You’re a gem Simon. Thank you for explaining this so well and including all the screenshots.
I’ve just started a serial fiction here on Substack (you were my inspiration) and it’s been so hard to get readers. Bookfunnel seems like a next option!
Great article! I’ve also used BookFunnel group promos and saw similar results while I was with MailerLite. I’ve recently started a Substack and I’m hesitant to apply the same strategy. Isn’t importing subscriber email addresses without a proper integration risky? I wonder if it fully complies with data protection regulations.
EDIT: Should note, I'm not a lawyer or data privacy expert. :)
It's always worth thinking carefully about that sort of thing. In this case I'm confident that it's OK - it's very clear when someone signs up via the BookFunnel promo that they're signing up to my newsletter. Their email address isn't used for anything else: I download the CSV and load it into BookFunnel. Nobody else gets access to it, and I don't use it for any other purpose.
It's not meaningfully different to having an automatic integration: I'm doing the exact same thing that the Mailerlite integration did, just in a manual process.
When you import email addresses into Substack you have to confirm that those people have opted in. Sometimes it takes a little while for them to be approved - I assume Substack has some automated processes watching out for any suspicious activity.
Thank you, it’s reassuring to know that the lack of integration isn’t a major obstacle. That said, I’m still trying to understand the real benefit of being on Substack. Compared to a WordPress site with email integration, it feels like I’m giving up flexibility without gaining much in terms of discoverability. Substack Notes seem similar to other social media feeds, but without the reach or convenience of more established platforms. Am I missing something?
Not necessarily - it very much depends what you want to do.
For a bit of context, in my personal case I had a Wordpress site for probably over 15 years, which was fun but was very much just a little personal thing. Nobody ever saw it (except for a review I did of the movie TAKEN which really annoyed a certain segment of the internet). I also had a Mailchimp newsletter, which got up to about 100 subscribers over 10 years.
In the 4 years I've been on Substack (since 2021), I've ended up with over 9,000 subscribers including some paying subscribers.
Something definitely changed for me, and I'm pretty sure it was starting to use Substack.
So, yes: Wordpress is much more flexible, for sure. But I like Substack precisely because it does a couple of things and does them really well: publishing my writing, audio and video stuff. It's incredibly quick and easy to publish new work, to the point that it doesn't eat into my actual creative time at all. On Wordpress, I was always wrestling with random updates, annoying interface quirks, layout etc etc - none of that flexibility of Wordpress was actually useful to what I was doing.
On Notes, it is similar in a lot of ways to Bluesky/Twitter, at least on the surface. I've found it to be more interesting, for my own use, but also much more useful. There's no penalising of external links. There's very tight integration with long-form newsletter content. And the userbase, while small in comparison to other sites, is super-specialised in being people that want to read long-form material. Getting someone on Notes to read something is vastly easier than convincing someone on X or Bluesky to actually bother.
General networking is great - I've met a ton of interesting writers, have benefited greatly from the Recommendations system and so on. Discovery and general growth has been off the charts compared to any other platform I've used for writing.
But it's still a huge platform with complex recommendation engines underpinning everything, so your mileage, as they say, may vary. And it's definitely a long game.
Thank you for taking the time to share such a thoughtful answer and the link. I actually came across your article through Google search, so it’s clearly doing its job!
Mixing fiction and nonfiction is tricky, definitely not something for beginners, though I’ve seen a few authors pull it off. That’s the challenge I’m tackling myself: after publishing 3 writing guides, I’m now launching a satirical fiction series about a debut novelist.
I’ll check out your fiction as well, being a big fantasy nerd!
I've always thought Book Funnel was cool; something I'd like to use when I publish. That will happen in the coming months so I'm in search of marketing opportunities now. I've never heard of this feature but I really like it and plan to take part at my first opportunity. Thank you very much for doing this post to help out new authors. Also, thank you for following my account.
Thank you so much for this concise intro to group promos! It sounds super helpful for promoting my serial fiction just like you did. The fee is a little steeper than expected but I agree that it's a great non-scammy opportunity for authors & readers to share interesting stories so I don't think I would feel bad about investing some. Looking forward to further thoughts on Bookfunnel!
That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure the cost per subscriber is worth it for me at the moment as my substack is free. I do have a paid sub level where I will gift copies of every book to new and current paid subs so I’m considering using BookFunnel for that to make the experience easy for both sides. However using the posts to promote the sale of published books is the strategy I want to pursue at the moment.
There's a monthly subscription option, which is what I used for a while to test it out. You don't need to commit to a year. Anyway, BookFunnel aren't paying me, so absolutely only do it if it makes financial sense. :D
I think for me it's paid off in the long-run. I'm curious to see what it does returning to it this coming July. By the time I stopped using BookFunnel, it felt like diminishing returns and was bringing in far fewer new readers than Substack itself. In the last month, though, I've had Substack dry up a bit (unexpectedly - not sure what's going on), so I thought I'd poke at BookFunnel again.
I haven't yet learnt how to use BookFunnel, thanks Simon for writing this!
So the way I understand it, if you used a part of your Triverse serial I can use a short story that is freely available (ie. non-paywalled) on my Substack?
You can use whatever you want of yours for the promo, that's up to you. If you're trying to attract new readers, who will happily stay on the newsletter, it works best if the freebie matches up to the regular newsletter content. In my case, if someone enjoys reading the free Triverse sample, they will probably also enjoy getting new chapters in their inbox.
You’re a gem Simon. Thank you for explaining this so well and including all the screenshots.
I’ve just started a serial fiction here on Substack (you were my inspiration) and it’s been so hard to get readers. Bookfunnel seems like a next option!
It's worth a try! I just mentioned in another comment that there's a monthly plan, so you could always try that rather than committing to a year.
