Behind the Scenes of BookFunnel with Damon Courtney

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hi everyone and welcome back to the AuthorWeal
podcast.
I'm Greta Boris, USA TodayBestselling Mystery Thriller.

Speaker 2 (00:07):
Author and I'm Megan Haskell, award-winning fantasy
adventure author, and togetherwe are the AuthorWeal.
So this week we are incrediblyexcited to be hosting Damon
Courtney, who is the creator ofBookFunnel, on the show.
We've talked about BookFunnelso many times because it's quite
honestly like the one tool thatI never questioned buying.

Speaker 1 (00:32):
I never questioned that bill ever.
I think it was the first toolthat I ever actually bought, I
mean except for maybe Scribner,yeah.

Speaker 2 (00:40):
Yeah, yeah, I was actually very early.
I was in the first under firstthousand subscribers to
BookFunnel.
It was my little acclaimedaffair.

Speaker 1 (00:51):
Wow, can I touch you Next time you're around, Right,
yeah, Anyway.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
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 helpbuild a newsletter, you can get
your free lead magnet out to getpeople on your list and let
people download it and do grouppromos.
But experienced authors use itwith massive success too,
because if you have a bigadvanced review team and things

(01:20):
like that, it helps you keepstay organized.
So we're going to talk aboutall of that and much more on the
show.
But before we get into thedetails, Greta, what's been
going on?

Speaker 1 (01:33):
Well, as you well know, I have been very immersed
in making our new website, asyou 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 thepoint.
We kind of decided we're notbloggers and we don't have a

(01:55):
blog anymore.
It's really easy to find who weare and what we do, so I'm
really happy about it.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yeah, I am too.
Actually, I was pleasantlysurprised at how easy so for
listeners.
We're switching over from ourSquarespace website to a new
platform called Podia, which hasactually been around for a few
years.
But they started out as acourse platform, so eventually
we are going to migrate ourcourses over there as well, but

(02:25):
since then they've alsodeveloped website tools and all
sorts of other tools, so it'skind of like an all-in-one
platform for people who aretrying to be coaches and
entrepreneurs and sell coursesand books and things like that.
So it's kind of perfect for us.
Yeah, it's kind of perfect, butI was pleasantly surprised at
how easy it is to use, and so bythe time this interview airs,

(02:50):
it actually should be live, andso we're excited for you to
check it out.
I can guarantee there will bechanges and tweaks and updates
over the coming weeks and months.
Right now it's kind of thebasics 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 haveclarity on our messaging again.

Speaker 1 (03:15):
Absolutely.
It was a lot of work, but Ilike it.
Y'all should go look.
So, then, the other things thatare going on with me is that
I'm always get every week it'slike, yeah, but I'm still
working on book six and the moreedition series.
I mean, books just take a danglong time to write.
So, yes, that I am doing, and Iwill not bore you with any more

(03:36):
details.
And then the other interestingthing, though, was that we had a
fabulous conversation with ourpodcast producer In fact, we'll
be airing that episode in acouple of weeks and he gave us
some really interesting ideas,and so one of them is that we
are going to record a series ofnanorimotips for you guys.

(03:59):
They'll be released as manypodcast episodes between
episodes, maybe like between ourmajor episodes, and we'll be
releasing them starting thisweek, this Thursday, and whether
you're actually doingnanorimotips or not, even if
you're just trying to get a bookwritten, these episodes are

(04:22):
going to be quick tips designedto get you ready, keep you going
and help you end strong.
So I'm excited about that.

Speaker 2 (04:30):
Yeah, it's going to be a lot of fun.

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yeah, so what are you up to?

Speaker 2 (04:35):
Well, so, in addition to all the author-reel stuff, I
am very excited I got thephysical rewards for my fiction
Kickstarter mailed on Tuesday ofthis 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

(04:58):
many boxes to ship out, ended upbeing like 30, which, ok,
actually that's kind of a lot.
It is, yeah, but it's nothundreds or thousands like some
of the big, massiveKickstarter's out there.
But, that being said, it wasstill a bit of a slog.
I did it.
My daughter helped me createthe boxes and everything, and we

(05:20):
got everything put together andwrapped and made it all pretty.
So that was a process thisweekend.
That's pretty much what I spentmy weekend doing that and
watching football.

Speaker 1 (05:31):
How much wine did you drink in the process of making
your boxes?

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Zero actually.

Speaker 1 (05:36):
Oh wow, I'm impressed .

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah, mostly because I was doing it in the morning.

Speaker 1 (05:42):
Oh, ok, well, I would have been a little worried
about you if you were drinkingyour wine.

Speaker 2 (05:46):
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:48):
We saved that for when we sent our books out.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
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 didwant to remind you all of,
actually, is that the RightAnyway Summit is coming up next
week Actually this week, as thiswill air.
So our presentation is our newmini course why you Need an

(06:17):
Author, missions Statements andthat will air on October 18th at
4 PM Pacific.
So the summit itself is free toattend live.
Or you get 24 hours to accessthe 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

(06:41):
presenters.
Some of the events are live,some are prerecorded, like ours,
but it's going to be veryinteresting.
There's some really interestingpeople on the summit, including
Gabriela Pereira, who weinterviewed in the past, and Sue
Campbell, who's organizing it,who we also interviewed I think
she was our very first podcastinterview and a bunch of other

(07:04):
people.
So check that out.
I will put the link in the shownotes 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 fromyour purchase, but at no cost to

(07:24):
you, no additional cost.
So just full disclosure on that.
But, like I said, we arepresenting, so we honestly
believe in this.
I think there's a lot of greatpeople to learn from, and I'm
going to be attending quite afew of the or watching quite a
few of the presentations as well.

Speaker 1 (07:39):
So yeah, and you don't forget, you can go to
everything live.
Yes, but if you want the allaccess, pass.
That is the link, that is thepaid version and that's where we
would get an affiliate.
Exactly that's it.

Speaker 2 (07:58):
All right, ok, well, I think that's it for now.
So today we are so incrediblythrilled to have Damon Courtney
on the show with us.
We have talked about hisservice, book Funnel, so many
times on the show and we finallyget to pick the brain of the
creator, so I'm really excited.
But in case you don't know,damon Courtney is the creator

(08:21):
and CEO of Book Funnel, ane-book and audiobook delivery
service for authors andpublishers.
As a lifelong software engineer, damon is an expert in just
about everything technical andcan offer unique insight on
publishing as it relates tosoftware and technology.
He is also the self-publishedauthor of his very own fantasy
trilogy and continues to spinstories in his head that he

(08:43):
hopes to someday get around towriting.
So welcome, damon.
How are you doing?

Speaker 3 (08:48):
I'm doing fantastic.
Thank you guys for having me.

Speaker 2 (08:51):
Of course.
Of course it's funny.
We've been talking about havingyou 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 (09:04):
Worth his time.

Speaker 2 (09:05):
Worth your time.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
You've got to build up the suspense a little bit
right.

Speaker 2 (09:09):
Yeah, now exactly.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Exactly.

Speaker 2 (09:12):
So thank you so much for coming on the show.
You know we, as I said, we'vementioned Book Funnel so many
times.
It's literally one of myfavorite products out there for
the writer.
I think pretty much everywriter in the industry should be
a Book Funnel subscriber.
But before we get into all thedetails on what that is, tell us

(09:33):
a little bit more aboutyourself and kind of how Book
Funnel got started and what yourpath was to bringing it all
together.

