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Robin recently received an email about their claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement, with instructions to review their claim, and check that the allocations were correct. They did that, but when they came to submit the information, it asked for an SSN or TIN. Since we’re not in the US, Robin doesn’t have either of those. They left those boxes blank, but the website warned that doing so could delay payment. They then emailed the settlement administrator to ask what they should do. A reply arrived yesterday, and we’re posting the information here in case it helps anyone in a similar situation. If you have a claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement and you are _not_ in the USA, download and fill in a W8-BEN form: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf When filling it in, make sure you enter dates in the MONTH-DAY-YEAR format. Parts I and II of a completed W8-BEN form If you’re in the UK, put your Unique Taxpayer Reference in box 6a. In part II, put that you are a resident of **United Kingdom** , claiming provisions of Article and paragraph **12(1)** to claim a **0** % rate of withholding on **book income**. You will need to print the PDF, sign it, and scan it. If you don’t have a printer or scanner, your local library should be able to help. Once it’s complete, upload it to https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/update-information

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Robin recently received an email about their claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement, with instructions to review their claim, and check that the allocations were correct. They did that, but when they came to submit the information, it asked for an SSN or TIN. Since we’re not in the US, Robin doesn’t have either of those. They left those boxes blank, but the website warned that doing so could delay payment. They then emailed the settlement administrator to ask what they should do. A reply arrived yesterday, and we’re posting the information here in case it helps anyone in a similar situation. If you have a claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement and you are _not_ in the USA, download and fill in a W8-BEN form: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf When filling it in, make sure you enter dates in the MONTH-DAY-YEAR format. Parts I and II of a completed W8-BEN form If you’re in the UK, put your Unique Taxpayer Reference in box 6a. In part II, put that you are a resident of **United Kingdom** , claiming provisions of Article and paragraph **12(1)** to claim a **0** % rate of withholding on **book income**. You will need to print the PDF, sign it, and scan it. If you don’t have a printer or scanner, your local library should be able to help. Once it’s complete, upload it to https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/update-information

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Robin recently received an email about their claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement, with instructions to review their claim, and check that the allocations were correct. They did that, but when they came to submit the information, it asked for an SSN or TIN. Since we’re not in the US, Robin doesn’t have either of those. They left those boxes blank, but the website warned that doing so could delay payment. They then emailed the settlement administrator to ask what they should do. A reply arrived yesterday, and we’re posting the information here in case it helps anyone in a similar situation. If you have a claim in the Anthropic copyright settlement and you are _not_ in the USA, download and fill in a W8-BEN form: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/fw8ben.pdf When filling it in, make sure you enter dates in the MONTH-DAY-YEAR format. Parts I and II of a completed W8-BEN form If you’re in the UK, put your Unique Taxpayer Reference in box 6a. In part II, put that you are a resident of **United Kingdom** , claiming provisions of Article and paragraph **12(1)** to claim a **0** % rate of withholding on **book income**. You will need to print the PDF, sign it, and scan it. If you don’t have a printer or scanner, your local library should be able to help. Once it’s complete, upload it to https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/update-information

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It’s an unfortunate fact of modern life that there are many scammers on the internet looking to make money from authors. > Avoid scammers by: > > * Not doing business via Facebook messenger > * Checking the email address — all ours end with @authorhelp.uk > * Being wary of impostors who steal photos and content > We were recently contacted by an author that had been contacted by a scammer pretending to be Robin. The author was contacted by a Facebook account called “Robin Phillips (Book Feature Hub)”. The Facebook account uses Author Help images, taken from our website. The account that contacted the author. Note the use of graphics from the Author Help website The scammer offered the author a free book spotlight, which they accepted. Then the scammer offered to set up a marketing funnel, for $500. Thus far, all communication had taken place via Facebook Messenger. The author, now rather suspicious, very sensibly asked the scammer to send the details from an Author Help email address. Initially, the scammer tried to ignore that request, but the author insisted. The scammer replied that the author could email him at a GMail address. Messages between the scammer and author. Note that the scammer offers a GMail address instead of an Author Help address (which would end in @authorhelp.uk). He also offers a web address, but there is no website at the address given At this point, the author knew that they were talking to a scammer, and not anyone from Author Help. They stopped responding, reported the account to Facebook, and emailed us to let us know. We have also reported the account to Facebook, but it’s probable that this won’t be the only or last account to try this. We used to have a Facebook page, but we stopped using it some time ago. This is what our Facebook page currently looks like: The current Author Help Facebook page We do not contact authors offering services. Few legitimate service providers do. You should always be suspicious of anyone contacting you to offer services. If you think they might be genuine, ask them to contact you using an email address belonging to the company they claim to represent. In our case, our email addresses end in @authorhelp.uk Writer Beware does excellent work reporting on scammers of all types. We recommend following their blog at https://writerbeware.blog/ The Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi) maintains a list of service providers, good and bad, at https://selfpublishingadvice.org/best-self-publishing-services/ We recommend checking that list before hiring any author service provider.

