What Are Newsletter Builders?

Q: What is Bookfunnel / Story Origin / Prolific Works

A: Book funnel, Story Origin, and Prolific Works are all places where you can upload your book and then send it for free to people and these can be really good resources for getting people to sign up for your newsletter. Something you can do is just say, 'Hey, do you want a free book? Here's the book funnel link.’ And it will take them to this beautiful page with your cover and your blurb.

They click download the link, and it says, 'Please sign up for this person's newsletter to receive your book.'

The other thing you can do is make it optional, which is actually often what I do. And I have found that there isn't really a difference between how many people sign up if they don't have the option and how many people sign up if they do have the option. So I tend to give them the option because maybe if they don't want to sign up right away, they'll read the book and then they'll decide they like me and they'll go ahead and sign up at the end of reading the book.

But what these sites also do, which is really wonderful, are group promotion efforts.

And so this would be where you and a bunch of other authors are all offering your books for free in exchange for newsletter subscriptions. And so you're pushing this promo, which has 15, 30, 100, whatever, however many books out to all of your readers, and saying, 'Hey, these authors are all offering free books; check them out.' And so all the readers will come and they'll check out the book that they're interested in, and hopefully subscribe to your newsletter.

These are a great way of cross-promoting if you follow certain guidelines.

I do not sign up for a lot of these. I am very, very picky about which ones I sign up for because I have found in the past that it is not always a good idea to join one just because it's got a million authors, if those authors don't write to the same heat level that I do or the same sub-genres that I do.

So, I would say be very, very focused, especially, you know, I mean, romance, that's a broad category.

If I can niche down, like, very high heat historical romance is where I want to be. If I see something that's focused on clean and sweet historical romance, I'm going to go; those readers are not going to like my books because there's a big difference between high heat romance and no heat romance.

There's a big difference between cozy mysteries and police procedurals.

And I find that some of these group promotions can get very broad in the genre that they're offering. And while there's nothing wrong with that, I have found it pays to be very, very picky and very, very specific about which group promotions I'm signing up for.

Subscribe for more tips!