Speaker 3 (09:43):
Sorry, I've been a software engineer my whole life.
I say that when I was seven Istarted coding.
I wasn't a software engineer, Iwas just learning how to
program, but that's when Istarted, when I was just a
little kid, and so my entirecareer that's been my job.
I love building software, Ilike solving problems, right,
and I've also been a storytellernot somebody who ever wrote to

(10:05):
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 andyou find agents and you do all
this stuff.
And I'm like, ah, that soundstoo bureaucratic, I don't want
to do all of that, right, but Ihave played Dungeons and Dragons
my whole life and I am what isknown in the world of D&D as the

(10:29):
forever DM, meaning that I amthe dungeon master of my group
and have been for over 30 yearsnow.
We still play with the sameguys, the same group of people
that I've played with since Iwas a kid, and so I was always
writing stories in my head.
That's what I talk about whenyou play D&D.
It's really just interactivestorytelling and then, as the,

(10:49):
I'm the writer who's writing thestory as we go along.
So when I discovered indiepublishing, I immediately was
like, oh, that I could do that.
I would love to write a book.
It was always sort of thatsecret dream, like I could write
a book, maybe.
And so I really jumped in and Istarted writing and I ended up
publishing a fantasy trilogywhich, despite the fact that it

(11:10):
did not get a lot of sales, I'mvery proud of it's still.
I still have gone back andre-read it a couple of times and
, you know, kind of went solid.
It's not a bad thing, right.
And Book Funnel came aboutbecause I needed what Book
Funnel did, which was that I wasbuilding a mailing list.
I had written a short, I triedto write a short story that
ended up being a 25,000 wordnovella, and now I was going to

(11:32):
give it away as the sort ofreader magnet to get people to
join my list.
And what Book Funnel doesdidn't exist.
You couldn't.
You could email people, files,and that's mostly what people
did, and I just didn't see thatthat 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

(11:52):
around now Like we.
We launched eight years agothis month, in October.
So it was October 2015, when wefirst opened up and said hey,
you know, we'll take your moneyand we'll do this job.
We think we've solved thisproblem and, you know, we did a
pretty good in the early days.
We hadn't solved it quite aswell as we thought we did, but

(12:13):
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 becauseI needed it for myself and once
I had invested all this time inbuilding it, I thought, you know
, I bet other people, I betother authors, indie authors,
would like this too and would beable to use it.
And that was it.
We put it out there into theworld and said, hey, if anybody,

(12:34):
if you know you find thisuseful, you might want to, you
might want to give it a try.

Speaker 2 (12:41):
Well, and it is.
It is so useful and I have tosay I have to brag a little bit
because I happened to know thatI was number.
I think I was definitely undera thousand, your thousand.
I was one of your earliersubscribers.
I think I was around number 700, plus or minus a little bit.
You looked it up for me once Ithink we did look it up.

Speaker 1 (13:00):
I don't know where I came in, but I can tell you that
I was traditionally published.
When I joined Book Funnelbecause I all of a sudden
recognized the fact that I feltlike I turned over my book to
somebody else.
I turned over everything andnow I had no agency.
I was just sitting aroundtwiddling my thumbs like waiting

(13:21):
for something to happen youknow, and then I recognized the
fact that, well, I could try tobuild my email list.
I can't run ads on books thatdoesn't.
There's no ROI there if you tryit.
But I could start to build myemail list and there was like
how?
And of course I've always had alot of indie author friends.

(13:42):
I was like what do you do?
And everybody screamed BookFunnel at once.

Speaker 3 (13:46):
They were like what the heck's that?

Speaker 1 (13:48):
And it was, yeah, it was fabulous, and I've been a.
Now I scream it at people BookFunnel.
Of course you know.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
You need to send a book to somebody.
Book.

Speaker 1 (13:59):
Funnel, yeah, but I have to say I think Book Funnel
may have been the first likesubscription thing that I like
broke down and paid for.
You know, when you're likebrand new and you're like I
don't want to spend any money onanything, I'm like, oh no, this
is worth it.
So, yes, it's totally amazing.
And before Megan and I continueto just like fangirl all over

(14:22):
the place what we should dobecause there may be listeners
out there who are like, what'sbook funnel?
Like I was, I can't imagine itthese days, but I'm sure you're
out there or you've heard aboutit, but you're not 100% sure how
you would use it we should gothrough all the different things
that book funnel does, and so Iwas thinking, iteration wise,

(14:43):
the first piece of it that youcreated was the delivery, was
that correct?
So tell us more about that, sohow others can use it.

Speaker 3 (14:55):
Yeah, sure.
So when it started it reallywas, you know, I was building a
list.
I had a reader magnet, and thereader magnet is just the free
cookie that you give.
It says, hey, here's a shortstory, here's a bonus chapter,
whatever.
Thanks for joining my list,here you can have it.
And so the first thing that webuilt was just the delivery
process to help people get thatbook onto whatever device they

(15:16):
happen to be reading on, whetherit was a Kindle or an iPhone or
an iPad or an Android, whateverit was.
That that was the originalprocess that we built and that
was the the genesis of the idea,right it just I needed to be
able to make that easier forreaders.
So you know, when you put yourbook up on Amazon or Barnes and
Noble or Cobor, any of thesestores, people buy it and it
goes directly to their app, totheir device, whatever it is

(15:38):
they're going to do.
But that that wasn't a thingyou could do with as an indie,
where you could just sort ofsend a book out to people in
some way.
So the delivery process wasfirst, actually the first
feature that we built after abook funnel launched in 2015,.
So that's where I was able toget into it.
Actually, the first featurethat we built after Bookfinal

(15:59):
launched in 2015 was a featurewe called Certified Mail, which
is for advanced reader copiesdelivery, and that was very
different.
Right, we had the originalfeature, which was just a
landing page people would go toand it would say here you can
download my book over here.
People didn't want that fortheir arcs.
I don't want everybody in theworld going to a page and

(16:20):
getting my book.
I want very specific people.
These people on my list want toget.
I want them to get my book.
I don't want anybody else toget my book.
So we built Certified Mail andthat is where you give Bookfinal
a list of the email addressesyou want us to send the book to
and each person on that listgets their own individual
personalized download link.
That's only just for them andonce they get their copy, that

(16:42):
link dies and they can't use itanywhere else.
So that is something that onlythey're going to get their copy
right.
And we started adding on morefeatures as authors would come
on board.
You know, when I try to explainit to people who really don't
have never heard of us, don'tknow why they might want to use

(17:03):
us, without getting into all thefeatures that we could do,
because in eight years we'veadded a ton of features that we
built but the core of it isanywhere that you can imagine
that you might want to send ane-book or an audiobook to a
reader outside of the sort oftraditional store system.
That's where Bookfinal comes in.
So you're delivering yourreader magnet to people that

(17:25):
join your list.
Bookfinal sends the book andthen helps them get the book to
their device E-book, audiobook,whatever it is.
You are doing direct sales fromyour own web store and you want
somebody needs to deliver thedigital goods.
That's where Bookfinal steps in.
We do that delivery.
You send out advanced readercopies.
You join group promotions andbuild your list and send the

(17:45):
books out that way.
You want a gift to copy?
Say you just want to send acopy to a reader on their
birthday of a book that you havea digital book right.
All of those are the kinds offeatures that we've built into
Bookfinal to allow Indies.
You know we used to say wewanted to give Indies the power
to be on par with what the bigpublishers were doing, but the
truth is big publishers can't dothis stuff right.

