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It makes me crazy when people selling products and services to authors use marketing buzzwords and phrases without defining them. The phrase du jour is “book funnels.”

And I’ll be honest: When I first learned about marketing “funnels” years ago, it took me a while to truly understand the concept because marketing funnels don’t work like my kitchen funnel. (I’ll explain that later.)

So, what is a book funnel and how can it help you sell more books? I’ve got the answers for you. In this article, I explain:

• What are book funnels
• Why you need one
• Book funnel process flow
• Book funnel elements
• How you’ll use your book funnel

Note: This article is not about the paid resource called BookFunnel, a brand name for a service that allows you to outsource the book funnel process to a specialist.

What the heck are book funnels?

A book funnel is a marketing strategy used to increase book sales. It consists of a series of steps that guide potential readers from discovering your book to purchasing it.

I created this graphic to help visualize it.

How book funnels differ from my kitchen funnel

Now let me explain why this concept wasn’t obvious to me at first.

When you pour a liquid into the wide mouth of a kitchen funnel, all of that water comes out the narrow bottom. All of it.

With marketing funnels, lots goes into the top, and little comes out the bottom. The difference between “lots” and “little” remains trapped in the middle. The marketing happens in that middle.

Getting stuck in the middle is a good thing

People enter the top of the funnel, and either take the action you’re requesting in the middle, or they don’t take it. If they don’t take action, they remain in the middle.

If they do take action, they move farther into the funnel.

And if they take the final desired action – purchasing a product, registering for an event, etc. – they come out of the funnel at the end. Sort of.

So, lots of people enter the top, but not everybody takes all of the steps that lead them out at the end. Unlike the liquid flowing through my kitchen funnel.

Why you need a book funnel

Now that you know what a book funnel is and isn’t, the big question is: Why do you need one?

Book funnels are a great way to gain visibility and generate more sales for your books. Here’s why.

Increased visibility: A book funnel and the marketing activities that drive readers into it increase your book’s visibility and boost your author brand. It will also help generate more traffic to your website.

More sales: Targeting potential readers who are interested in your book and guiding them towards making a purchase helps you sell more books.

Increased engagement: A book funnel can help increase reader engagement on social media but also through email, which I find both helpful and rewarding. You’ll be able to use your email list to launch promotions, send notifications about new releases, and create conversations around your book and other topics.

Saves time: It automates the marketing process and reduces the time you spend manually promoting your book. This gives you more time to do what you’d rather be doing – writing another book.

Affordable: It’s a cost-effective way to market your book.

Once it’s set up, it keeps working for you all day and all night. What’s not to like about that?

Book funnel process flow

If you’re new to the funnel concept, it helps to break down how readers flow from top to bottom. Here’s how it works.

Step 1: At the top of your book funnel

Book funnels typically begin when you or your publisher create awareness of your book. This might involve social media campaigns, advertising, blog posts, and email marketing.

You’re attracting readers to the top of your funnel.

Step 2: Drawing the right readers into your funnel

Picture those readers hovering at the top of the book funnel. You want to draw them in by helping them learn more about your book. Reviews, interviews, videos, and other content can give readers a better understanding of the book’s themes and characters or what they’ll learn from it.

That information will help them decide if they want to move further into your funnel to continue learning more.

Step 3: Pulling readers further into your funnel

To pull those at the top even further into your funnel, you offer them a free digital gift that’s related to the book. Some call this a “freebie” or “reader magnet.” The marketing term is “lead magnet.”

They must provide their email address to receive this gift.

Step 4: Convert readers in your book funnels from “interested” to “buyers”

The process you use to capture their email takes them to a “thank you” page on your site. In addition to information on how they download your lead magnet, this page provides more information about the book, including purchase links.

Your process will also automatically send an email containing the link they use to download your lead magnet. You use this to encourage a purchase, too.

Step 5: Continue to encourage purchase by staying in touch

You have the email address of everybody in the middle of your funnel who added themselves to your email list – they “opted in.” This is whether they bought the book and came out the end or not.

Send them regular emails with helpful and interesting information so they don’t forget about you and your book.

These aren’t “buy my book” emails. They’re “staying in touch” emails that include book and other news as well as a purchase link.

These are the people who are most likely to purchase from you eventually. It might not be this book, but it could be the next one.

Visualize these five steps as you look at the book funnel diagram again.

Book funnel elements

Book funnels require technology. If you’re not a do-it-yourselfer, you can pay someone to set this up for you.

These are the elements you need.

Email service provider

I hope you’re already collecting email addresses that you use to stay in touch with readers. If you aren’t, this is a great way to start.

Your email service provider will:

• Give you the power to add a form to your landing page that collects email addresses
• Automatically collect and store those email addresses for you
• Automatically send email messages to people as soon as they provide their address (this is called an “email sequence”)
• Allow you to create and distribute to your list an email newsletter or any other messages you want to send them

There are many email service providers to chose from. I used several before discovering my absolute favorite, ConvertKit. It’s designed for creators like us, and the customer support is exceptional.

Landing page

A landing page is a single web page designed to encourage a single, specific action. It has no toolbars. There are no links to other pages on your site. I design mine with Thrive Architect, which works with WordPress.

