The Publishing Performance Show

Damon Courtney of BookFunnel - From Free Books to Lifetime Readers: Mastering the Author Book Funnel

• Teddy Smith • Episode 96

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Damon Courtney is the creator of BookFunnel, a platform that helps authors deliver digital books to readers and build marketing funnels. A former self-published fantasy author who published a trilogy in 2011, Damon created BookFunnel to solve the problem of easily delivering free books to readers' devices. What started as a simple solution for getting ebooks onto Kindles has evolved into a comprehensive platform that now delivers approximately 150,000 books per day and offers tools for author collaboration, group promotions, and building reader relationships.

In this episode:

  • What a book funnel is and how it differs from traditional marketing
  • The reader journey from discovery to becoming a superfan
  • How to create effective reader magnets and lead capture systems
  • Using group promotions to collaborate with other authors
  • Author swaps for cross-promotion opportunities
  • Different strategies for fiction vs. nonfiction funnels
  • The lifetime value of readers and how to calculate it
  • Creating bonus content to capture readers at the end of books
  • Why giving away multiple books can be more effective than one
  • Building organic vs. inorganic traffic through book funnels


Resources mentioned:


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[00:00:00] Teddy Smith: Hi everyone and welcome to the Publishing Performance Show. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Damon Courtney, who's the creator of Book Funnel. So thank you for joining me, Damon. 

[00:00:14] Damon Courtney: Absolutely. Happy to be here. 

[00:00:16] Teddy Smith: So tell me a bit about yourself. Like what got you to starting BookFunnel in the first place?

[00:00:20] Damon Courtney: So I actually self-published a fantasy trilogy. This was back in 2011 when publishing was, I won't say easier, although, and some people would tell you so, but it was certainly a lot simpler. there weren't as many things that you had to do, and anybody coming into publishing now kind of has to learn so many things as they come in.

[00:00:37] Damon Courtney: But back in the heady days and the gold rush days of 2011, 2014, I had published a fantasy trilogy and had given no thought whatsoever to marketing. Or even what that was or how you did it or anything. I was just like, I'm gonna write a book about dragons 'cause because I love dragons. And so I had done that and then, decided to start learning marketing and started learning about funnels and how all that sort of stuff works and the prevailing advice at the time, and it's still pretty true today for most authors getting in.

[00:01:05] Damon Courtney: It's like to build your funnel, you know, offer readers some sort of. Free thing. Now we call them reader magnets, but back in the day it was just like, you know, a short story, a novella, something like that. And I thought that was a great idea. So I went off and I wrote a novella and decided that I would give that away for free.

[00:01:21] Damon Courtney: And then came to find out that there really wasn't a good way to do that. Everybody at the time that the biggest authors in the game were all just emailing people. EPUBs and PDFs and while I thought that was probably fine for somebody like me who's a fairly techie, I've been an engineer my whole life, um, I kind of had this thought like, I don't know that other like mortals are gonna know how to get this onto a Kindle.

[00:01:44] Damon Courtney: And so started looking into that, figuring, well, I'll just write up a little set of instructions. And then as time went on. I would hear more and more. They're like, oh, so I'm not the only one who has this problem. Right. Other people have discovered this. And then I'm an engineer, so I can solve that problem.

[00:01:58] Damon Courtney: then went off and tried to solve it. And as it happened, I think we did a pretty good job. We're still here 10 years later and doing, probably 150,000 books a day now. I mean, it's a lot crazy. We deliver, and audiobooks too, that got added much later. But like, we're eBooks, audiobooks, we deliver a lot of stuff every day.

[00:02:15] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Are the books you wrote for yourself originally, are they still available to purchase? 

[00:02:19] Damon Courtney: They are, yeah. I wanna make a project out of reformatting them. 'cause I mean I really, 2011 we were all just using Scrivener, which is fine. I'm not it, it's actually a great writing tool as a formatting tool.

[00:02:30] Damon Courtney: It was always sort of limited, but you know, it made a proper eub and it looked okay. Now we have tools like Vem and Atticus that can just make gorgeous books. And so I've always had it sort of on my project list, like yeah, I probably need to just reformat them 'cause they are still. Up and available and you can find them.

[00:02:45] Damon Courtney: Nobody does because now you know, if you don't do any marketing at all, your books are just gonna sink to the bottom and no one will let you find them. 

[00:02:52] Teddy Smith: Yeah, great. So I think for a lot of people listening to this, some of the terminology you've just said, may be not. Understandable. So like, what is a funnel?

[00:02:59] Teddy Smith: What does that mean? 

[00:03:00] Damon Courtney: So, you know, funnel is, is a marketing term, right? Yeah. we use it, it's funny 'cause you're right, we use all these lingos and things that we use as shorthand in the industry. But, we stole the books. Authors stole this term from the marketing world, which is a funnel is. Is just as you imagine, it's, it's a big thing at the top and it funnels down to a small thing at the bottom.

[00:03:18] Damon Courtney: And the idea is that if you can get more people in the door in, in the case of marketing terms, if you're, you know, if you're a store, you're a retail store, the more people you can get in the door, then the more things that you're ultimately going to sell. But it's never gonna be a hundred percent, people that walk through the door are not going to buy something.

[00:03:34] Damon Courtney: So that's the idea of the funnel. Lots of people are the top and a smaller amount of people coming out the bottom. We stole authors, self-published authors. We stole the term and created a book funnel, which of course is like we are trying to sell books. We're authors and that's ultimately the goal is to sell our books.

[00:03:50] Damon Courtney: And so, but the same principles all apply. We need to get people in the top so that we can filter it down and get people out the bottom that are then gonna go on to purchase our books. 

