How to get People to Read your Books
The Journey from Click to Download
But it’s free!
Time for an update on my quest for visibility. I’m currently running one ad on Facebook that’s telling people about my free novella, Regent, and sending them to a landing page to sign up for my newsletter in exchange for downloading it. This ad started the day my last boosted post finished.
As a result, I now have a total of twelve subscribers! That’s four from this ad so far.
Woohoo! Twelve wonderful people who were willing to hand over their email addresses, even though some of them still haven’t downloaded the free book that was on offer. Hmmm.
Why aren’t they all downloading the novella? I can understand people seeing they have to input their email address and giving up, but having gone to that effort, why not grab the free thingy that you put your address in to get?
Troubleshooting the process
My assumption is that I might have too many steps in the chain to get the book. Currently the process is this:
- You click the link on the ad
- It takes you to the landing page on my website and you’re asked for your email address
- I have a double opt-in enabled, which means an email is sent to confirm you really wanted to sign up to my list
- Once you confirm your address, you get an email with a link to the book.
- That link takes you to BookFunnel where you click another button and follow the process to download the file to send the book wherever you want to read it.
Now, I could host a landing page direct on BookFunnel, and that would cut out the trip to my website and send people straight to the book.
What’s the difference? Using my website I have more control over what that landing page looks like. That’s obviously better from branding, and while I might be struggling in the ‘building a brand’ department, keeping things consistent is probably better than nothing.
I can also control the language and sequencing with the embedded form that I have there from MailerLite. And than includes a button on the ‘thank you’ page (after they’ve given me their email) that takes them to my homepage where they can browse my site (the landing page itself has no links away). I think this will be useful once my first full book, Royal, goes live (it’s currently only pre-order).
The alternative option
Sending people straight to BookFunnel means less clicking around all over the internet, which would be better for ensuring people don’t get bored or annoyed or just sick of the treasure hunt. This should mean they not only get on the list but also download the book. The risk is that they’re not introduced to my site, and eventually the other books.
At this stage though, I only have a link to one pre-order (Royal). Now I also have a link to Royal in the back of Regent, and when Royal is live, it will also have a link to my mailing list sign up, where you can get Regent.
So not sending them to the website proper is not likely to be a big deal until I have some more books to sell.
The experiment
The real issue is that I don’t even know if I have a problem at this stage. Maybe life happened and distracted people from downloading the book. Maybe they found the download instructions too much to deal with right then, in which case it won’t matter how they got there.
The best way to figure this out would be to A/B, or split test the ad. Within Facebook, you can do split testing where Facebook will send some people one ad and the rest get a different one. To solve this issue, I would need to simply switch the link, sending half to my page and the other half straight to BookFunnel.
But first I need to decide if it’s worth continuing the ad in the first place.
Check back soon to see what happens!
Cheers, K.T.
