A nonfiction lead magnet is the digital, downloadable incentive you offer your target readers in exchange for providing their address so they add themselves to your email list.

Whether you call it a lead magnet, reader magnet, freebie, or ethical bribe, it’s what people get when they “opt-in” – choose to add themselves – to your email list.

And you need one.

Nonfiction lead magnets and email list-building

Years ago, author email marketing was novel enough that all you needed was a newsletter sign-up form on your website to begin building your essential email list. Now that email marketing is the norm, things are more complicated.

Today, people expect a gift in exchange for their address, and why shouldn’t they? When they opt-in to your list, they’re giving you permission to contact them regularly. Thank them with a small, useful, and relevant gift.

“Useful” and “relevant” are key. Your nonfiction lead magnet has to be something your readers, fans, or audience need or want. (Do you write fiction? Read “3 fiction lead magnet ideas.”)

Make sure it solves a promise, is short and easily digestible, and offers high value.

Lead magnet examples

My primary lead magnet is a one-page PDF file with my “Top 5 Free Book Promotion Resources.” Authors receive it when they complete the form on the right side of this screen or on a page I’ve created specifically for that purpose — a “landing page.” (I use ThriveArchitect, a WordPress plug-in, or my email service provider, ConvertKit, to create most of my landing pages.)

I have several others, too. I offer each on its own landing page. They include:

• Virtual Book Tour Basics: How to Connect with Your Audience and Sell More Books Without Leaving Home
• Guest Blogging Cheat Sheet
• Book Marketing Plan Template
• Platform Building for Authors Cheat Sheet

What can you offer as a lead magnet? What does your target audience want that you can provide? Here are five ideas.

Nonfiction lead magnet idea #1: The Template

A template is a fill-in-the-blanks form.

What can you pull from your book that you can turn into a form? If your book teaches a system, you might have a worksheet that you can pull out of the manuscript and turn into a downloadable PDF file.

A fitness book author might offer an exercise tracking Excel file; the author of a book on small business website design can offer a form that lets people outline site content.

Example: Momentum Planners by Productive Flourishing

Nonfiction lead magnet idea #2: The Cheat Sheet

I’m a sucker for a cheat sheet, which is probably why I like to create them. A cheat sheet offers best practices or your best advice on a specific reader problem or challenge.

I created my author Guest Blogging Cheat Sheet after volunteering as the editor of an association blog with a monthly member column. Many member-written posts and headshots arrived in my inbox with issues I had to fix before the next step. I used them to create a short list of best practices for authors using guest blogging as a book marketing tool.

Any nonfiction author writing how-to or instructional content can easily pull a list of tips on a specific topic out of their book. Memoir writers can distill their lessons learned about the key problem or turning point in their lives into a cheat sheet, too.

Example: Guest Blogging Cheat Sheet

Nonfiction lead magnet idea #3: The Plan

A plan is a form of calendar where you’ve mapped out what someone needs to do on a schedule – it might be daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly.

Are you a cookbook author? Create a menu plan based on your book. Is yours a career book for new college graduates? Provide a simple “do this, then do that” plan for landing that first job.

Example: 100 Days of Real Food (when you move your mouse to leave the page, you’ll get a pop-up with a free meal plan offer)

Nonfiction lead magnet idea #4: The Resource List

People love resource lists because they save them time.

What are your favorite resources that are related to your topic? What tools, products, or sites do you use that will help others who are interested in what you write about? Drop them into a one-page resource list.

Are you a social media guru? List your favorite content creation and scheduling tools. Do you write travel books? Give us a list of what you won’t leave home without.

Example: The Content Hacker Educational Resource List for Today’s Marketers-in-Training

Nonfiction lead magnet idea #5: The Checklist

Who doesn’t love a checklist that will keep them on track and prevent mistakes?

Do you offer dating advice? List the elements of a dating app profile that gets results. Is your book about how to make soap? Give us an ingredients shopping list.

Example: The Ultimate Optin Form Checklist

Designing your lead magnet

Before you can create a compelling lead magnet, you need to know what goes into one and what it looks like. For that reason, I recommend downloading the examples listed above.

Add yourself to lots of other email lists, too, and study their lead magnets to see how others are doing it.

Once you’ve selected a format and written text to go with it, you’ll decide whether you’re going to design it yourself or outsource the work.

You can also create an attractive, effective lead magnet with low- or no-cost resources. I’ve used each of the following. The first is for out-sourcing; the second two are do-it-yourself options.

Fiverr 

Fiverr is an online marketplace for freelance services. For tasks like this, I think it’s an easier way to find a graphic artist than alternatives that include ask friends for recommendations or using a job site such as Upwork.

On the site, search for “lead magnet design” until you find one or two designers that you like.

When placing an order, attach to your order a lead magnet that represents what you’re looking for. It will help your designer better understand what you need in a finished product.