[00:04:00] Teddy Smith: So what does that top of the funnel look like? 

[00:04:02] Damon Courtney: so how do you discover people? Right. discoverability is the big problem.

[00:04:07] Damon Courtney: always has been, right? We, a big problem now, but even back in 2010, 2011, it was always the problem of how do we get people to find our books? And so just like when I started building. Book funnel. idea was, oh, well if you can get people onto your mailing list, then you have a way or a newsletter, whatever you wanna call it.

[00:04:26] Damon Courtney: The two terms are interchangeable, but, if we can get people onto that list, then when I have another book to sell, have a way to reach those people. and back then it was even easier to reach people. Now, you know, Facebook is pay to play if you want to reach even people that have said, I wanna follow this person, I want to hear what they have to say.

[00:04:44] Damon Courtney: And Facebook's like, yeah, but do you really? I mean, like if they gimme $20 maybe, then I'll let you hear what they have to say. And so the idea of having a mailing list, always really appealed to me, and I think it does to most indie authors 'cause indie, right? whole idea is didn't want to go this route of giving our books to other people and having other people be in charge of how our.

[00:05:06] Damon Courtney: Our books are getting out there into the world. And so a typical funnel, a book funnel for an author might look like, Hey, you know, at the back of my book, you get to the end of book one, or you land on my website. However you get there, it's, Hey, I have this free novella, or I have this free short story.

[00:05:22] Damon Courtney: If you want an introduction to my writing or an introduction to my world, you can have that for free. Just join my newsletter. You can cancel, be unsubscribe at any time, but. If you read this, you will get an idea of the kind of writing that I have and, and the kinds of stories that I tell and determine whether that works for you.

[00:05:43] Teddy Smith: So, so the funnel is basically the way of getting people into your mailing list at the, at the top end. It's not really a way of selling books necessarily at first. It's more a way of getting them into your main list so that you can sell them when a new book comes out, or tell them a bit more information about your writing style or something about you that makes them start thinking about you more often.

[00:06:02] Damon Courtney: Yeah. So the biggest difference that we as authors have versus like a retail business, right? So a store would use what they call a loss leader or something where, if you've ever been to a Black Friday sale, have you ever been to one though? They're like, oh, here's a vacuum cleaner for 82 cents.

[00:06:17] Damon Courtney: And the thing like they're losing money on that. But the idea that they've only got. You know, 50 of those. And then once you're here, I'm gonna get you to buy more stuff, right? Mm-hmm. If you're in the us, and you go to a gas station now, it'll be like, oh, it's $2 and 89 cents a gallon. Or it's for, that's for credit, or it's $2 and 70 cents a gallon for cash.

[00:06:40] Damon Courtney: Because they want you to walk in the store. 'cause then you're gonna pick up a bag of Doritos and a mount. Well, I'm gonna pick up a bag of Doritos and a mountain too. And so all of that is designed to get you through the door. The problem that you have in the digital world is you might land on my website and then within 30 seconds click away and I'll never see you again.

[00:06:58] Damon Courtney: And it's much, much harder in the physical world. Once I've got you through the door, I got all kinds of ways that I can entice you to stay. And so that's what you're trying to do in the digital, in the digital equivalent of that you've landed on my website. Hey, let me offer you this free thing. You know, while I've got your attention here, let me give you this free thing to get you over to my list once you're on my list.

[00:07:18] Damon Courtney: Well, now you're effectively in the door and I can kind of start pitching you as things and it all, it's all very delicate. You don't wanna be like, buy my book, buy my book, buy my book. You want to be like, Hey, you know, you landed here because you like fantasy. You like dragons, you like wizards, you like, oh, at least you landed on mind page.

[00:07:34] Damon Courtney: You did. So like, let me tell you. About my stories, but you can't do that. If you do that on a website, they might read it, they might not, they might disappear in, in 10 seconds. And so the, the idea in the case of a, digital funnel, I guess is I need to get you over on my list and then I can start.

[00:07:53] Damon Courtney: Slowly giving you little bits of information that will lead you down that funnel and ultimately lead to buying my book, right? You can certainly put your books right up on the front page of your website, and maybe somebody who's never heard of you will, if your ad copy is really good and you're really good at it, somebody might look at that and go, yeah, sure, I'm gonna buy those.

[00:08:12] Damon Courtney: But you're much more likely. As the stores have found out, if I give you the 82 cent vacuum cleaner, to then like, oh, well I've already got the vacuum cleaner in my cart. Oh, I need some batteries and I need a big lighter, and, uh, oh, there's a great deal on a, you know, food ninja.

[00:08:25] Damon Courtney: I'll get that too. Right. 

[00:08:27] Teddy Smith: Perfect. But, so one thing I was gonna ask was, I've heard of people giving away their book for free, maybe to try and get people to sign up for their main list, but why would you have a funnel rather than just a, a giveaway of the book? 

[00:08:39] Damon Courtney: Well 'cause you know, a hundred percent again, like think about the funnel and it's like a hundred percent pe of people get in the top.

[00:08:45] Damon Courtney: And, and if, if we're really, really good, like in marketing, a conversion rate of like five or 6% would be bonkers. Right? We love that. Right? And so we know that not everybody who gets in the top is going to make it out the bottom. Our goal is of course to try to get as many people out the bottom as possible.

[00:09:03] Damon Courtney: 'cause those are people that are gonna go on to buy our books. funnel is not just the free thing. The free thing is the first thing. That's how we get them in the top. The next thing might be, well, listen, you can pick up my first book for 99 cents, right? So I got you with the free novella. And then the next layer down the funnel sort of is.

