Day 126: Reader Magnets

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I had mentioned before about how I started learning all about marketing and sales funnels. I also posted about Reader Magnets recently, but my previous marketing blog post didn't mention much about them, so I'll write a little bit here.

I got most of my information from the book Reader Magnets: Build Your Author Platform and Sell more Books on Kindle (2019 Edition) (Book Marketing for Authors 1), which is a free ebook, and also Launch to Market: Easy Marketing For Authors (Write Faster, Write Smarter Book 4), which explained a slightly different tweak on the type of Reader Magnet you can offer.

A Reader Magnet is basically something free that you offer to people if they join your newsletter. This is important since you now have a captive audience for when you launch a new book. You want to build your newsletter list with people who like your writing and might actually be willing to buy it, and a Reader Magnet is a tool that will automatically draw in people who already like your writing.

Nick Stephenson offered book 2 in his series for free as a Reader Magnet. Chris Fox offered a prequel story to his launch book, which explained some mysterious events that had happened before the book and were referenced a few times. (Reader Magnets don't have to be books or stories, they can be other things too.)

For both Reader Magnets, they appealed more to people who had read book 1 in their series and enjoyed it. So the Reader Magnet directly targeted readers who were fans of the author.

I'm going the Chris Fox route, simply because when I started writing volume 1 in my Lady Wynwood's Spies series, there were already events that happened beforehand that formed a foundation for the storyline. However, I didn't want to write it and offer it for sale because I already had a prequel novel (The Spinster's Christmas).

Also, since I'm publishing on Kindle Unlimited, I can't offer the second book in my series for free. Another thing to think about is that Chris Fox mentioned that offering a book that's also available for purchase didn't get him as many newsletter subscribers as offering a book not available anywhere else.

So I decided to write the Meynhill birthday celebration as a Reader Magnet to offer to people if they join my newsletter. The events are referenced in volume 1 of the series, and while they do have some impact, it's not important enough that a reader needs to read the Reader Magnet to enjoy the rest of the series.

I still don't know what I'm going to call the book yet, though, so I'm still referring to it as the Reader Magnet right now. :)

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