Writing for the market vs for yourself

Can you be strategic and still make good art?

I’ve used a service called BookFunnel to help grow my list for several years. In fact, many of you reading this probably found the Write More newsletter through a BookFunnel promo (hi! 👋). A whopping 54% of my subscribers have joined up this way, and it was especially useful in the early days.

It’s easy to use:

1. Multiple authors join forces for a free giveaway 🤝

2. Each author links to the giveaway in their newsletter, on social platforms and anywhere else that makes sense. This produces a powerful networking effect, with everyone involved borrowing from the combined reach. 🔗

3. Readers can browse the giveaway, which is usually a list of ebooks. Downloading a book is free but does require signing up to the author’s newsletter. 🗞️

That’s all there is to it. It’s author-friendly and, crucially, reader-friendly. No hard sell, no dodgy tracking, no underhand advertising trickery. I use the opening 10-or-so chapters of Triverse for these giveaways, which means anyone who enjoys the sample will probably then also enjoy this newsletter.

Anyway. I’ve been doing this for ages, and a week-or-so ago had my first rejection.