[00:09:22] Damon Courtney: You can read. If you like that, you can pick up the first book in my series for 99 cents. If you have a long running series, some authors will offer the first book for free. So not only did you get the free development, hey listen, you can read the first book for free. biggest problem that you have in, in being an author today is readers have so many books that they can choose from, and so whatever you've done.

[00:09:43] Damon Courtney: To get them here, wherever here is, be it on your newsletter, be it in your website, on your Facebook group, something you did worked because you got their eyeballs and you got them here. Now that they're here, you want to keep leading them slowly down the funnel So that they don't like tip over out the top, we want them to come out the bottom and then buy more of those books.

[00:10:02] Damon Courtney: And so anything that you can, you know, old adage in marketing is it's way easier to keep a customer than it is to make a new one. So whatever you did to get them in the top of the funnel, great. You did a great job. You got them there. idea of the funnel is now you have to slowly lead them down until they become one of the success stories and they come out the bottom.

[00:10:20] Damon Courtney: The great thing that. If you're, if you're out there writing genre fiction, which you know, of course is, is mostly what I'm talking about, although it, it also works in nonfiction. But if you're out there writing genre fiction. If you're writing things as parts of of series or even in world, if you like to do standalones, if you're doing like Brandon Sanderson who writes in series, but he also writes individual novels, but they're all part of his cosme, right?

[00:10:42] Damon Courtney: Which is this huge universe that he's creating. And so he can give you these cool little standalone novels, but they're all in a world you're familiar with and they all do tie together in some way. So if I can get you into that. If I could get you in the top and I give you, even just giving you a few free things to get you to read them, then I've got a whole lot of books to sell you.

[00:11:04] Damon Courtney: And, and what you generally find and what they talk about is I. The average lifetime value of a, of a reader. And so if you calculate that out and you say, okay, I know that if I get somebody in the top of my funnel and I get them out the bottom, meaning they, they actually go on to buy my books, that the average lifetime value of of a reader who gets into my funnel and makes it out the bottom is $38.

[00:11:26] Damon Courtney: 'cause I've got lots of, I've got long series and I've got lots to sell them. Well then now you, you have an idea of if it costs you a dollar. To get somebody in the top, but you know that if you get them at the bottom, you're gonna make $38. Then you have a lot of wiggle room. You'll be like, well, sure. I'll give you the first book for free.

[00:11:44] Damon Courtney: Um, I know. So Lindsey Bar is a fantasy author, and years ago she would like a lot of people, she would, once she put her books out widely available, she'd make the first book free. But what she learned over time was that. You could give somebody one book 

[00:11:57] Damon Courtney: I got seven more books to sell you at, at full price at 6 99 a piece, so That's okay. Giving you the first three.

[00:12:04] Damon Courtney: for nothing works for me. So she would box those once the series had gone out, she would, and it was complete once the series was done. Right? So not. When she had book four, but when she had all seven, the rest of them to sell you, she would take the first three and box those up and that would be her magnet.

[00:12:20] Damon Courtney: Hey, if you like, if you wanna read this series, read the first three 'cause it's really easy. If they're reading book one to then just keep, tap the next page and keep going on to book two and, oh, I'm enjoying this. Let go on to book three. Once I've got, she looks at all of her stats and said, once I've got you in three books, I've got you for the rest of the series.

[00:12:36] Damon Courtney: So why not just give you the three books and get you hooked right from the start. 

[00:12:41] Teddy Smith: That's really interesting. I've never heard of that. Trust of giving away the first three books. 'cause it makes perfect sense if you're giving away three. It's the same as giving away one because your series is so long.

[00:12:48] Teddy Smith: Yeah. That it keeps people hooking in. 

[00:12:50] Damon Courtney: It doesn't work if you don't have a long, if you've only got five books, don't give away three. Yeah. But if you've got 10, if you've got nine, sure. Why not? If I'll give you a third of it, because again, I'm gonna get you full price on all of the rest of them. Yeah. I don't discount the rest of the series.

[00:13:04] Damon Courtney: And if you're hooked at three, I mean, I've never read three books in a series that was 10 books and went, eh, no. If I'm three books in I'm, I'm buying all of them. 

[00:13:12] Teddy Smith: Definitely I know of my favorite authors like Robert Harris. He's a historical author in the UK and he does one book a year. I basically just pay for the full price ebook every single year 'cause I know I'm gonna love it.

[00:13:22] Teddy Smith: So he doesn't even need a funnel for me, but I can see exactly how it'd work. You know, people get hooked and then I. Bring them in. 

[00:13:28] Damon Courtney: Well, and that is the, that is the true goal at the end of the funnel. It's not just to find a reader. Right? We, we talk about this and we talk about the reader journey, which it for us is they've never heard of you, which Congratulations.

[00:13:41] Damon Courtney: Guess what? There's 8 billion people on the planet who've never heard of you. So there's a lot of upside. They've never heard of you. They've read one of your, your books. Okay. I can read a book by an author and go, that was nice. That doesn't make me a fan, but it, it puts me on the road to it, right? And so then I, I read a couple of your books and I go, okay, well now I'm a fan.

[00:13:57] Damon Courtney: But ultimately what we want you to get to is what we call super fan level. Super fan level is I will buy everything you publish forever and ever. You know, Brandon Sanderson's, big blowout Kickstarter a few years ago that made like $42 million. Um, I am a Brandon Sanderson super fan. I read all of his books.

[00:14:13] Damon Courtney: And so here he comes and he literally, his Kickstarter offer was literally. I have four novels. They're in the Cosme. I'm not gonna tell you the titles, I'm not gonna tell you what they're about, but you can buy them. And people said, shut up and take my money. Right. So Brandon Anderson and people, even the people that weren't super fans were just like, oh, this is really interesting.