If you don’t have a lead magnet to offer as a sample, scroll through the design samples offered by Fiverr designers to find something that resonates with you and your book’s personality.

In general, I find that I get the best results on Fiverr when I can give the designer an example of the type of look I’d like to have.

Designrr 

Designrr is one of my favorite book marketing resources. It’s a web-based tool that lets me take content I’ve already created on my blog, in a Word file, or on a web page and turn it into a range of end products. I pay $27 for it annually and use it specifically for lead magnets.

Just last week, I used it to turn my 2021 Literary Calendar blog post into a downloadable PDF. Now, authors reading that article can also download and save the calendar when they provide their email address.

It was as simple as selecting the template I wanted to use (this one was my first time using a two-column design), pasting my URL into the form for the text import, and  playing around with the result.

Every time I use it, I get a little more brave . . . and a little more creative.

Canva 

Canva is an online design tool with both free and premium levels.

Creating a lead magnet is easier, of course, if you already know how to use Canva. If you aren’t taking advantage of it yet, it will probably take longer to create an end product than other options. Reviewing templates and learning how to customize or replace elements isn’t hard, but it takes time.

If you know what you want  – say, an e-book or a checklist   – simply type that term into the search box. You can also search for “lead magnet” to get some fun ideas and templates.

As an alternative, on the home page, review the options under the Canva header image. These categories are your best bets:

• Documents
• Education
• Marketing
• Events

Click around each collection to find something that speaks to you.

Set aside time to browse your options, as there are plenty of them. To get started, in the “documents” collection, try the “A4 document” options. Or, in the “events” group, select “announcement” in the “events” collection.

There are many more lead magnet options available to you, so spend some time Googling the topic to see what else you might discover. Once you’ve got your lead magnet (or magnets!) in place, remember that it won’t help if people don’t know about it.

Your goal with email list-building is to constantly send ideal readers to your landing page so your list — and your reach — grows steadily.

If you have a lead magnet, please tell us what it is in a comment and explain why you selected that format and topic. 

I wanted to help her reach more potential fans while providing my readers with something useful that they’d appreciate.

When the WordPress system notified her of my link to her site, she promptly hopped over to my post and left a comment.

After thanking me for the mention, she gently chastised me for encouraging people to download her gift. She wanted people to either pin it to a Pinterest board or join her membership program to receive a printable version.

My approach to this is to contact the person privately with the feedback. But here’s the key question about this situation: Am I now a superfan?

What do you think? Should I be?

I AM a big fan of Pat Flynn!

On the other hand, I’ve been a Pat Flynn fan for a long time, so I was pretty sure I’d discover a few new-to-me gems in his new book, Superfans:The Easy Way to Stand Out, Grow Your Tribe, And Build a Successful Business.

I discovered early on through Flynn’s Smart Passive Income podcast that we have the same business values. That keeps me listening. Over the years, I’ve learned a great deal from him and his podcast guests. They often take listeners behind the scenes, sharing what has and hasn’t worked for their online businesses.

Superfans isn’t Flynn’s first book, but it’s the first he’s written that’s relevant to my business and yours. I was pretty sure I could pull some wisdom out of it for authors like you seeking a community of loyal readers waiting for your next book.

On the surface, it’s more relevant to entrepreneurs than to authors, especially those who don’t yet accept that they’re actually small business owners.

But when you replace the term “fan” with “readers,” you’ll soon see that there’s lots to learn as an author. With authors, it’s all about finding and connecting with people you want to become loyal readers.

What can you learn from this book?

When I read a prescriptive nonfiction book like this, I’m looking at it from a few different perspectives:

• Is there content that’s helpful to authors?
• What, if anything, can I apply to my business?
• How is it written, structured, and organized? I do this as a nonfiction writer and author, not as a reader. Other people’s books often provide insights I can use in my own books.

What follows is my breakdown of these three points. What you take away from this book as a reader will be different, of course, because we’re coming at it with different backgrounds. My goal with this review, though, is to help you decide if this book is a “must read” for you, or a “good to know about, but not what I need right now” kind of book.

Specific nuggets for authors

Regarding that first point about relevance to authors, I think novelists will have to work a little harder to see the takeaways in it for them. They’re there, but they will probably be more obvious to nonfiction authors.

For example, in Chapter 1, we learn the importance of using your fan’s/reader’s language when writing promotional text — which can include your book description and website copy. Novelists need to do this as much as anyone else. That first chapter helps you see how you can uncover the phrases and terms your audience uses.

In Chapter 3, you’ll discover how to use an online community such as a Facebook or LinkedIn group to learn more about how you can help or serve your readers.

The advice in Chapter 6 to invite your readers into your writer’s room, so to speak, “where they can share their opinions on where the story should go” is 100 percent relevant to all authors.

