was actually another somebody else who said it originally, and I don't know the original author, but they talked about the thousand true fans. Right, you know, if you, as an artist, if you can get a thousand true fans, then you can make a living for the rest of your life, because it's not just the thousand true fans. It's that those thousand true fans will go out and evangelize you and talk about you to other people. Those are the people who are like oh my god, have you read Damon Courtney's books? Oh my god, I think you would love them. You should read them, right. And yet I used to think that that was like oh, you really need the thousand true fans, but then they also need to go out and talk you up and sell your books and do all that sort of stuff so that you can make more money.

Speaker 3: 1:04:29

What was fascinating was when I was putting together all my slides for my talk on direct sales, I went out and found book funnel, does I mean? Basically, we talked about it earlier, but anywhere you want to send ebooks and audiobooks, we're probably there doing it. One of those places is Kickstarter. A lot of authors are starting to use Kickstarter to launch new books and, of course, one of the big things that they offer is you know, if you back me for $5, you get a copy of the ebook when it's ready. If you back me for $20, you get the audiobook when it's ready. However, they want to do it right and then they might do special paperbacks, signed paperback editions. They might do a beautiful hardcover edition, things like that. So I started looking at, I was pulling up screenshots and things that I could put onto my slides to try and demonstrate what authors were out there doing with direct sales, which is what Kickstarter is. Even if you're not doing it from a store, you're still selling direct to readers. You're just using Kickstarter as the platform, the medium, to reach them.

Speaker 3: 1:05:23

What I found was that there were the authors that I was looking at. For example, kevin J Anderson did a as an author who dida Kickstarter last year for a. It's actually a kind of a cozy fantasy that he'd written an originally published book one and then had sold it to Amazon back when Amazon was actually publishing things, got the rights back on it, decided that he wanted to put a second book after it, so he put that up on Kickstarter, ended up getting $45,000 for that Kickstarter. And you go Google. If you Google these online, you can find them $45,000. What was crazy was, if you look at the numbers, he only had about 348 backers that that backed him to reach that number.

Speaker 3: 1:06:03

Britt Andrews is another. She's a romance author who recently closed her Kickstarter. She earned over $95,000 on on the next book that she's kick, starting in her series. That was about 700, just over 700 readers, so we're not even hitting the thousand true fans. That's more. I mean $45,000 is more than any traditional publisher is currently offering For as an advance on a book one on any book, unless you are, you know, stephen King. So these authors are out there using Kickstarter and reaching their fans, but we're not even reaching but a few hundred people To be able to make money like that. If you published four books a year and your fans were willing to give you $40,000 or $50,000 up front for each of them, that's a really nice living. So, but those are the super fans. Those are the people that the readers that we we've.

Speaker 3: 1:06:57

You've already moved them into that category of. I'm just gonna buy it. I just just tell me what it is. You don't even never mind. You know Brandon Sanderson, with his Kickstarter. I have four secret novels. I'm not even gonna tell you the titles of them. Shut up and take my money. I'll buy all four of them.

Speaker 3: 1:07:10

I did, I backed all four of them and they're I'm reading them. They're wonderful. No idea, right? His fans. I mean, he did $42 million, which none of us are Brandon Sanderson, but literally $42 million from super fans who don't even care what the titles of the books are or what's in them. They'll just take them here. Take my money. You know we all want to reach that level and that's that's really kind of what we're talking about. And and the authors that that are on book funnel when we see them doing stuff like this, when they're building that like sort of super fandom, that's what they're doing. They're giving them. It's such small things. They're giving them drink recipes. Here's a fun short story. Here's a cute little thing that I did. Here's a coloring page for my you know, for my fantasy book. Here's a map. All of these little things that they're doing that are all just inching people along from. That was a good book to man. I really like that author. They're awesome.

Speaker 1: 1:08:05

Yep.

Speaker 2: 1:08:07

Well, I hate to say it, but I actually have to go pick up my kids here in a few minutes. We should probably Wrap it up here, but, damon, I think we're definitely gonna have to have you on again. I will say just quick note Kickstarter thing I love too is that you guys support all of that. So I just did.

Speaker 2: 1:08:28

My Kickstarter was much smaller dollar value, but I still had, I think, a hundred and or no, I had about a hundred backers and they all got the e-book. And when they had problems and the email didn't work or the whatever, whatever it didn't your support team whoever's behind your support team you know they were quick, johnny on the spot to make sure that my readers got what I had promised them. It made it easy on me, you made it easy on the reader and it's just phenomenal.

Speaker 1: 1:08:56

So, on that note, it's now that I've fangirled everywhere Um Greta, anything else before we, before we sign off, no, I just think that when Damon creates the next thing that he's not telling us about, that we can't wait because we're book funnel super fans. Well, just have to have them back. What? And?

Speaker 2: 1:09:20

there we go.

Speaker 1: 1:09:21

Because, and if we have not convinced you all to go and check out book funnel if you're don't already have an account I don't know what we can say. I think we've we've pretty done done our best to convince you all to go look and that's even just.

Speaker 2: 1:09:35

That's even just scratching the surface of the functionality. I mean, there's so much, there's so much more. I just love you guys.

Speaker 3: 1:09:41

Thank you guys so much, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1: 1:09:44

Okay, so we're. We will have the link to book funnel in the show notes. Is there anything else anywhere else that people should look for what you're doing, damon?

Speaker 3: 1:09:55

No, book funnel calm, we don't try to be tricky about it. So, yeah, we put everything up there. You can find our pricing. You can find our account information. If you do have any questions, you, if you, if you're thinking about joining and you're not sure, you can email support at book funnel calm, our author support people will be happy to answer any of your questions, okay.

Speaker 1: 1:10:15

So and as I said, we will have the links in the show notes For listeners don't forget, if you haven't, to hop on over to offer wheel calm, slash Stuff and pick up our free course seven days to clarify your author purpose. And this course will lead you, one step at a time, for seven days, into a process that will help you create your author mission mission statement and then boil that down into a tagline. And did I mention it was free? I think I did. It's free, go on and check it out and meanwhile, keep your stories rolling.