The goal of your book funnel landing page is to get people to join your email list. This is where you offer that free digital download, your lead magnet.

This means there should be a clear call-to-action that encourages readers to do that. Include these elements:

• Text that describes your lead magnet
• An image of the lead magnet or something that represents it
• A call to action
• An email signup form, either on the landing page or on a form or page that pops up when people click on the call-to-action button

Here’s an example of the landing page for my newest lead magnet, a cheat sheet that lists the “8 Services That Help Journalists Find Authors and Other Sources.”

Lead magnet

A lead magnet is a digital, downloadable incentive you offer your target readers in exchange for providing their address so they add themselves to your email list. It must be relevant to your book.

Get nonfiction lead magnet ideas and resources for creating one in “5 nonfiction lead magnet ideas.”

A sample chapter works well as a fiction lead magnet, but I’ve got other ideas plus tools you can use to design yours in “3 fiction lead magnet ideas.”

Thank-you page

As soon as readers submit their email address, technology will take them to a thank-you page. That page can either provide the download link for your lead magnet, thank them for requesting your “gift” and instruct them to check their email for a message with the download link, or both.

Use this page to sell your book.

In addition to text that thanks people and instructs on the next steps involved for downloading the lead magnet, include:

• Your book cover
• Book description
• Your best influencer blurbs/testimonials
• A few reader reviews if you have them
• Purchase links to online retailers selling your book

Email sequence

An email sequence is an automated series of messages.

In this case, the first message thanks readers for requesting your gift and provides instructions on how and where to download it.

Follow that with an email with more information about your book and purchase links.

Continue to nurture these interested readers by sending regular emails with updates about your book, additional content related to it, helpful or interesting information, and so on.

View your landing page as an alternative home page

The idea behind a book funnel is to create a series of steps that use information to turn readers from browsers to buyers. This is why I want you to use your landing page as an alternative home page for much of your book marketing.

Send people to your landing page instead of your website’s home page. Get ideas for how to do that in Carolyn Choate’s free lead magnet, “20 Ways to Bring People to Your Funnel.” (Carolyn sets up funnels for authors and others. This is part of her funnel, so even if you aren’t interested in her free download, check out her landing page for inspiration.)

Add the URL to your social media profiles. Share it on social media regularly. Include it in your speaker bio if you speak at conferences and online summits.

Repetition can lead to purchasing

Here’s why: People aren’t going to buy your book the first time they hear about it on social media, in a guest post, or in a YouTube video. When you send them to your Amazon sales page early in this relationship, they aren’t likely to buy the book quite yet.

They need more information and they need it more than once. A lot more.

You can do all of this with email marketing. And that’s why you want to capture their email addresses.

Email marketing allows you to connect with the right readers in a way that helps keep your book top of mind now and later.

There are definitely situations where you’ll send people to your book’s sales page on Amazon or elsewhere. But when you’re marketing to readers who don’t know you and your work yet, a book funnel built around email marketing is one of the best ways for them to get to see the value you offer.

Start building your book funnel

Don’t wait to get started building your book funnel. And don’t let the technology frighten you off. If you don’t want to do it yourself, pay someone to do it for you. Help is out there.

But do it.

Let a book funnel help you connect in a more meaningful way with the people you wrote the book for while you sell more books.

What company do you use for your email service provider? Please tell us in a comment. 

10 rock-solid reasons why authors should build an email list

By Joan Stewart, The Publicity Hound

Two weeks before launching her book, the frantic author calls, begging me to help her identify every possible reader who might be interested in her book, and brainstorm ways to reach them.

One of my first questions always is, “Do you have an email list?”

“Only a list of family and friends,” she says. “But they’re sick of hearing about my book.”

When that scene repeats itself every few weeks, my heart breaks.

Without an email list of people who have raised their hands and given you permission to market to them, you’re leaving thousands of dollars, as well as stacks of unsold books, on the table.

Email: A profitable power tool for authors

After building two email lists for more than 15 years – one with 7,000 names in my shopping cart and one with 6,300 names in AWeber, my email management program, I can’t think of a marketing tool that comes anywhere close to making money faster than email does.

Tim Ferriss, author of The 4-Hour Work Week, built a list of more than 250,000 fans but did nothing with it for three years. When he finally started emailing regularly, he realized that he had been “sitting on Fort Knox.”

Your list doesn’t have to be as big as his, or even as big as mine. A small list of just a few hundred fans can reap dividends if you mail interesting content on a regular schedule. Don’t start building a list but delay mailing because you “don’t have enough names.” I started with only one.

If you haven’t written your book yet, you’re in a much better position than the author above who’s launching in two weeks. You have time to build your list and give readers a chance to know, like, and trust you.

Here are 10 rock-solid reasons why you should start building a list now, regardless of your genre and whether you write fiction or nonfiction.

1. Email can be your secret weapon.

At least nine out of 10 authors don’t market with email. Maybe it’s because so many authors are introverts and just want to be left alone to write books.

That means huge potential to attract a solid list of fans who are interested in your topic and hungry for your content. Why? Because so few authors are providing it.