(18:07):
We're actually way out in frontof what traditional publishing
can do.
They don't go around giftingbooks to people.
They don't bump into somebodyin an airport and hand them up a
business card that's got a QRcode on the back where they can
go download a free book.
That's not a thing that's outthere, right.
So Indies are actually ahead ofthe game in a lot of this stuff
because of some of the toolsthat not just Bookfinal but

(18:30):
other software providers in theindustry have built.

Speaker 2 (18:35):
Yeah, I want to touch on a couple of the features
that I think our audience willbe the most interested in, and
the first one is actually theARC copies that you mentioned.
That was one of the firstthings that I used it for, and
so back in the day because Iactually have been around long

(18:57):
enough that I remember what itwas like to try and get free
books to readers before Istarted using Bookfinal- I won't
say before Bookfinal existed,because you probably were
already around but I didn't knowabout you yet.
but it was still early days andit was a pain in the butt.
You could give a PDF or a Worddoc, but obviously that could
easily be copied and sharedacross anybody anywhere.

(19:19):
And then trying to side loadthings onto the Kindle device
was just a nightmare.
And if your reader wasn't techieenough, then you had to lead
them through the process to getit done.
It was huge pain, so henceBookfinal, which is awesome,
through the ARC program.
The thing I love that yes, okay, you can send the book to your

(19:43):
ARC team, but not only that,it's watermarked and you keep
track of who's actuallydownloaded it so I can go back
in and remind people hey, didyou know you haven't downloaded
this book yet.
Or hey, let's remind you toactually review the book when
the book comes out.
And you built in all thosefeatures, which was just, it

(20:05):
makes the whole process so muchsmoother, so kind of.

Speaker 1 (20:10):
Can I add one more thing to that too?
Is it because I was just in alittle Facebook conversation the
other day on an author's sitewhere somebody was saying oh
yeah, I sent ARCs out, but youknow 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 thisthrough Bookfinal, because the
reminder emails?

(20:30):
It's a total game changerbecause, as we've had some
experience today, people forgetthings, but getting those emails
, you know pre-scheduled, so Idon't even have to remember when
I'm in the middle of a booklaunch to go, oh, I have to
email everybody.
And then I pre-set it up and itgoes, and I will have between 50

(20:53):
and 75% of the people I sendthe ARC to will review the book,
and it's closer to 75% becauseI do realize then that some of
them are in other countries, soI'm not always seeing it right
away.
You know what I mean.
But I launched with a lot ofreviews now and that was not the

(21:14):
case before I started doingthat.
So it's a huge help, it's agame changer.
So your question, megan.
I'm sorry, I just had tointersperse my little thought.

Speaker 2 (21:24):
Well, no.
So, given that that was kind ofone of the earliest features
you actually developed and Ithink it's gone through a few
iterations, as I recall, overthe years with you know
expansion of the service.
But I guess I'd like to talk alittle bit about the security on
that and how you've been ableto do the watermarking and make

(21:47):
sure that you track.
You know who's opened thingsand what and why.
That's kind of important.
So when you were going throughthe process of development, what
were you thinking as thedeveloper for Book Funnel?
Does that make sense?
Yeah, sure.

Speaker 3 (22:01):
So the I mean, like you know, we had the download
pages, which was our first Iwon't even say feature.
It really was what all BookFunnel was when we first
launched.
And then, like I said, within afew weeks, we of course we were
we had people signing up andthen people if you've ever used
software before, especially ifyou're really friendly and you
let people know that you're asmall company, they don't
hesitate to reach out and emailyou and say you know it'd be

(22:23):
cool, it'd be really cool tobook 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 arealways built on what our authors
are asking us for, and so whenit came to advanced reader copy
delivery, it was a differentequation, right?
Again, if I send out just alink where anybody can download,
I might send it to my art team,but nothing really stops them

(22:45):
from sending it to their friends, who send it to their friends,
who send it to their friends,right?
So we wanted to build somethingthat was was more secure.
So everybody gets their ownindividual link, which is how,
of course, we actually know whatyou're doing.
In our system.
Each person gets their ownindividualized little copy, and
the first thing we built in webuilt in hidden watermarks.
Really, from the very firsttime we launched, we had those

(23:08):
and those were.
They were just littlewatermarks that we it's hard.
They're not even really calledwatermarks technically, but
they're really just little bitsof data that we've we've put
inside of the files so thatwhenever the reader gets them,
if that file ends up hopefullynot, but if it ends up shared
somewhere on a piracy site orit's thrown into a Facebook
group or something like that, wecan track down who sent it.

(23:31):
We know who we sent that bookto originally and we can track
down the person who sent it.
Over time, though, you know,authors were asking for more
protection, especially on arcsmore than anything else.
Right, because this is yourbrand new book.
It's not even out there to thepublic yet, and the worst
feeling in the world is to findthat it's been pirated by

(23:52):
somebody who was on your, yourtrusted arc team.
And you know, maybe they didn'teven do it on purpose, maybe
they were just like oh, I sharedit with a friend because she
loves books too and I thoughtshe 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 punchthat your brand new book you
haven't even published it yet,you haven't made $1 on it yet

(24:14):
and already it's out there forthe whole world.
So over time we were looking atthose and saying, well, how can
we make that better?
So the second thing that weadded actually was just last
year was so visible watermarks,what we call social DRM.
Drm is digital rightsmanagement, but social DRM is
really just a shaming thing,right.
So you can go into Book Funneland you can say hey, anybody who

(24:37):
downloads this copy I want toput on the title page, on the,
at the bottom of the epilogue,at the bottom of the prologue,
you can pick the chapters, youcan have it at every chapter if
you really want to.
I want to put a little messagethat says this copy was
specially prepared for you know,damon at bookfunnelcom, and
that's it.
And then we'll insert that inso that as the person downloads

(24:58):
their copy, all of those littlenuggets get inserted everywhere.
And again, it's sort of a shamething, like don't you go and
share it, because we're going toknow who you did it right, but
beyond that, a few years agoabout three or four years ago we
launched our own app for ebookreading and then for audiobook

(25:18):
listening.
Eventually, when we launchedaudiobooks, and then over time
that we have improved that appand it's just gotten better and
better and better, to the pointI read it in every night, right,
any books that I get, even if Ibuy them.
I buy most of my books on Kobo.
I will take them from Kobo andthen I will put them into my
book funnel app, because that'show I prefer to read all my
books.
I'm a really picky softwaredeveloper and so everything

(25:40):
about our reader is exactly theway I like to read.
But one of the features that welaunched last year was also what
we called restricted delivery,which what that does is.
It allows you to really, youcan use it anywhere in the
system, but it's reallyespecially good for ARCs, and
what it allows you to do is sayhere I want to send this book to
everybody, but they have toread it in the book funnel app

(26:02):
or within what we call our cloudreader, which is anybody could.
You can go to mybookfunnelcomand you can read any of your
books right there in yourbrowser.
You can listen to any of youraudio books right there in your
browser, so you can do it fromthe browser.
You can do it from our app,which is supported on iPhones
and androids aplenty right.
What's nice about that is theydon't get a file that they can
download, they don't get a Moby,they don't get an EPUB, they

(26:24):
don't get a PDF, they don't geta thing that they could then
potentially pass on to somebodyelse, and this makes it so that,
with your ARCs especially, theyhave to read it in our app.
They have to read it in thecloud.
What's kind of cool about thatis because they're in our
ecosystem.
We not as Greta was talkingabout like, we know when you've

(26:47):
viewed the link that you weresent.
So everybody gets an emailthat's here.
Here's your ARC copy.
They click on that link.
We know you viewed it, so weput a little check and so if you
, the author, are looking atyour 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 atit, and then, of course, how
many have actually downloadedthe book, and you can see all of

(27:10):
that data.
When you use a restricted book,though because the everything
remains in our ecosystem we cannot only show you that the book
was delivered.
We continue to show you whatpercentage of the book read
through that they currently are.
So if you've sent out acertified mail campaign with a
restricted book, we can show youyour readers exactly like oh,
wow, she finished that book inone day.