Much of Part 3 will be more interesting to nonfiction authors who use books as part of a larger business. It’s worth reading, but it will be harder for novelists to determine how to leverage the concepts.

Part 4 is about protecting yourself from the dark side of this new world of superfandom. It’s something most of us won’t need to worry about, but it’s a good reminder about why and how you want to protect your privacy and stay safe.

As for my own business working with authors, I was happy to see he recommends certain steps that I already do instinctively. I took plenty of notes, too.

This book’s bones

My third bullet point above relates to how I read books like this as a writer more than a knowledge-seeker. Several things about how the book is written and structured stood out for me.

Superfans is organized logically. The author uses an inverted pyramid graphic to explain the structure in the introduction. Like the book, the pyramid is divided into four parts. Each part moves readers through the fan-building process.

As a writer, three other features stand out for me.

1. The stories. Flynn draws from his experience, and those of the many entrepreneurs he has interviewed on his podcast, to bring the concepts to life. Every time I thought, “What would this look like in action?”, he showed me.
2. Exercises at the end of each chapter. They encourage readers to take action on what they’ve just learned.
3. A helpful bonus online course with worksheets and other tools related to each chapter’s exercises. I always encourage authors to create bonus content that readers can access after providing their name and email address. It’s an excellent way to help you continue the conversation with that reader — and turn that person into a fan, and, eventually a superfan.

I think you’ll appreciate these features, too.

Connecting with your readers

Because I’m a long-time listener to Flynn’s podcast, I was familiar with much of the content already. Still, it didn’t bother me to have it presented in a new format, and in one that allowed me to take notes as I read. (I can’t do that when listening to a podcast while exercising or driving.)

If you’re new to Pat Flynn’s world, you won’t be slowed down by that “Ohhhh, I’ve heard this before” issue. And, if your goal is to better connect with and understand your readers, I think you’ll be satisfied with what you learn.

What are you doing now to better connect with the people who love your books? Please tell us in a comment! 

*I’m protecting the creator’s identity by not sharing the file name

I clicked on the link, expecting to see a motivational nonfiction book because that’s his thing.

What I saw, though, was a business book title superimposed over an image of a man in a suit. Underneath the title were two words: “A Novel.”

Huh?

I’ll admit that I’m easily confused, but I think this might have confused you, too.

I read the description, hoping it would offer some clarity.

It didn’t.

The book description assured me that the book’s story was infused with thousands of hours of executive coaching and years of leadership experience. This didn’t reassure me that the book really was a novel. In fact, it sure sounded like a nonfiction business book.

I looked for a table of contents. Yup. There it was.

When’s the last time you saw a table of contents in a novel? (Maybe never?)

I closed the window. I was tired of trying to understand what was going on. The book is  probably a parable, not a novel. Because the author doesn’t know about parables, he is confusing people by applying the wrong label.

More confused readers

I’d like to say this was the first time I’ve asked, “Is this fiction or nonfiction?” after reading a book description, but honestly, it happens way more often than you might think.

An author in my network sent me a link to the sales page for his new book. It, too, had a business book title — complete with subtitle — and a cover image of a suited male. Absolutely no question it was a business book.

Then I read the description. It described a novel.

If I didn’t know the author, I would have closed the window. Again, it takes too much effort to figure out the book!

Instead, I scrolled down the page to see what else I might learn — maybe in the author’s bio? — about the book and saw text from the back cover. It was a list of bullet points that detailed what I would learn about business leadership from the book.

News flash: People don’t read novels to learn leadership strategies. They read novels to be entertained. They want stories that are so compelling and well-written that they have to keep turning the pages to find out what happens next.

Signs you’re confusing readers

How do you know if you’re confusing readers and therefore forcing them to move on without buying your book? Here are a few clues:

1. You categorize your book as a novel, but instead of describing a story readers won’t be able to put down, you tell them what the book will teach them.
2. You tell readers the book is a novel, but your marketing copy uses bullet points that tell them what they’ll learn from the book.
3. Your “novel’s” description uses “I,” “me,” and “my” — “My novel is about what I did and what happened to me. You won’t be able to put it down because it’s true.”
4. You’ve written a parable — a story that uses fiction to teach a moral or lesson — and you’re calling it nonfiction or a novel rather than what it is. It’s a parable. Call it a parable.
5. You’ve categorized your memoir as “fiction” because you’ve had to create imagined dialogue that you can’t support with documentation. It’s still a memoir.

The problems created by these and other mistakes go beyond confusing readers. When your book is incorrectly categorized, it won’t be discovered by the people you wrote it for. That doesn’t help you, it doesn’t help your book sales, and it doesn’t help potential readers.

Sure, your friends, family, and some in your network might buy your book because you asked them to. But will your book change the world in the way that you think it will?