[00:14:32] Damon Courtney: Right. I, I like his books. Maybe I'll try those out. And, and what's crazy is even people that weren't part of his audience joined in because they just wanted to be part of the rush. Right. But for me. I did not care what those books were about. I basically pre-order all of his books when they come out anyway.

[00:14:50] Damon Courtney: So for me, I was like, yeah, great. Four books. You're not gonna tell me what they are. I don't care. I know they're gonna be great because I like that author. I'm a super fan of, of Brandon Sanderson. So in the same way that you just, yeah, whatever your book is, I'll buy it. Just give it to me. 

[00:15:04] Teddy Smith: I've got a presentation I'm doing actually after this with Aaron from Book Rockstar, and this funnel is the, we're talking about the marketing funnel rather than book funnel, but it was the exact same thing where we've got discoverability and then conversion, and then at the bottom it's like advocacy.

[00:15:17] Teddy Smith: And that's the point you're talking about. When you've gone all the way through that funnel, you're like, now you're a super fan and you're gonna just buy. And that's an great example of the exact thing we were just talking about. 

[00:15:26] Damon Courtney: Yeah. And the beauty is, is that, you know, if, if you've, I'm sure you've heard of a thousand True Fans theory, but the reason that theory works is not just that these people, you know, let's say you have a few hundred super fans, which means they're gonna buy everything you publish forever and ever.

[00:15:40] Damon Courtney: Amen. So you put out a couple of books a year, or even if as a tra author, you're putting out one book a year, it's not just that those people are going to buy. All of your books, those are the people, the super fans that are gonna go out and evangelize you to everybody. Those are the people that are standing in, you know, at an airport and they see that you're reading a book like the ones you like and you go, oh my God, have you read Brandon Sanderson?

[00:16:02] Damon Courtney: And they're like, oh no, I've never heard of Brandon. Oh my god, he's amazing. You'd love him, right? So they go out and talk you up all of the time. And that is the, when we talk about marketing, that is the holy grail, right? That, that there are people out there doing your marketing. For you. Yeah, and you don't even have to put the effort in anymore.

[00:16:17] Damon Courtney: I mean, you still have to keep putting the effort in to get more people into the top of your funnel, but once we get them out the bottom and we get them through some of our books, they become our super fans and they will go out and tell everybody they know how much they love these books. Much like I'm sitting here on this podcast telling everybody how much I love.

[00:16:33] Damon Courtney: Brandon Sanderson, right? 

[00:16:35] Teddy Smith: Yeah, exactly. Now with the funnel, so we'll talk about the top level in a minute, but you've got, we once you've got people in, you've got these different stages to it. Now how, what do those different stages look like and how does book funnel I. Makes them work. 

[00:16:49] Damon Courtney: so book funnel, the company, we're, we have a lot of tools to get people in the top.

[00:16:54] Damon Courtney: Yeah. So we have group promotions and author swaps and things like that so that you can find those new readers. Right? Yeah. So let's, let's say that you are, so, you know, you, we have this difference between organic and inorganic traffic. Organic traffic would be somebody reads. One of my books, the first book in my series, don't know how they got there, but it still happens that people just happen to be browsing around Amazon and go, oh, that looks like a good book.

[00:17:16] Damon Courtney: However, they got there, they read my book, they get to the end, and in the back it says, Hey, join my newsletter. Get the free short story or free novel develop. That comes at the beginning of the story. And so now they've made it to my list, and I know they made it from the back of my book that is what we call organic traffic.

[00:17:31] Damon Courtney: I didn't do anything extra other than make the link available in the back of my book, but that means that that person got there because they read my book. They liked it enough that they wanted to hear more. And then they were willing to give their email address to hear more of the story. Right? And so that's over on my mailing list.

[00:17:49] Damon Courtney: I'm like, Ooh, a good lead. not a lead. That's somebody who's already read some of my stuff. So now already kind of midway, they came in like midway down the funnel. Right. But we're talking about the very top, and that is. Leads. So people who just came in and were like, yeah, I picked up your free thing, right?

[00:18:04] Damon Courtney: It was free, it had a dragon on the cover. So I was interested. Right now, your job, when you think about the funnel and getting people down once I've got you on my mailing list, that does not mean that you're going to read my thing, right? gave you a free thing, but guess what? Readers get free books all the time now, right?

[00:18:22] Damon Courtney: Free eBooks. Not so much in the physical world, 'cause that costs people money, but it costs authors almost nothing to give away free eBooks. And so that is a very, very popular way to get people on the top of your funnel. But just because they landed in the top. So now they're on your newsletter, they're on your mailing list.

[00:18:37] Damon Courtney: That does not mean that they're actually going to read your thing. So the middle of the funnel now for a, a book funnel for an author is, a series of emails, a welcome sequence, one or two emails, sometimes three, depending on how deep you want to go. That says. That starts to sort of just put yourself into their mind, right?

[00:18:55] Damon Courtney: So they picked up your reader magnet because they saw something they liked, they had Dragon on the cover. It had, you know, a wizard on the cover. Again, I use all fantasy references, obviously. The book description sounded really good. The series sounded really good and I was gonna pick up this free thing.

[00:19:10] Damon Courtney: But now the next thing is I send you a welcome email that says, Hey, thanks so much for picking up a copy of, you know, my free thing. I started writing because I loved reading about dragons and knights as a kid. you sort of tell a little bit of your story, because now that you have my thing in hand, I want to put my book at the top of mind so that when you're done reading whatever you're reading, you go, oh, you know what?

[00:19:34] Damon Courtney: I wanted to read that. Dragon novella that I picked up and let me see. And that is sort of where the middle of the funnel is, right? can, if you have, and you know, a lot of this depends on the level and where you are. Right? If you're an author was a deep back list, start throwing free books at 'em, right?