(27:31):
Like in the day she received it, she read the whole thing.
So you can actually not onlytrack when they downloaded it,
but how far through the bookthat they've read, because you
know it's the kind of thing thatAmazon would never give you
right, they're never, ever goingto tell you what your readers
are doing with your data.
But as far as book funnel isconcerned, those aren't my
readers, those are your readers.
You know you're paying me for aservice, but that's not my data

(27:54):
, it's your data, so I don'thave any problem giving you.
Now, you know there's a lot ofother personal data that we have
that I we don't hand out and wedon't give back to authors.
And, of course, book funnelnever does anything with our
reader data.
It all just sits there for ourauthors to have.
But it's kind of neat, you can.
You can actually use certifiedmail for audio books as well and
do the same thing.
It'll tell you how, whatpercentage of the book everybody

(28:16):
is listening as they are goingthrough your arcs.

Speaker 2 (28:19):
Oh my gosh See how long have I been using this and
I did not know that.

Speaker 1 (28:25):
I did not know that either.

Speaker 2 (28:27):
I knew you could send certified and make watermarks,
but I did not know you couldrestrict it and then track how
far they are in the book forarcs.

Speaker 3 (28:36):
I mean that's.

Speaker 2 (28:37):
That's incredible.
That's such valuableinformation, Like for anybody
out there who who maybe doesn'trealize how powerful that is.
One of the things I always askmy art creators is where did you
first stop?
How?
long did it take you to read thebook?
Were you engaged the whole waythrough on a scale of one to
five, right, you know, one beingyou barely finished it and five

(28:58):
being you couldn't put it down.
You ignored your children inyour chores to keep reading.
I literally asked that, butwith this I guess I don't have
to anymore.

Speaker 3 (29:11):
No, you can actually go back to your campaign and
export each day what was goingon.
You can even sort the table bypercentage red.
You can actually see like, ohwow, these 10 people.
They finish the book the daythat they got it or within two
days.
Then here's a group of peoplethat are stuck at the 28 percent
mark.
Then it's a few days later andthey're still not picking it

(29:34):
back up and reading again, andwhether they would be willing to
tell you that or not, right,right, because some readers you
want honesty and you say give mehonesty.
But a lot of people are like,give me honesty, but like don't
be really honest.
And so a reader might be like oh, you know, I've just been busy,
I haven't had time, and that issometimes true.
But if you're also seeing thata lot of people aren't quite
making it past the 30 percentmark, then maybe there's

(29:56):
something about the book that'snot grabbing everybody.

Speaker 1 (29:59):
Yeah, or something at the 30 percent mark you need to
look at too.

Speaker 3 (30:04):
Right.

Speaker 1 (30:04):
A specific spot in the book that it's fascinating.
I did not know that.
Well, I don't make it that theyhave to read the book on book
funnel, you know they can readthat they can download it
whatever.
But that would be interestingif I had a little art team and
they said how many of you arewilling to read on book funnel,
then I could like really trackit.

(30:25):
That's fascinating.

Speaker 2 (30:27):
So here's another question for you, then, and
maybe this is my feature requestfor the day.
But the other thing that isfrustrating for me is that, like
when I send out the files,right, some readers like to read
it on their Kindle, some readit on their Nook or online or

(30:47):
whatever.
Some want to do word files.
Do you track filites oranything like that?
Because if you could have yourart team or your beta readers
actually go through and say, oh,I really liked this quote or,
you know, just have highlightsor things that then they could
pull from or that you could seeas the author, you could almost

(31:08):
like instantize that's not aword, but you know what I mean
the entire like beta readingprocess, not just arts, not just
for reviews, but actually forthe critique and the feedback as
well.
Do you have?

Speaker 3 (31:22):
anything like that.
Or is that feature?
No, is that feature in theworks?
No comment.

Speaker 1 (31:30):
Oh, that's good.

Speaker 2 (31:32):
I like this.
I like where this is going OK.

Speaker 1 (31:34):
I know that's because that could be.

Speaker 3 (31:37):
So we have a lot of power.
When you're reading within ourapp, we, we know what you're
doing right, and Amazon too.
That sounds kind of creepy, butthe truth is like you're using
my system, so I have that.
I have that data available tome and so, of course, unlike
other providers, unlike otherstores again, we don't consider

(31:57):
that our data, so we considerthat your data.
So, as we have that, we want tomake sure that we give that
back to our authors in ways thatis meaningful, so that you can
do something with that.
Yes, that is.
That would be a really coolfeature if somebody built
something like that, megan.

Speaker 2 (32:13):
It would be a fantastic feature.

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Ok, like the beta, the beta reader program, you
know, yeah, yeah, I've seen.

Speaker 3 (32:21):
I've seen a few beta reader.
You know there are a fewdifferent software out there
that can do the beta, that tryto do the beta sort of thing.
The problem that that I havewith those that I've seen is
that they all sort of requireyou to read a web page, right,
they don't.
They don't act like an e-reader.
You don't get all the featuresthat you're used to having,
right, I only read in bed atnight.
I get in bed and I have aboutan hour before I go to sleep.

(32:44):
That is my downtime, that's myleisure time.
I sit and I pull out my phoneand I do all my reading and you
know our app reads like a reader, like you would expect.
Right, some people like to dothe whole scrolly thing.
I do the little page turns, Itap.
You know I do tap, tap, tap andthat's how I prefer to read.
So I've seen some of the betasoftware is out, the software
that are out there that aredesigned so that you can get

(33:05):
sort of beta feedback and thingslike that.
I don't enjoy reading things onmy computer.
I'm often surprised how manypeople do we get?
A lot of what?
Little old ladies who just lovereading on their laptops and I
can't imagine having my biglaptop like sitting in my lap
and reading a book.
That doesn't seem leisurely tome, but maybe it's because my
laptop is a work thing for me,so if I have it open I feel like

(33:28):
I'm working.
But the the bookfrontal app,when, when a feature like that,
if it were to be developed oradded, you would be able to just
drag your finger and highlighta thing just like you would any
other time, and then all of thatkind of data would be shared
back with the author, like you'dbe able to highlight and say,
oh, I found a typo.
And then you know what would bereally cool is like I don't

(33:49):
need to tell you that 50 peoplefound the same typo.
I can just say, hey, obviouslyyou have a typo here, because 50
people are willing to tell youthat you have a typo.
Or, yes, highlight and say,just, you know one of the it.
It's one of those things thatseems stupid.
When it first came out, right,so texting, right, you know we
had texting.
And then, you know, the iPhoneand smartphones came along and

(34:10):
texting got a whole lot betterbecause we didn't have to type
on little numbers.
But then, you know, apple cameout with the whole.
Now you can just tap on a thingand respond with a little heart
, with a little thumbs up, alittle thumbs down, a little ha
ha right, sort of thing, andyou're like that really
necessary, couldn't we justcouldn't you just have replied,
and now I use that all the daytime.