No — because you haven’t packaged and positioned it in the accepted, understood way.

Follow the rules

Here’s the thing. Self-publishing might feel like the new frontier, but there are rules. If you don’t follow them, you end up confusing the very people you want to help. So learn and follow the rules.

That means that before writing your book and its description, you must read traditionally published books that are similar to yours. Then study how they are packaged, marketed, and categorized.

Don’t wing it. You can learn a lot from others, especially those who have succeeded.

And, to learn how to write a book description that convinces readers to buy your book, read this Build Book Buzz blog post, “Are you making these mistakes with your Amazon book description?”

Want to learn more about how to sell on Amazon the right way? Purchase our “Sell More Books on Amazon” video training program and learn what works (and what doesn’t) on the most popular marketplace for books.

Let’s flip this and discuss what you’re seeing that is working on Amazon. What’s your best “how to do it right” tip for selling books on Amazon? Please share it in a comment. 

Jennifer Lawler is the author or coauthor of more than 30 nonfiction books as well as 16 romances under various pen names. Her publishing experience includes stints as a a literary agent and as an acquisitions editor. She just released the second edition of Dojo Wisdom for Writers, the second book in her popular Dojo Wisdom series. She also offers classes in writing book proposals, planning a nonfiction book for self-publishing authors, and writing queries and synopses for novelists at BeYourOwnBookDoctor.com (under the “classes” tab).

How to plan your nonfiction book when you’re self-publishing

By Jennifer Lawler

If you’ve decided to bypass traditional publishers and strike out on your own, congratulations! You’ve taken the power of publishing into your own hands.

But as a book publishing consultant, I’ve often found that authors who are self-publishing worry so much about the process of publishing (“How do I format an e-book? Where do I get an ISBN? Who can do an affordable cover for me?”) that they forget the most important element of successful self-publishing:

Writing a great book.

Over and over again, I’m asked by authors why their self-published book isn’t selling or how they can get better reviews. The problem is almost always that the author didn’t plan his or her book before writing it.

Planning your nonfiction book means that you have identified your audience, know where to find these readers, have differentiated your book from its competition, created a unique selling proposition, and begun to build your promotional platform. And, yes, you need to do all of that before you write a single word of your book.

Here are the basics your plan needs to cover:

1. What is your book about and how will you write it?

In a few paragraphs, describe what your book is going to cover. Treat this like the copy you see on the back of a book, but expand it with a few more details than you usually find there.

How will the information be delivered? Using case studies, anecdotes, analysis? Will you need charts and tables? Do you envision illustrations? (Consider that tables, charts, and illustrations can be difficult to convert to e-book format). Will you interview experts, do you need a coauthor? What is unique about your book (more on this later)? How would you describe your book in one or two sentences to someone who asks?

2. Who cares about your book?

This is your audience, and you need to know them intimately before you start writing. Who are they and what do they need from you? Why will they buy your book? Most crucial of all: where will you find them? You should be part of this community before your book is ever published.

3. What does the competition do?

You need to research other books like yours and answer these questions:

• How will yours be different?
• What will it offer to readers that they can’t get elsewhere?

If you think there’s no other book like yours on the market, it could be that there’s no audience (see #2). Consider tweaking your idea.

4. Create a chapter outline.

Many times authors just sit down and write the book, start to finish. But this is a mistake. You need to know where you’re going in nonfiction. An outline is crucial. This is the spine of the book and where people can often forget what the audience needs.

You don’t want to sit down and 60,000 words later realize that you’ve written a book that no one needs. As you devise the outline, constantly ask yourself, What can the reader expect from the book? How will you meet their needs?

5. What is your platform?

That’s right, even before you write a word of your book, you need to think about your platform.

Your platform is what you use to sell your book to an audience. If you’re Dr. Phil, your platform is your television show. If you’re Oprah, it’s your magazine (among other things).

For the less well known among us, a platform starts with a website (or a combination website-blog) so that your audience has a place to find you. In this part of your plan, you’ll nail down why you are the right person to write the book. Why should the reader trust you? What is your experience? What are your credentials? Do you need to get more, or can you partner with someone who has the needed expertise?

What will you do now to make sure you have an audience in place for your book once it’s published?

Yes, it’s work

If it seems like a lot of work to do before you even write the first word of Chapter 1, you’re right. But skipping the plan will almost certainly lead to a less than ideal outcome for your book. You owe it to yourself and to your project to make a solid plan. Not only will it help you clarify your thinking about what your book will cover and how, it will help you ensure solid sales of your book once it’s published.

For more information on Jennifer’s “How to Plan Your Nonfiction Book” online course please visit her website. Note that I’m teaching the fourth week on platform-building, so I hope you’ll check it out.

Do you have a question about what you should to do plan your nonfiction book? Please ask it here in a comment.