[00:19:50] Damon Courtney: Hey, give them, I know authors that do first in Series free. When you join their, their newsletter, you get the Starter Library, which is the first book in like four different series. Why? Because I don't care which one you read, whichever one you read, you're going to go on and get the rest of the series and I'm gonna make money.

[00:20:07] Damon Courtney: more likely, if I can get you to read one series, you're gonna go back and read another and another, and another, and I've got lifetime value and blah, blah, blah, blah, all that sort of stuff. Right? And so the middle of the funnel looks like really, I got you in the door and now I need to keep.

[00:20:22] Damon Courtney: Hitting you with little bits of things that are gonna keep you moving down. Right? And that can be more free things. Another short story, another novella, or it really can just be emails that, that talk about your writing because ultimately what I as a reader need to know, I'm a lifelong reader. I. I read every single night I crawl into bed.

[00:20:40] Damon Courtney: I'm currently reading the last, the fifth book of Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive. After reading many, many other books, right? every time I finish a book, the very next thing I do is go grab the next book. sometimes it's not an obvious thing for me. I go and I look at what's, what's in my tuby red pile, which is no longer like a physical stack of books beside my bed, but is instead a pile of eBooks that I have, and I'm looking for.

[00:21:03] Damon Courtney: Which one do I want to pick up next? And as an author, you wanna make sure that you've got your slotted right there at the top, and that's what the middle of that funnel looks like. It's, it's keeping yourself top of mind, sending a few emails, not spamming them, like one after the other. But you know, the welcome email comes as soon as they download the freebie, and then maybe three or four days later you say, Hey.

[00:21:25] Damon Courtney: I hope you're enjoying the story. If you haven't started it yet. It's about this. It's about this. It's got dragons, it's got wizards, it's got all these things, right? As a reader, the first thing I'm looking for is. Does this book match what I want to read? So I read Epic Fantasy. I sometimes dabble in science fiction, but for the most part I'm an epic fantasy reader, which means your book cover, your blurb, your title, all of those things need to telegraph to me that this is a book that matches what I'm looking for.

[00:21:54] Damon Courtney: But if it's made it to my two B red pile, you've already done that part. So then the next thing I wanna know is, is this the kind of story that I wanna read? Well, that, a little harder to tell from the book cover. Right. In fantasy we have grim dark, which is, is like dark, gritty, sort of fantasy, which is great.

[00:22:11] Damon Courtney: Sometimes I'm not in the mood for that. I. Sometimes I really want something. That's what, what we used to just call fantasy is now called Noble bright Fantasy, hilarious, all the genres that we've, you know, created and, and now there's cozy fantasies. It's like, I don't want the big world ending bad guy. I wanna read about, you know, the troll who decided to open a coffee shop.

[00:22:31] Damon Courtney: And I mean, like, that's literature and latte, like, it's all. Out there, right? And so as the author, my job is to, well, you've already, you've got my thing. So step one, I got you in the top of the funnel. Now I need to just slowly convince you that the next thing you wanna put on the top of your tubi red pile is my thing.

[00:22:51] Damon Courtney: And let me tell you why. 

[00:22:53] Teddy Smith: Perfect. Now, we've talked a lot about fiction today. Um, now a lot of the listeners to this are nonfiction author as well, and I think maybe a lot of them are a bit more familiar funnels 'cause they maybe come from sort of a more business background or they, that's the sort of thing they're doing.

[00:23:06] Teddy Smith: So how does the book funnel works differently For business author or for nonfiction authors, sorry. And what would that top of the funnel look like? 

[00:23:15] Damon Courtney: So still gonna give them, so. The thing about nonfiction is, um, if they're coming to you, it is because you are going to solve a problem for them.

[00:23:24] Damon Courtney: Mm-hmm. Traditionally, I mean, if we're talking about nonfiction, like business type books, so not like a memoir and a memoir. you're basically selling fiction. That's not fiction. It's your real life. Yeah. But you are marketing it like. Fiction, right? Yeah. If we're talking about, um, actual non-fiction, self-help books, diet, exercise, business, all of these sort of things, then those people are coming to you because you are seen as some sort of authority and you are gonna solve my problem.

[00:23:49] Damon Courtney: I'm, I'm trying to, I'm gonna take up running. I'm definitely not. Just for, so we're clear. Dave and Courtney is not going to take up running, but somebody has landed on your website because you have this great book about like how to begin, you know, a beginning, uh, your running career, right? Or to, to launch into that.

[00:24:05] Damon Courtney: And so the funnel for that is not so different in the sense that, your website kind of is the top of your funnel because you are laying out why I should listen to you. Why am I the authority on running? Well, I've, I've run, you know, 8,000 marathons. I've been a triathlete for 20 years, whatever it is, right?

[00:24:24] Damon Courtney: Whatever your baf feet is, your expertise, that is top of the funnel because I need to believe that you can actually solve my problem, weight loss. I need to, I need to see that you lost weight. And I'm like, wow, you did it. I can do it too. And then you're still gonna offer them something free. Now, in this case, oftentimes you only have the one book.

[00:24:43] Damon Courtney: You know, nonfiction authors don't necessarily, or you don't. I mean, there's not a series of, of, you know, running books. Maybe there is, but generally you're gonna have like the one thing. So you don't wanna give them that whole thing for free. Instead you want to give them a smaller thing. Maybe it's a motivational, when you think about something like running or losing weight, a lot of these kinds of things are, you just need to get motivated.

