Use Lead Magnets to Market Your Novels Without Social Media

This is the first in a series of blogs about marketing for fiction authors without using social media.

One thing I focus on is building up my email newsletter. One way I do this is through Lead Magnets.

I don’t know if this is true for non-fiction writers, but I’ve heard of two different kinds of fiction lead magnets—one for a cold audience who has never heard of you (called a Funnel Book), and one for a warm audience (Reader Magnet).

The Funnel Book is for things like BookFunnel group promos or newsletter swaps.

BookFunnel group promos (you can also do the same on StoryOrigin) are where you join a promo event with other authors in your genre or niche. Everyone shares the link to the promo in their newsletter. The link goes to a landing page with everyone’s book covers that readers can click on. That goes to the individual book’s landing page with a blurb and a link to either buy the book (if it’s sales promo) or to sign up for your newsletter to get the book for free. The latter is what I use my Funnel Book for.

Newsletter swaps (organized either privately or through websites like BookFunnel or StoryOrigin) are where two authors agree to share about the other author’s book in their newsletter and give a link. The link can be to buy the book or to sign up for the author’s newsletter list. The latter is what I use my Funnel Book for.

Or sometimes the Funnel Book is a free book 1 in your series, whether it’s a flash sale or it’s Permafree. I will often reduce book 1 in my series to free for a few days so people can download it and try it to see if they want to continue in the series. Other authors who are not in Kindle Unlimited can make their book 1 permanently free (PermaFree) so readers can get it anytime and try their book.

In contrast, the Reader Magnet is the link at the end of one of your books that offers a prequel, epilogue, story, or bonus content (character sheets, maps, etc.) in exchange for signing up for your newsletter. It’s for readers who have finished your book and loved it enough to want the extra content.

Sometimes the same story can work as both a Funnel Book and a Reader Magnet—I have a novella for my contemporary series that works well as both—but for my historical series, I have a Funnel Book and a Reader Magnet. And for me, my marketing changes if I’m promoting a Funnel Book or a Reader Magnet.

So sometimes my marketing is for my Funnel Book, other times for my Reader Magnet. Sometimes for both, but the marketing tends to be slightly different for each.  The majority of my marketing is to a cold audience, so I usually use my Funnel Book.

I will always put my Reader Magnet at the back of my books to induce people who have finished the book (a warm audience) to join my email newsletter. My Reader Magnet is a prequel novella called The Gentleman Thief, and the events are only vaguely mentioned in book 1 but the reader has to read the novella to find out what happened. The Gentleman Thief also has some side characters who later appear in book 7 of the series, so it’s another way to get people to sign up for my newsletter after they read book 7.

However, The Gentleman Thief is a historical adventure while my series is historical romance, so it doesn’t exactly match the genre of the general series, and therefore it didn’t work as a Funnel Book for a cold audience very well. A cold reader who loves historical romance won’t care much for The Gentleman Thief because it has no romance, and so they might not go on to try book 1 in my series. Or a reader who doesn’t like romance might like The Gentleman Thief and try my series only to be disappointed because it has “too much romance.”

In contrast, my Funnel Book is Lissa and the Spy, which is a standalone historical romance with some side characters who appear as main characters in the main series. The novella is a better match for my series and therefore a better taste of my writing and my story world for a cold audience.

Lissa and the Spy could probably work as a Reader Magnet for a warm audience as well, since it features characters in book 1, but since I have The Gentleman Thief, I use that as a Reader Magnet instead.

Here is the link to my Funnel Book (cold audience), Lissa and the Spy: https://bookhip.com/NFFXTQL

Here is the link to my Reader Magnet (warm audience), The Gentleman Thief: https://bookhip.com/GTSFSGZ

Here is the link to my combination Reader Magnet and Funnel Book (warm and cold audiences), The Wedding Kimono: https://dl.bookfunnel.com/bvvbol2lpc