Glad this was helpful, though - and I hope you get some good results if you give it a try.
Great article! I’ve also used BookFunnel group promos and saw similar results while I was with MailerLite. I’ve recently started a Substack and I’m hesitant to apply the same strategy. Isn’t importing subscriber email addresses without a proper integration risky? I wonder if it fully complies with data protection regulations.
EDIT: Should note, I'm not a lawyer or data privacy expert. :)
It's always worth thinking carefully about that sort of thing. In this case I'm confident that it's OK - it's very clear when someone signs up via the BookFunnel promo that they're signing up to my newsletter. Their email address isn't used for anything else: I download the CSV and load it into BookFunnel. Nobody else gets access to it, and I don't use it for any other purpose.
It's not meaningfully different to having an automatic integration: I'm doing the exact same thing that the Mailerlite integration did, just in a manual process.
When you import email addresses into Substack you have to confirm that those people have opted in. Sometimes it takes a little while for them to be approved - I assume Substack has some automated processes watching out for any suspicious activity.
Thank you, it’s reassuring to know that the lack of integration isn’t a major obstacle. That said, I’m still trying to understand the real benefit of being on Substack. Compared to a WordPress site with email integration, it feels like I’m giving up flexibility without gaining much in terms of discoverability. Substack Notes seem similar to other social media feeds, but without the reach or convenience of more established platforms. Am I missing something?
Not necessarily - it very much depends what you want to do.
For a bit of context, in my personal case I had a Wordpress site for probably over 15 years, which was fun but was very much just a little personal thing. Nobody ever saw it (except for a review I did of the movie TAKEN which really annoyed a certain segment of the internet). I also had a Mailchimp newsletter, which got up to about 100 subscribers over 10 years.
In the 4 years I've been on Substack (since 2021), I've ended up with over 9,000 subscribers including some paying subscribers.
Something definitely changed for me, and I'm pretty sure it was starting to use Substack.
So, yes: Wordpress is much more flexible, for sure. But I like Substack precisely because it does a couple of things and does them really well: publishing my writing, audio and video stuff. It's incredibly quick and easy to publish new work, to the point that it doesn't eat into my actual creative time at all. On Wordpress, I was always wrestling with random updates, annoying interface quirks, layout etc etc - none of that flexibility of Wordpress was actually useful to what I was doing.
On Notes, it is similar in a lot of ways to Bluesky/Twitter, at least on the surface. I've found it to be more interesting, for my own use, but also much more useful. There's no penalising of external links. There's very tight integration with long-form newsletter content. And the userbase, while small in comparison to other sites, is super-specialised in being people that want to read long-form material. Getting someone on Notes to read something is vastly easier than convincing someone on X or Bluesky to actually bother.
General networking is great - I've met a ton of interesting writers, have benefited greatly from the Recommendations system and so on. Discovery and general growth has been off the charts compared to any other platform I've used for writing.
But it's still a huge platform with complex recommendation engines underpinning everything, so your mileage, as they say, may vary. And it's definitely a long game.
This post of mine might be a useful follow-up: https://open.substack.com/pub/simonkjones/p/how-to-very-very-slowly-cultivate?r=3rwg&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false
Thank you for taking the time to share such a thoughtful answer and the link. I actually came across your article through Google search, so it’s clearly doing its job!
Mixing fiction and nonfiction is tricky, definitely not something for beginners, though I’ve seen a few authors pull it off. That’s the challenge I’m tackling myself: after publishing 3 writing guides, I’m now launching a satirical fiction series about a debut novelist.
I’ll check out your fiction as well, being a big fantasy nerd!
I've always thought Book Funnel was cool; something I'd like to use when I publish. That will happen in the coming months so I'm in search of marketing opportunities now. I've never heard of this feature but I really like it and plan to take part at my first opportunity. Thank you very much for doing this post to help out new authors. Also, thank you for following my account.
Thank you so much for this concise intro to group promos! It sounds super helpful for promoting my serial fiction just like you did. The fee is a little steeper than expected but I agree that it's a great non-scammy opportunity for authors & readers to share interesting stories so I don't think I would feel bad about investing some. Looking forward to further thoughts on Bookfunnel!
Very interesting idea! I will save it until I'm a bit further along on my fiction path. Thank you!
That’s an interesting idea. I’m not sure the cost per subscriber is worth it for me at the moment as my substack is free. I do have a paid sub level where I will gift copies of every book to new and current paid subs so I’m considering using BookFunnel for that to make the experience easy for both sides. However using the posts to promote the sale of published books is the strategy I want to pursue at the moment.
There's a monthly subscription option, which is what I used for a while to test it out. You don't need to commit to a year. Anyway, BookFunnel aren't paying me, so absolutely only do it if it makes financial sense. :D
I think for me it's paid off in the long-run. I'm curious to see what it does returning to it this coming July. By the time I stopped using BookFunnel, it felt like diminishing returns and was bringing in far fewer new readers than Substack itself. In the last month, though, I've had Substack dry up a bit (unexpectedly - not sure what's going on), so I thought I'd poke at BookFunnel again.
Thanks for the advice
I have used it occasionally, but I may need to do it more....
I haven't yet learnt how to use BookFunnel, thanks Simon for writing this!
So the way I understand it, if you used a part of your Triverse serial I can use a short story that is freely available (ie. non-paywalled) on my Substack?
You can use whatever you want of yours for the promo, that's up to you. If you're trying to attract new readers, who will happily stay on the newsletter, it works best if the freebie matches up to the regular newsletter content. In my case, if someone enjoys reading the free Triverse sample, they will probably also enjoy getting new chapters in their inbox.
Simon, hanks for another great tutorial. Not sure I’m ready for book funnel today, though will keep it in mind for a good option n the future.