[00:25:03] Damon Courtney: So I have this short novella that is really just, it gives you a few of the tips from my book and it really just gets you motivated. Motivated to what? Well buy my book, obviously, because that's the motivation I really, but also get running. And so the, the funnel is the same. Once I get you in the top, now you're on my newsletter.

[00:25:21] Damon Courtney: I want to motivate you to get up and do the thing and, and whatever it is that is the problem I'm solving. You wanna start a, you're an entrepreneur and you wanna start that new business. Great. Here's my PDF. That is the business entrepreneurs start up checklist, right? And it's like, make sure that you've got this, did you file your LLC?

[00:25:38] Damon Courtney: Did you like all these sort of things. But then. All I'm doing is, doing further work to establish my expertise in this so that you feel confident that when I buy this, this person's book, they're gonna solve my problem. 

[00:25:51] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Now what, what are the tools that Book Funnel actually has that helps people fill that top of that funnel?

[00:25:57] Teddy Smith: 'cause I know we've sort of touched on a couple, but it'd be good to actually go through like exactly. How does Book Funnel help you get the people into your list in the first place? 

[00:26:05] Damon Courtney: Sure. So the biggest one that we have is what we call group promos. So group promotions are. I write space opera. You write space opera.

[00:26:12] Damon Courtney: These 20 other people write space opera. If we all work together, right? We all have a reader magnet, whatever that is. It can be the first book in your series. It can be a novella or short story that you've written that leads into your series. Whatever the free thing that we've talked about that's gonna get people in the top.

[00:26:27] Damon Courtney: When you join group promos on book funnel, which really is just a gigantic board, that you can filter down to. Okay, I'm only interested in space operas. That's what I write. And so that's what I'm looking for. And if you went on book funnel right now, you might find 50 or a hundred science fiction space opera promos that other authors who also write rights based opera are.

[00:26:47] Damon Courtney: Looking for fellow authors that we can share with. And the idea is really simple. We get 20 space opera authors together. You are gonna send it to your list. I'm gonna send it to my list. Each of these 20 people is gonna send it to their list because number one, we're all working on building up a list, right?

[00:27:03] Damon Courtney: We're all building that funnel at the top, but each of us has readers that the others have never seen before. Mm-hmm. So the goal is to try to get my book, my reader magnet in front of more people. That's the top of the funnel. And. Everybody in this promo writes space opera. So guess what? Every reader on their list, they read space opera.

[00:27:26] Damon Courtney: That's why they're there. That's why they got on the list in the first place. And so we can all share in readers because it is, it's one of the few things where like if, if you were. If you ran a restaurant locally, you would not share coupons to other restaurants because people only eat at one restaurant a day maybe, and if in most cases, maybe once a week, and I need you to come back to my restaurant 'cause I need to make money.

[00:27:49] Damon Courtney: That's not the way authors and readers work as a reader. I don't read one book and I go, well that was my book for the year. I guess I'll have to wait till next year for that other book. Like, no, I finish a book and I immediately go on and read the next, and I tend to read fairly. Straightforward in my genre, right?

[00:28:07] Damon Courtney: And so I'm always looking for more books in my genre that I can read, especially from if I've gotten on your list, then that means I like you as an author. And so if you're saying, Hey, these other space opera authors, you might wanna give them a try. They've got some good stuff too. I'm gonna go take a look.

[00:28:24] Damon Courtney: And, and that's where if you're doing all your things right, your cover's good at Telegraph Space Opera, your title, your blurb, all of these things say space opera. Then you're already in my wheelhouse. You're already there and I'm gonna go, you know what? That looks pretty good. I'll pick that up, put it on my pile.

[00:28:39] Damon Courtney: And then you all have the same job. So group promos really help you facilitate finding other authors in your genre and in non-fiction, right? So you can have broadly non-fiction promos. We have lots of those on book funnel. But then you also get narrow. we have promos that are like memoirs. So every book in this promo is, is some authors memoir.

[00:28:57] Damon Courtney: We have self-help. Oh, great. I'm gonna join this self-help promo because I'm gonna put my stuff in there. We have business promos, we have the business of writing, all of these sort of things. So the, the promo board on book funnel really helps you find all those other authors that are writing in the same stuff that you are because their readers are already predisposed to like what I'm writing.

[00:29:16] Damon Courtney: Even if I don't have a list, I can now get my book in front of readers who know, who I know are looking for what I'm writing. 

[00:29:24] Teddy Smith: And how's it work? Do you, do you post your book up on Book Funnel and say, Hey, this is the book I, uh, that I want to use as my lead magnet. Uh, can I find other people who are doing something similar?

[00:29:34] Teddy Smith: And then you connect, connect through book funnel. 

[00:29:36] Damon Courtney: so the other feature that I didn't really talk about is called author swaps. And in, in the case of it, which an author swap is just you and me, I put my book up on the author swap board and say, Hey. I write space opera. Here is my book.

[00:29:47] Damon Courtney: This is the actual book cover. This is the book that I, that I am looking, the reader magnet that I'm looking to give away. Um, and then you go browsing the swap board and you go, oh, space opera. Yeah. Oh, hey, that book looks good. So you request a swap with me and then you send me, i book funnel shows me your book, the book that you are offering to swap.

[00:30:05] Damon Courtney: We both go, yeah, these look really good. And we agree. So unlike a group promo where you share a. Promo link, you know, you'd send out to your newsletter and say, Hey, I'm in this great promotion with 20 other space opera authors. If you're interested, check it out. In the case of a swap, we would say, Hey, I'm doing a swap this month.

[00:30:23] Damon Courtney: Or, um, I saw this great book by Teddy Smith. I thought you guys might like it. Check it out. Here's the book cover. You know, it's similar to my books. Right. And then that's all we're gonna do. I'm gonna swap, I'm gonna share your book. You're gonna share my book, so it's a one-on-one sort of thing.