Speaker 2 (34:29):
Like I just.

Speaker 3 (34:30):
I highlight and I say you love it, or thumbs up or
whatever, right.
So how neat would that be tojust, like you were saying,
highlight a quote and just giveit a heart.
I don't need to type out awhole thing, I just I wanted to
tell you that, man, I love thisquote.
Or man, I love this dialogueright here.
That would be really cool ifsomebody built that.

Speaker 2 (34:46):
It would be amazing yes.

Speaker 1 (34:48):
And because I have a certain segment of my arc team
that I call my typo hunters, andit's an ever growing group and
they are all reading indifferent ways on different
devices, and so it's like Ialways prepare myself that I am
going to have at least one dayand I line up all their emails

(35:10):
and I go from one to the otherto 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 sameone, but you just got to double
check.
And then every once in a whileI get one from somebody who they
don't even give me page numbersor chapter headings.
They're just like give me thesentence.

(35:33):
It's like it's a bug.
How do I find that sentence?

Speaker 2 (35:37):
Control F.
What are you talking about?
That's how I do it.

Speaker 1 (35:43):
Right, it's crazy.
So anyway, yes, that would bean incredibly helpful feature.
I echo Megan's If somebodycreated that, I would be happy
to tell you what.

Speaker 2 (35:56):
So the next, the next feature that I wanted to talk
about, because I do think thisis incredibly useful,
particularly for newer authorswho are still growing their
backlist, but also their, theiraudience and their readership.
Let's talk a bit about thegroup promos feature and
functionality, because now Iwill say, like I go through

(36:19):
periods where I join a ton ofthe of the promos and then I
stop for a while and then I comeback and I do a ton of them
again and then I stop for awhile, and I do that for reasons
.
I have reasons for this, but ingeneral, 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

(36:40):
funnel landing pages.
But let's talk a little bitabout the development on that
and how how that's helpedauthors network.
So where did that come from?
How did you get that started?
What was your inspiration?
Was that?
It Was that a interview wheresomebody said do you do this and

(37:01):
you went not yet?
Or how did that come about?

Speaker 3 (37:04):
That came about mostly because we saw authors
were already starting to do this.
Right, and this is the kind ofthing where where, when I first
built Book Funnel, authors wereout there sending books to
readers by just sending them aDropbox link or a Google Drive
link with an ePub and a Moby.
And it's like, if you see thathappening, you're you're already

(37:25):
looking at a thing and you'regoing 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 apage on their website, right.
So you, they, you would sayyou'd have some Megan Haskell
dot com slash promo and youwould set up a promo and you
would ask all these otherauthors and they would give you
their book funnel links.

(37:45):
And you're creating like a pagein WordPress with book covers
and all of this sort of stuffand it's just.
It's just a page that has allthese different book covers for
everybody.
So we saw that authors werealready out there doing this.
They were doing this on theirown websites, and then you'd
have like I don't know how tobuild a web page, I can't do
that right.
And so immediately we said OK,there's a need for this.
We already have all the bookfunnel links.

(38:07):
We're book funnel.
So at first we just built abundle page where you could just
kind of paste a bunch of linksin there and we would do that.
And then we very quickly sawwell, 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 tojoin.
And we were trying, we wereseeing all of that happening and
when, ok, we can solve thatproblem too.

(38:28):
We can just give them a placewhere they can communicate with
each other and people can joinin.
So that was I mean it's again,I've said it before, but all of
our features really come aboutbecause either our authors are
asking directly like saying hey,you know, it would be cool if
it did this, or we are seeingtrends in the industry and we
look at what they're doing andgo.
We can solve that problem moreelegantly than what people are

(38:51):
doing right now.
And so group promos came aboutbecause some authors were asking
us for it, but really more thananything, they were already out
there doing it.
It was just really hard to do,right.
Somebody had to be the webdesigner, somebody had to own
the domain, and so it's already.
You're kind of not going to.
You know, I'm joining yourpromo but I'm sending my traffic

(39:15):
to Megan Haskell dot com, whichis, you know, you're a lovely
person, but it's not a placewhere people will be like, oh,
I've been to that site before, Iknow what that is.
Whereas reader trust, bookfunnel trust among readers is
very high.
They know exactly who we are,they know what we do, they know
that where their books are goingto go, they know how to use our
system.
So there's a lot of trust.

(39:36):
When they see there's a page onbook funnelcom, they go oh okay
, I know what that is and I knowwhat that's going to be.
And so we built the grouppromos feature so that just to
make a lot of that easier.
Then we started seeing how niceit was.
We have a lot of authors onbook funnel and man, wouldn't it
be nice if they could just sortof work together, find each
other right?
That's the biggest problem.

(39:57):
You have all the you know.
If you think you know all thegenres of books out there.
You can't even imagine how manythere are, and I mean, we've
been doing this for eight yearsand even genres that eight years
ago were sort of and nobodyreally.
Yeah, what is that?
That's not a thing, right?
I was actually talking to afriend yesterday.
Cozy Fantasy is now likestarting to come into its own

(40:21):
and become a thing.
Legends and lattes by TravisBaldry he's got his second book
coming out Orconomics by JayZachary Pike.
These were like fantasy, butnot end of the world fighting to
kill the bad guys, sort offantasy, more like a.
Oh well, you know, my life atthe venturing is over and now I
have this cute little communitythat I'm building, but it's

(40:41):
still dragons and ogres andwizards and stuff, and that was
not a thing years ago and nowit's barely a thing.
But that the same thing wastrue of paranormal cozy
mysteries.
Cozy mysteries, you know, wehad Agatha Christie long back in
the day and then traditionalpublishing went and nobody wants
to read those anymore, exceptthat people did.
There were lots of people outthere who still wanted to read

(41:03):
them and Indies came along andsaid, well, I want to read those
books and if nobody's going towrite them, I'll make them so.
But once they started doing that, how do you find other cozy
mystery authors?
I write paranormal cozymysteries and I need to find
others because your readers arelike my readers and if we can
find some way to share it, thenwe can both find some way to
share it and we can both findsome new readers from that.

(41:24):
So we built the board, what weoriginally 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
.
But it's just a great way tofind other authors who are
writing the kinds of books thatyou're writing, and if you join

(41:45):
in with them, that means thattheir readers are already
predisposed to liking your booksbecause you write small town,
clean Christian romance.
Well, guess what?
All 30 of these other authorsthey write the same thing and
even if each of you only has asmall list, you have a lot of
crossover.
You have a lot of that.
Their audience has never seenyour books before and readers

(42:08):
are always looking for new booksto read.
So you can now be on bookfunnel.
You just click group promos andthen start scrolling through it
.
There are thousands of promosthat you can find in all
different genres to join in.

Speaker 1 (42:19):
I'm in one right now.
I have to schedule it, send itto my list.
Yeah, I think I used primarilybook funnel to build the first
few thousand readers you know onmy mailing list.
I think I'm trying to eventhink if I use I think I did one

(42:44):
or two from other bookplatforms like that.
I will not be named in thisinterview but I always came back
to book funnel being myfavorite for many reasons.
I think that one of the thingsthat I love about it is that you
can look at the other authors.