2. It’s inexpensive.

Don’t believe what you hear about needing a big email list. A small list of several hundred loyal fans who love you can be much more valuable than a list of 50,000, most of whom might not bother opening your emails.

My AWeber program costs only $69 a month to email as often as I wish to about 6,300 people who subscribe to my free email tips on publicity. I also clean my list regularly, which means I remove people who don’t open my emails within six months. Why pay to mail to someone who isn’t interested?

If you don’t have a budget, you can use the free version of easy-to-use MailChimp, until your list grows and you need the paid version. Or you can switch to AWeber which has an A+ help desk with phone support.

3. You’ll have a ready-made list of fans in place before you launch — and you own the list.

Even with a list of only a few hundred, you can convince some of them to let their friends and followers know about your book.  The more valuable your content, the more eager they will be to help you.  Authors who don’t have email lists are at a huge disadvantage on launch day.

If you have a big following on Facebook, relying solely on social media can be dangerous because you don’t own the property. Do a Google search for “my Facebook fan page disappeared” and you’ll see how many people, some of them authors, have lost thousands of fans that took years to attract.

4. It’s the fastest, most efficient way to communicate with a big group of fans.

OK, so you’re on Facebook.  Not all your fans are, however. Same with Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, Google+, and other social media sites. Think about how much time you spend sharing one piece of content to multiple sites. And how little traction you build.

In less than 20 minutes, you can send one well-written email message about a special promotion you’re running and watch your Amazon numbers change.

If subscribers decide they don’t want to receive your emails, they can click the “unsubscribe” link without bothering you. If they do ask you to unsubscribe them, do it, and don’t try to change their minds.

5. You can send follow-up messages automatically to build the relationship.

If you want to see how this works, grab my free cheat sheet “10 Profitable Ways to Use Email to Create SuperFans Who Help You Sell Books.”  (Note from editor: That offer is no longer available, so we’ve removed the link.)

Over the next several days, you’ll receive a series of four email messages, asking you for feedback on my tips. The emails are so short and simple–without photos or fancy fonts–that  many authors thank me for responding. Some think I wrote the plain text emails only for them because they look exactly like the emails their family and friends send. Save the fancy templates for your newsletter.

6. You can separate your fans by what interests them. 

This means that if you’re using a decent email management program, you can place subscribers onto separate lists according to where they live, their occupation, products purchased, or other criteria. By doing this, you can email all your fans in, say, Boston, to let them know you’ll be doing a book signing at a Boston bookstore. You don’t have to pester the hundreds of other people on your list who don’t care about that event.

You can also send an entire series of follow-up messages to just one segment. Segmenting readers is a powerful tool if you’ve written books on unrelated topics.

7. You can convert casual observers on your list into a smaller circle of loyal fans, and those loyal fans into a smaller but more valuable circle of what I call SuperFans.

Kevin Kelly, the founding executive editor of Wired magazine, writes about the importance of SuperFans or what he calls “True Fans.” These are people who can’t stand to be without anything you produce.

Here’s an excerpt from the book The Curve: From Freeloaders Into Superfans by Nicholas Lovell.

“A creator, such as an artist, musician, photographer, craftsperson, performer, animator, designer, videomaker, or author–in other words, anyone producing works of art–needs to acquire only 1,000 True Fans to make a living,” Kelly writes.

“They will drive 200 miles to see you sing. They will buy the super deluxe re-issue hi-res box set of your stuff even though they have the low-res version. They have a Google Alert set for your name. They bookmark the eBay page where your out-of-print editions show up.

“They come to your openings. They have you sign their copies. They buy the T-shirt and the mug, and the hat. They can’t wait till you issue your next work. They are true fans.”

And they make the cash register go ka-ching, ka-ching.

8. You can interest people in your topic, and give them time to know, like, and trust you before you ask them to buy anything.

If you follow the 80-20 rule of marketing – share 80 percent valuable or interesting content and 20 percent promotions – you can’t go wrong.

What’s valuable content? How-to tips, stories, information about emerging trends, helpful tools you love using, writing tips, and even step-by-step instructions on how to do something.

An author who writes horror novels can show people how to make a Halloween mask that resembles a character in the book.  A romance author can explain how singles can have fun on Valentine’s Day without a significant other. The author of poetry books can share a “Top 10” list of websites for readers who want to try their hand at writing poetry.

9. If you blog, you can send a “blog broadcast” to your email list whenever you publish a new post, or you can send a weekly wrap-up of links to your posts.

I don’t do this but some of my author clients do. I love the idea because it encourages them to blog on a regular basis. And they don’t have to rely only on the search engines to pull traffic to their blogs.

10. Fans who love you on social media, but see your content sporadically, can subscribe to your email list so they don’t miss a beat.

Content you publish to Twitter, LinkedIn, and Facebook can drop far down in someone’s feed within minutes. If they aren’t in front of their computers when you publish it, they can miss it. Email, on the other hand, stays in their inbox until they delete it.

Have I convinced you?

If you’re thinking about writing a book, or if you’ve already published, start building an email list now.

What questions do you have about email marketing? Do you use it? If so, what results have you seen? Share your questions and success stories in the comments.