[00:30:37] Damon Courtney: In the case of group promos, you can either choose to be the organizer so you can set up. The group promo and book funnel and you can say, Hey, this is a space opera promo. Here's my requirements. Everybody gets one book. No man chest on the covers, no romance, whatever, right? However you wanna design your promo.

[00:30:54] Damon Courtney: And then other people will see that 'cause Book Funnel sends out email notifications and says, Hey you, you said you wanted to watch Space Opera promos. Well, here's a new one. And then they come in and join in. As a typical author, you would mostly browse the board and look for promos and go, Ooh. 99 cent, you know, promo space Opera sale.

[00:31:14] Damon Courtney: That sounds really good. I was planning on putting my book, my first book in series up for 99 cents. Let me go click on that promo and then read through it and go, yeah, this sounds good. I'm gonna join. So then you join and submit your book, and in most cases, by default, your book is already in the promo.

[00:31:29] Damon Courtney: And this is what I tell people. Find the promos that match what you do. Um, you, we have, you'll see promos on book funnel that have gigantic space opera, right? 250 authors all doing space opera. I'm sorry, not space opera, just science fiction, right? In general. And you can put your book in those. That's great.

[00:31:47] Damon Courtney: You write space opera. Guess what? That's science fiction. That's great. Don't put your dragon book in the sci-fi promo unless they specifically say sci-fi fantasy. Um, but that said, you can also drill down and find those smaller niches where it's like, oh. Space opera. a smaller niche of the overall science fiction genre.

[00:32:04] Damon Courtney: So I wanna join those promos specifically. But if it's an alien invasion promo and your book is not alien invasion, don't put your book in there. Number one, you're probably gonna get booted out 'cause the organizer's gonna go, yeah, this is an alien invasion. Number two, if a reader does pick up your book.

[00:32:21] Damon Courtney: It is possible that an alien invasion reader is going to like your space opera. It's also possible they're just gonna throw it in the garbage because that's not what they read. And so you wanna make sure that your book is matching in those. So as a, an author, you're generally browsing what other organizers have created.

[00:32:37] Damon Courtney: But we always tell people if you're not finding what you're looking for, if you're, you know, if you're not finding a, you want a space opera promo that has no romance and none of this stuff, and you're just not finding it, organize your own. All of the promos on Book funnel are organized by authors just like you.

[00:32:53] Teddy Smith: Yeah, really interesting. I didn't realize that you could do those group promos and just really just get involved with the whole other people's promotions. 'cause a really exciting way to do it because I can see, especially, well, most of my, a lot of my audience I speak to is nonfiction, but I can see how there's so much like, continuity between the different things that people are interested in.

[00:33:10] Teddy Smith: 'cause if you're interested in these, like book business ideas, for example, there'd be lots of books around that topic for sure. If your audience is interested in one, they'd be interested in all of them. 

[00:33:18] Damon Courtney: Yeah, and we have, I mean, features, right? We've been doing this for 10 years now.

[00:33:21] Damon Courtney: So a book funnel does lots of great things. Um, you can also just create a private, what we call a private promo, which doesn't get posted to the board. Instead, it creates a link that you can send out. So, for example, I don't want a bunch of randos on book funnel joining. I'm gonna do a book business promo, but I do have this great Facebook group that I monitor with lots of other.

[00:33:41] Damon Courtney: Authors writing nonfiction books in the book business space. So I'm gonna post it there because I wanna get those people to join in my promo, but I don't want it just sort of broadly available to everybody. Yeah. Um, we have all kinds of features out there that can do that. And, and yeah, that's one of those ones that I really like that I.

[00:33:56] Damon Courtney: People can use when they want to keep their audience small. I really wanna do this promo with authors that I know. I know six other authors that all have great book business books. I wanna do a promo with those people, so I'm just gonna send, I'm gonna email them individually and say, Hey, let's just do a smaller promo, so then it's not gonna be this big thing.

[00:34:16] Teddy Smith: Yeah. Do you have any good case studies or when some really good like book, uh, funnel launches where it's, where everything's just gone absolutely perfectly and what, what was it that made it so good? 

[00:34:27] Damon Courtney: So it's been years now and it's now become sort of the popular thing. So I. You know, if you go look at book funnel's promo board, you'll find that more than half of them are romance.

[00:34:36] Damon Courtney: And this is pretty standard across the industry. Yeah. If you, if you've, if you've been in this game long enough, you know that romance, it easily is half, if not more than half. I didn't 

[00:34:46] Teddy Smith: know romance was so big until I went to Author Nation. That's right. 

[00:34:48] Damon Courtney: It's gigantic. Right. and book funnel is no exception.

[00:34:51] Damon Courtney: Right. I easily 50% of the promos on Book funnel are romance. What the romance authors. Figured out when they, when you talk about funnels. So this started years and years ago, and I actually went to, novelist Inc. The n Conference in September, back in 2017. And I took with me, what we had seen this author do, which I thought was amazing.

[00:35:11] Damon Courtney: And what it was, was you read to the end of her series. It was a three book series, and at the end of her three book series, she offered. A bonus epilogue, and it was essentially a romance series. The couple gets together and then at the end, you know, they live happily ever after. But if you wanted to find out what happened at the wedding, a year later, you can join my newsletter and read the 5,000 word bonus epilogue.

[00:35:38] Damon Courtney: Well, who the heck gets to the end of a three part? Yeah, you know, romance and doesn't wanna read about the wedding, but she had like 40,000 people sign up for her newsletter over the course of a couple of weeks because everybody wants to see that now. She did a great job. She didn't, it didn't feel like a rug pull.