(43:05):
You know, the longer I've beendoing this, the pickier I get
about who I'm going to send tomy 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 thatpromotion and I can kind of
decide is that a group ofauthors that I feel is close

(43:28):
enough to me and similar enoughthat I, or professional looking
enough?
The covers are professional,looking enough, whatever my
criteria happens to be that I amhappy to send that to my
readership.
So that's another great feature, because early in my early in
my writing career in fact it wasmy very first published book I

(43:52):
asked my publisher if I could dothis author cross promotion and
it was one that was on some ofthese websites and everything.
And she said, yeah, sure.
So it said it was I writemurder mystery and suspense and
stuff.
So it said it was for romance,romantic suspense and just plain

(44:13):
old suspense.
So I was like, really, you know, because it seems pretty
diverse to me, and she said, ohno, 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 rabbittrail.
This is why Book Funnel is sohelpful.
Anyway, so I pay my money, Isign up.
I do that.
The day the promo comes out,I'm like, no, absolutely no,

(44:38):
it's all naked men, chests.
All of it and mine is called theMargin of Lust, but there's no
lust in it.
I mean it's a total misnomer.
It's being retitled andrepackaged, but because I was
writing the Seven Deadly Sins.
So, for years I got also botson Barnes Noble with Gay Erotica

(45:02):
, which mine is.
No sex in it, it's just amurder mystery.
And then I would get badreviews because people would be
like upset because there was nosex in the book.
So people.

Speaker 3 (45:12):
It says lust, but there's no gay sex.

Speaker 1 (45:16):
Exactly, there's no any kind of sex, so it was just
a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (45:23):
It's more that she's not getting any.
Exactly, exactly.

Speaker 1 (45:29):
It's called the Margin of.
Lust, because she ain't gettingany Right so but the point being
that is such a helpful tool sothat when you can actually see a
preview page and you canactually see the authors in
advance that you're talkingabout cross promoting with, I
mean that to me is invaluable.

(45:49):
After my horrible experiencethat took like three letters
from my publisher to BarnesNoble 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 aredirty, I was just an expression.
Sorry, just throw that in.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
So and that's that's the thing is is, like, all the
promotions, all the group promoson book funnel are organized by
authors just like you.
So, which means some of themand some of them are really good
at it and some of them arereally strict with their rules
and they say, hey, no man chestcovers nothing that's not safe
for work.
This is a you know they're verytight with it Like this is for

(46:32):
suspense and thrillers.
So if you submit anythingthat's not anywhere in that
genre, you're going to getkicked out and you will find,
you know, the more promos thatyou 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 alittle bit.
Running one promo a month isnot terrible.

(46:52):
I see authors that that dive inand when you're first getting
started, it's probably okay tojoin several, but you want to be
careful that you're not justjoining tons and tons and tons
and tons of them.
You will exhaust your own listas well as exhausting the list
of other authors that are outthere.
So, giving it a break everyonce in a while and then coming
back to it.
But you'll also find organizersand authors that you really

(47:12):
enjoy working with, because theyalways do a good job of making
sure that all the books matchthe right genre, that everybody
in the promo has a pretty solidlist or has a good reputation.
So Book Funnel tracks yourreputation, how many times you
are sharing with your list, sothat we can then tell other
organizers when you join hey,this person they share, right?

(47:35):
Because that's ultimately whatwe want when you join in a group
promo.
We just want to make sure thateverybody is doing their part,
even if you have a small list.
It's not a crime to have asmall list.
It's kind of crappy if you sayyou're going to share with your
list and then you don't share atall, and that is the thing that
we're, that organizers aretrying to avoid.
So they can see all of that.

(47:55):
They can see your reputation onBook Funnel and how many promos
you've been in, and then sortof the average of how many
clicks, how many shares you getanytime that you share with your
list.

Speaker 2 (48:07):
Yeah, so, damon, do you have to have a full length
novel on Book Funnel.
What else can you share?

Speaker 3 (48:16):
Well, megan, actually I'm glad you asked, I'm glad
you asked that question.
What a fantastic question thehonestly the biggest things that
we see on Book Funnel.
Nobody's so for a while.
There are people we would havesome authors that give away a
full novel and I will say, ifyou have a big backlist, it's
not a terrible idea to,especially if it's a Book One.

(48:36):
If you've got a 10 book deepseries, that's, that's backlist.
And you want to give away BookOne, by God, go for it.
You will have a lot of readerswho love that.
But that's not what most authorson Book Funnel are doing with
their reader magnets.
What they're mostly using arenovella length or short stories.
The biggest thing is you wantto try to make it part of what

(48:59):
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 toreaders who have already read
your stuff.
If you have a four book seriesthat you're working on and you
have this prequel novella thatyou've put out there as your
reader magnet, that works really, really well as a reader magnet

(49:21):
because if somebody's alreadyread your Book One and that the
end of Book One.
The offer is hey, find out.
I read fantasy, so all myexamples 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 hearabout the first time these, this
duo, ever went on an adventuretogether, read the prequel and
the prequel happens before allof that.

(49:43):
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 theprequel and just find out what
happened beforehand.
But it also works really wellif to join in things like group
promos, because nobody whohasn't read Book One can still
enjoy the prequel and thenhopefully be enticed to go.
I like these characters.

(50:04):
I think I want to go pick upand buy Book One and move on
with the rest of the series,right?
So there's two different.
You know we see them as twodifferent sort of things.
There's sort of the readermagnet, which is this thing
works really really well forsomebody 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

(50:25):
for people who've just neverheard of you.
I'll give you an example of areader magnet.
One thing that we see lots ofauthors doing, particularly in
romance, as a favorite tool iswhat we call an extended
epilogue or a bonus chapter.
So they get to the end of thebook and there's a bonus chapter
, right, something that happenslater.
The couple gets there happily,ever after they go off into the
sunset, yada, yada.

(50:45):
But if you want to find outwhat a year later they bought
them when they bought theirfirst puppy, oh, it's
pandemonium, right, and so it'sjust like a two, three thousand
word short story.
But it's a bonus chapter that'smeant to be tacked on to the
end of the book so that readersare immediately enticed to go
and get that reader magnet.

(51:05):
But it's not a very valuablelead 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 thesecharacters are, and so something
like that works really great asthe reader magnet.
You put that in the back ofyour book to help build your
list organically, but it's notthe kind of thing that you would
put into a group promo Otherthings that authors use.

(51:27):
Now that we do audio books andshort audio, we have more and
more authors that are startingto do their reader magnets,
their short stories, theirnovellas, in audio, having their
narrators also record, you know, at a 30 minute an hour long
short audio that they're nowoffering up to their list.
What's really neat about thatis that you know if you're big

(51:48):
in audio and a lot of peopledon't have the money to have all
their books in audio but if youdo have your things in audio
and people join your list, youcan say, hey, thanks for joining
my list.
Here is the bonus thing thatyou get Click here If you wanted
an ebook, click here If youwanted an audio.
What's neat about that is thatyou can actually track which way

(52:08):
they go.
Right, if you send something tome, I'm an ebook reader, I
don't like audio books, so I'mgoing to click that ebook and
I'm going to download that andI'm going to read it on my phone
.
But if somebody who's intoaudio gets that same email,
they're going to click audio.
Now you can start to segmentyour lists and say, ah, these
people over here, these are myaudio people when they were

(52:28):
offered a choice betweendownloading the audio or the
ebook.
Of my thing, they picked audio,and the reason that's important
is if you're not able to getyour audio out at the same time
as you're doing your paperbacksand your ebooks and a lot of
authors can't right, they'rebecause they use the money from
the sales of that, the earlysales of their ebook, to
bankroll the audio book thatthey're going to then produce,

(52:51):
or sometimes audible, and allthe rest of them are just really
darn slow at getting your audiobook 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 everybodywho'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 becausesome of those audio listeners
well, they'll go pick up theebook if it's available, but

(53:12):
they would have given you a fullprice audio sale if you had
waited to tell them when the newbook was available in audio.
But you can do that.
If you start to segment yourlist a little bit, that gets a
little.
We all went off in the weeds alittle bit there.
But when you talk about thekinds of things that you can
deliver with BookFunnel and whatauthors are using.
Most of them are not givingaway full books and, in fact,

(53:33):
unless you have a really bigbacklist, I don't recommend that
at all.
Even if you've got five or sixbooks, you probably shouldn't be
giving away BookOne.
It's better to give them anovella.
What we've actually seen fromreaders is, if they don't know
who you are, if they've neverheard of you, readers are really
willing to give you a shot ofabout eight to 10,000 words.

