Indie authors might already be familiar with bookfunnel–after all, it’s been around since 2015 (as the website will proudly tell you!). I’ve been using it just under a year, myself, but it took me a long time to figure out its real strengths.
So what is bookfunnel, exactly? It’s an online tool that authors can use to securely send ebooks to readers. Those ebooks might be advance reader copies (ARCs), newsletter freebies, or even books you’ve sold directly through your author website.
When you use the site, the first thing you do is set up your author profile/account. Then you can add your ebooks and create landing pages for them. The nice thing about bookfunnel is that it’s a streamlined way to offer an ebook in whatever format a reader might prefer–delivered to a library app, for example, or emailed as an attachment or a pdf, etc. The less-nice things about bookfunnel are that it does cost money to create an account, and that sometimes it can make readers jump through extra hoops (clicking through extra links, submitting and resubmitting emails, and so on).
To be fair, that latter issue can be mitigated by the author, I think. When you distribute a book, you can tweak settings–most importantly, whether or not an email or other confirmation is required.
When I first started with bookfunnel, I made about as many mistakes as I could (including clumsy landing pages for readers and general confusion!). But now, nine months later, I’ve got my feet under me–I’m even taking part in a bookfunnel promotion. This is one of the cool bells and whistles of bookfunnel: as authors, we can join group promotions–say, a free cozy mystery promotion, for example 😉 –which act kind of like newsletter swaps. All the books contributed to the promotion show up on a special landing page, and all the authors involved share the link to that page with their audience. Theoretically, it’s a great way to find new people. I’m trying out my first one this month, so I may report back later as to how it went!
My book in the promotion is The Carousel Capers, naturally, which newsletter subscribers already have access to. But if you’d like to check out the other books involved, please do! You can find the promotion here. There’s a ton of books listed, and they’ll be available during the month of June! 🙂