[00:35:55] Damon Courtney: She gave you the end of the story, so it wasn't like a cliffhanger. And then, oh no, no, no. If you wanna read the rest of the book, you're gonna have to go sign up for my newsletter. It really was like a bonus epilogue, but it was masterfully done. Now you see that in romance everywhere. bonus chapter, the extended epilogue, that sort of thing is, is very, very popular in romance now because it, it works, the, the reason it works so well is it becomes self-selecting.

[00:36:20] Damon Courtney: If I get to the end of the book. Or the end of a small se, a short series, and I didn't like it. I don't need to read the bonus. Short story. I don't care. I didn't like this book. 

[00:36:29] Teddy Smith: Yeah. 

[00:36:30] Damon Courtney: But if I did and I liked it, then I want to read what happens next. I want to read last little nugget of the story.

[00:36:39] Damon Courtney: And so by the time those people land on your list, it's more than just the top of the funnel. Again, they're already midway down the funnel. I have all of this data. You read one of my books, you liked one of my books. You clicked the link in the back of the book and you were willing to give up your email address to get this short story.

[00:36:55] Damon Courtney: That means you're already on your way to becoming a fan of mine. 

[00:36:59] Teddy Smith: Yeah. That's amazing. It works 

[00:37:01] Damon Courtney: extremely well. And it also becomes like this free short story. It's not valuable to anybody else. I could put it up on my website and it doesn't matter. People who've never read the book, you know, who cares?

[00:37:11] Damon Courtney: Right? It's like watching the end sequence of a Marvel movie you've never seen. It's meaningless. It doesn't mean anything to me. And so that little, that one little idea that we saw, and then of course I started going to conferences and telling people. 'cause one of the things that I do when I go to conferences and give talks is, you know, I haven't been publishing since 2014, so it's been 10 years since I published a book, but.

[00:37:31] Damon Courtney: Every single day on book funnel, we see what the other authors are out there doing, and we see the ones that are like, wow, they're really blowing the doors off. What are they doing? Wow, that's a really great idea. And so oftentimes that I come on and I talk to people. I'm really telling you what other authors are doing that is, is working so well in the industry right now.

[00:37:51] Teddy Smith: That strategy of putting 'em at the end could be a, a really nice strategy for non no, uh, nonfiction books as well. 'cause I could see how you could get to the end of the book, you've really enjoyed reading something and then you think, okay, I just wanna get the template so I can just get on and do this.

[00:38:03] Teddy Smith: Yep. Or you know, you could write a book about how to do book funnels and then at the end it's like, right. Gotta go sign up for book funnels. I mean, yeah. You can see exactly how this would work for. For nonfiction books. That's really interesting. I have to go and have a think, think about that a bit more.

[00:38:15] Damon Courtney: Workbooks are great in nonfiction. 'cause again, I'm telling you how to do something and then here, let me help you get started on it. Let me give you this great motivational checklist that you can start with. Um, you're writing, you know, if you're doing, uh, whatever weight loss books, hey, get the free cook, get my free cookbook.

[00:38:32] Damon Courtney: This is, you know, but that's, that's the thing at the end, right? That's the magnet. once again. It becomes a little self-selecting. don't really need your checklist. If I haven't at least read the book and understand what I'm doing. I don't need the workbook if I'm not planning to do the work.

[00:38:47] Damon Courtney: And so by the time you get to the end of the book, you know that you have somebody, somebody lands on your list because they wanted the workbook, they picked up your book, they read your book, and they're motivated. And so at that moment, when you capture that data, that's when you start sending them emails.

[00:39:01] Damon Courtney: You send them a sequence that says, okay, this person's here, they're motivated to start running. So I want to use my funnel. I want to use my email sequence as a way to keep them motivated. And say, Hey, you can do it. Here's the workbook that I promised you. And also, you know, you're gonna get an email every week.

[00:39:18] Damon Courtney: I'm gonna check in with you and see how your running journey is going. Right? Yeah. 

[00:39:22] Teddy Smith: That's amazing. Or in the 

[00:39:23] Damon Courtney: case of books like, Hey. I see this all the time. I meet authors. I'm like, how's your word count going? Are you getting your writing done? Have you published, you know, if you were putting out writing books, if you were putting out book business books that, the workbook that says, okay, your next step is to get your book finished and then do this and do this and do this and this, and hey, you're gonna get an email every week for me, that's just checking in on you and seeing how's your book journey going?

[00:39:48] Teddy Smith: Yeah, I think we're gonna have to get you on to do a demo of the tool properly so that we can go through exactly some of these features. I think it'd be amazing to really go through it and see exactly how it would work for each, each, different scenario, I think. Yeah, that'd be great. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on.

[00:40:01] Teddy Smith: It's been super interesting. I mean, funnels are. You know, a lot of people in the book industry, they're writing their books 'cause they want to create a business, especially in nonfiction world. They wanna create a business out of it, not just by selling books, by building a bit of a wider business. And I can see exactly how book funnels will fit in to build all of those different parts out and connect 'em all together.

[00:40:18] Teddy Smith: So yeah, thank you so much for coming on, explaining how it works. Thanks for having me. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that? 

[00:40:25] Damon Courtney: Book funnel.com. We try not to be too clever about it. 

[00:40:29] Teddy Smith: That's easy. Well, great. Thank you so much Colin Damon, and we'll speak again soon. Absolutely.

[00:40:34] Teddy Smith: Thank you so much for tuning into the Publishing Performance podcast. I really hope you found today's episode inspiring. I love chatting to authors, writers, and people in the publishing world. Now, just before we wrap up, let me tell you about publishing Formants the number one platform for authors who want to increase Amazon book sales, but I'm not really sure where to start.

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