(53:54):
So you give them a novella andmost readers can burn through
that in an hour or so.
If I pick up a new book, I onlyneed one, maybe two chapters to
decide whether you're going tobe the right author for me,
whether you write the style ofwriting that I like and I enjoy.
So readers don't need an entirebook to figure out that they

(54:15):
want to go on and buy your books.
So an eight to 10,000 wordnovella they read that and they
go, hey, I like this writer, andthey jump on.
And then immediately, of course, if you're doing it right, your
reader magnet should have rightin the back a link to then
immediately go and buy BookOne,because the only way they got
this reader magnet is if theygot onto your list.

(54:35):
So while in the back of BookOneyou might have a newsletter,
your mailing list sign up youknow that the only way they
could have read this readermagnet, this novella, is if
you're already on my list.
So when you get to the end ofthat, immediately I want to send
you to BookOne on books to reador Amazon If you're exclusive.
However, you want to do itbecause if you got to the end of

(54:58):
this and you liked it, you'regoing to like BookOne, where the
story continues.

Speaker 2 (55:02):
Yeah Well, and I've used all of those methods myself
.
I do want to point out oneother thing, though, too.
That was kind of mind-blowingor game-changing for me.
Last time I saw you in person Ithink we had talked, or maybe
it was a couple of times ago,but we had talked about this
PDFs, just PDFs, because what Ihave done and it's been not

(55:26):
super successful, but it doeshelp is cocktail recipes.
I, as a link in my books, Ihave the cocktail that she makes
and you can go download therecipe with sign-up, and it's
just a PDF, and I made it pretty, or at least to the best of my
ability.
I'm not a graphic designer, butI did the best I could.

(55:47):
I think it was all right.
So you can actually, as anotheradd-on to broaden the reader
experience, you can offer otherdigital downloads through
BookFunnel for subscription anduse that to expand your list and
expand that world, thatimmersiveness of that world.

(56:09):
So just another.
I mean that was kind of like,oh my gosh, I never even thought
about that until we had beentalking one day and it was
brilliant, and so I really likedthat ability as well.
So thinking beyond just booksbut shorter samples, excerpts or
other things too.

(56:29):
To kind of draw people in is, Ithink, a great method.

Speaker 3 (56:33):
Once you start seeing what other.
So I have a talk that I givethat I kind of detail reader
magnets and things like that,because once you start seeing
what other authors are out theredoing, you start going, oh,
that's a really neat idea.
It's not exactly what I coulddo, but I could turn it into
this and do that.
You talk about drink recipes.
I think that's fantastic.

(56:55):
We have authors that put outcookbooks of their oh, the
characters in my little romance.
They live in this little townwhere there's this wonderful
little diner and I put outrecipes from the diner.
Oh, here's the chicken friedsteak that you can get from the
such and such diner.
And each one of those can bejust little things that you give
and they serve two purposes.

(57:16):
One is getting new people ontoyour list.
If people love your stuff, thenthey go sign up for your list
because they wanna get the cutelittle cookbook or the cute
little recipe from your favoritelittle diner.
But if they're already on yourlist, all of those little things
are just one more thing that ishelping to move people, move
readers, along the path of froma lead to a reader to a fan, to

(57:40):
a super fan, and a super fan issomebody who's going to buy
everything you write till theend of time, and that is
ultimately where we want all ofour readers to be right.
So I'm a Swifty.
I'm a Taylor Swift fan.
My wife and I went to the Arestour out in LA and she is
massively good at just creatingmassive superfans and so much of

(58:03):
it is just her being her right.
People like she seems genuineand sincere and so people really
like her.
But I mean, like I've likedplenty of artists in my life
that I thought, oh, I like theirstuff, 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 areauthors that I have read since I

(58:24):
was a teenager, that I stillread today.
I am a super fan.
Any book that they publish I'mgoing to go out and buy, and
that, of course, is taken forsome of those authors.
That took many, many years forme to go from being like, oh
yeah, I like their stuff, that'spretty good.
If they have a book out, I'llflip through it and see if it
looks like I'm interested in it,but once I fall into the super

(58:44):
fan category, I don't even carewhat it is, so I'll pre-order it
site unseen.
And that is where we want allof our readers to get to, and we
have power that, like I thinkabout those authors that I've
read for 30 years, I've nevertalked to those people.
There was no way that I couldreach out to Ari Salvatore you
know 14 year old me and just belike I really like your books.

(59:05):
Now you literally can.
He's on Twitter X, whatever thehell we're calling it today.
You can just go and send him amessage.
You can email, you can find hisemail address.
You can just go email peopleand as Indies, we have the power
to foster relationships withour readers that have never
existed in history.
Right, you really can.
Just they can.
You know when I was setting upmy list, which I haven't written

(59:27):
in many, many years, but youcan just email me.
Here's my email address Drop mea line, tell me how much you
like my book.
I would love to hear from you.
And when you email thosereaders back and say thank you
so much, I'm so glad that youlove the book.
Hey, here's a recipe.
You know, here's a freecookbook.
Here is a short story, all ofthose little things.
Just move them one inch closerto that super fan side of the

(59:51):
list.

Speaker 1 (59:52):
You know David Gogren , I get his email.
Probably a David Gogren superfan, not of his fiction, but
it's nonfiction.
I probably need to read hisfiction.
I never have, but anyway he wastalking about that whole
movement he does in his book.
You know, from something tosuper fans Rangers to super fans

(01:00:12):
yeah Right, strangers.
I knew there was a word I wasmissing Strangers to super fans.
But just the cost.
I mean people.
We don't stop to think aboutthis.
As writers, we're alwayslooking for the bigger audience,
the more audience get more, butthe cost of getting somebody
onto your list to buy your firstbook is so high compared to the

(01:00:38):
cost of getting somebody who'son your list who already likes
your books to buy the next book,like if we just thought even
just dollars and cents.
It makes so much sense to focuson our readership, on our
readership base Plus.
It's darn fun, like when I get,because I write this kind of

(01:01:01):
crazy mortician murder mystery.
She's studying to be amortician and she has this weird
connection to the dead.
When she touches their hair shegets their final sensations
Anyway, and it's got a lot ofhumor in it.
I've actually had now three orfour different readers email me
and say you changed.

(01:01:23):
I was at a funeral of arelative and it changed the
whole experience for me becauseI started giggling because I was
imagining your characterdownstairs in the basement
trying not to touch anybody'shair and all this stuff.
And one of them said I am lessafraid of death.
Now, when somebody writes yousomething like that, what do you

(01:01:47):
want to do?
You cannot wait to sit down andwrite the next chapter of the
next book.
So I mean just yes, it's adollars and cents thing and
we're all talking business.
But just for our emotionalsanity as writers, it's like to
have that kind of back and forthwith your readers.
It just keeps you going.

(01:02:07):
It's just an amazing thing andI do love.
I do need to do more of thatsend them a short story.
So I do all those things, butnot always as consistently as I
should, because I get Busy.
I got to keep checking my autoresponders.
What is this auto responder doagain?

Speaker 3 (01:02:29):
You know that kind of thing, but we all have a
limited set of bandwidth, andthis is this is something that
that my wife, my wife Julie,runs Book funnel with me, and
this is something that we'realways talking about is we have
this much bandwidth, we havethis much time to get something
done.
What can we apply our time to?
That is going to be the mostvaluable.
What's fascinating to me,though, is something I've

(01:02:50):
started to do, so book funnel wedeliver direct sales from
authors, websites and thingslike that too, which I haven't
really talked about, but I wasjust at the novelist Inc
conference Last week, and ormaybe it was two weeks ago now.
It's all sort of blurredtogether, but anyway, they I
gave a talk about direct sales,and one of the points that that

(01:03:10):
I had that I put up on thescreen and I was showing people
was you know, there's this SethGodin, you know made popularized
it, but it was actually anothersomebody else who said it
originally, and I don't know theoriginal author, but they
talked about the thousand truefans.
Right, you know, if you, as anartist, if you can get a
thousand true fans, then you canmake a living for the rest of
your life, because it's not justthe thousand true fans.

(01:03:32):
It's that those thousand truefans will go out and evangelize
you and talk about you to otherpeople.
Those are the people who arelike oh my god, have you read
Damon Courtney's books?
Oh my god, I think you wouldlove them.
You should read them, right.
And yet I used to think thatthat was like oh, you really
need the thousand true fans, butthen they also need to go out
and talk you up and sell yourbooks and do all that sort of
stuff so that you can make moremoney.
What was fascinating was when Iwas putting together all my

(01:03:54):
slides for my talk on directsales, I went out and found book
funnel, does I mean?
Basically, we talked about itearlier, but anywhere you want
to send ebooks and audiobooks,we're probably there doing it.
One of those places isKickstarter.
A lot of authors are startingto use Kickstarter to launch new
books and, of course, one ofthe big things that they offer
is you know, if you back me for$5, you get a copy of the ebook

(01:04:16):
when it's ready.
If you back me for $20, you getthe audiobook when it's ready.
However, they want to do itright and then they might do
special paperbacks, signedpaperback editions.
They might do a beautifulhardcover edition, things like
that.
So I started looking at, I waspulling up screenshots and
things that I could put onto myslides to try and demonstrate
what authors were out theredoing with direct sales, which

(01:04:36):
is what Kickstarter is.
Even if you're not doing itfrom a store, you're still
selling direct to readers.
You're just using Kickstarteras the platform, the medium, to
reach them.
What I found was that there werethe authors that I was looking
at.
For example, kevin J Andersondid a as an author who dida
Kickstarter last year for a.
It's actually a kind of a cozyfantasy that he'd written an

(01:04:59):
originally published book oneand then had sold it to Amazon
back when Amazon was actuallypublishing things, got the
rights back on it, decided thathe wanted to put a second book
after it, so he put that up onKickstarter, ended up getting
$45,000 for that Kickstarter.
And you go Google.
If you Google these online, youcan find them $45,000.
What was crazy was, if you lookat the numbers, he only had

(01:05:20):
about 348 backers that thatbacked him to reach that number.
Britt Andrews is another.
She's a romance author whorecently closed her Kickstarter.
She earned over $95,000 on onthe next book that she's kick,
starting in her series.
That was about 700, just over700 readers, so we're not even

(01:05:42):
hitting the thousand true fans.
That's more.
I mean $45,000 is more than anytraditional publisher is
currently offering For as anadvance on a book one on any
book, unless you are, you know,stephen King.
So these authors are out thereusing Kickstarter and reaching
their fans, but we're not evenreaching but a few hundred

(01:06:04):
people To be able to make moneylike that.
If you published four books ayear and your fans were willing
to give you $40,000 or $50,000up front for each of them,
that's a really nice living.
So, but those are the superfans.
Those are the people that thereaders that we we've.
You've already moved them intothat category of.
I'm just gonna buy it.
I just just tell me what it is.

(01:06:24):
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 thetitles of them.
Shut up and take my money.
I'll buy all four of them.
I did, I backed all four of themand 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 $42million from super fans who

(01:06:46):
don't even care what the titlesof the books are or what's in
them.
They'll just take them here.
Take my money.
You know we all want to reachthat level and that's that's
really kind of what we'retalking about.
And and the authors that thatare on book funnel when we see
them doing stuff like this, whenthey're building that like sort
of super fandom, that's whatthey're doing.

(01:07:07):
They're giving them.
It's such small things.
They're giving them drinkrecipes.
Here's a fun short story.
Here's a cute little thing thatI did.
Here's a coloring page for myyou know, for my fantasy book.
Here's a map.
All of these little things thatthey'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 (01:07:27):
Yep.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
Well, I hate to say it, but I actually have to go
pick up my kids here in a fewminutes.
We should probably Wrap it uphere, but, damon, I think we're
definitely gonna have to haveyou on again.
I will say just quick noteKickstarter thing I love too is
that you guys support all ofthat.

(01:07:49):
So I just did.
My Kickstarter was much smallerdollar value, but I still had, I
think, a hundred and or no, Ihad about a hundred backers and
they all got the e-book.
And when they had problems andthe email didn't work or the
whatever, whatever it didn'tyour support team whoever's
behind your support team youknow they were quick, johnny on

(01:08:10):
the spot to make sure that myreaders got what I had promised
them.
It made it easy on me, you madeit easy on the reader and it's
just phenomenal.

Speaker 1 (01:08:18):
So, on that note, it's now that I've fangirled
everywhere Um Greta, anythingelse before we, before we sign
off, no, I just think that whenDamon creates the next thing
that he's not telling us about,that we can't wait because we're

(01:08:39):
book funnel super fans.
Well, just have to have themback.
What?
And?

Speaker 2 (01:08:43):
there we go.

Speaker 1 (01:08:44):
Because, and if we have not convinced you all to go
and check out book funnel ifyou're don't already have an
account I don't know what we cansay.
I think we've we've pretty donedone our best to convince you
all to go look and that's evenjust.

Speaker 2 (01:08:57):
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 (01:09:04):
Thank you guys so much, I appreciate it.

Speaker 1 (01:09:07):
Okay, so we're.
We will have the link to bookfunnel in the show notes.
Is there anything else anywhereelse that people should look
for what you're doing, damon?

Speaker 3 (01:09:17):
No, book funnel calm, we don't try to be tricky about
it.
So, yeah, we put everything upthere.
You can find our pricing.
You can find our accountinformation.
If you do have any questions,you, if you, if you're thinking
about joining and you're notsure, you can email support at
book funnel calm, our authorsupport people will be happy to
answer any of your questions,okay.

Speaker 1 (01:09:38):
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, slashStuff and pick up our free
course seven days to clarifyyour author purpose.
And this course will lead you,one step at a time, for seven

(01:10:00):
days, into a process that willhelp you create your author
mission mission statement andthen boil that down into a
tagline.
And did I mention it was free?
I think I did.
It's free, go on and check itout and meanwhile, keep your
stories rolling.

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