This week, many authors who are part of the Anthropic copyright class action settlement began receiving notices like this one: Upon accessing the portal (which doesn’t seem to have a formal name, so I’ll call it the “disgreement portal”), many of those authors made an unwelcome discovery: their publishers are making claims on their allocations (aka the payouts for their works) that are simply…wrong. (Just to note, since several people have asked me this: as far as I know, you only get a notice if there’s a disagreement. So if, like me, you haven’t received anything, there’s no disagreement and nothing you need to do.) **UPDATE:** Oops, looks like I was wrong. Some authors are getting notices inviting them to review their claim summary, with no mention of an “allocation difference”. I’ll try to get one of these so I can add it. ### Wrongful Claims Just to refresh: per the stipulations of the settlement, authors who’ve self-published, or whose contracts have terminated, or who have reverted the rights to their published books, can claim 100% of the allocation. The publisher isn’t entitled to a share. For in-print books, the settlement imposes a 50/50 split (the “default split”) between author and publisher (this is based on common publishing contract language that divides recovery in copyright infringement litigation equally between publisher and author). **_Publishers_** Most of the reports I’m receiving fall into two categories: publishers making 50% or 100% claims on _rights-reverted works_ (where they should receive no share), and publishers making 100% claims on _in-print works_ (where their share should be 50%). Being a fairly cautious person, I’m always reluctant to attribute to malice what can be plausibly explained by poor recordkeeping (or poor checking of that recordkeeping)–and do I suspect that poor records, or poor checking, or overworked or inexperienced staff assigned to the task, are responsible for many if not most of the wrongful claims on rights-reverted works. Not that that’s an excuse–especially where multiple books are involved (one author told me that 16 of their rights-reverted books were being claimed; another had 11). For the wrongful 100% claims on in-print books, it’s harder to figure what’s going on. Since several Kensington Publishing authors reported such claims, I reached out to Kensington CEO Steve Zacharius for comment; he indicated that it wasn’t Kensington’s intent to claim 100%, and told me that Anthropic was aware of the issue and was correcting it. Three other publishers, when contacted by authors, said essentially the same thing. (**UPDATE:** On Bluesky, McFarland has said the same.) Given this, and the fact that so many authors are reporting the exact same wrongful claim by multiple different publishers, I can’t help wondering if, rather than greed or evil, some kind of glitch in the settlement claims system is responsible for the errors. Or maybe it’s an artifact of batch claims by publishers? I don’t know. Publishers and imprints reported (I will add to these lists as information comes my way): * **50% or 100% claims on rights-reverted works:** Bloomsbury, Kensington, Harlequin, Silhouette, Ballantine, Siren Bookstrand, HarperCollins, Little Brown, Macmillan, Tor, Feiwel & Friends, Angry Robot, Hachette, Grand Central, Orbit US, Globe Pequot, Titan Publishing, Astra Publishing House, Simon & Schuster, North Star Editions, Baen, Tekno, Penguin Random House, Albert Whitman (!!! AW is in bankruptcy proceedings), Desktop Broadcasting Inc., Red Hen Press, Sourcebooks. * **100% claims on in-print works:** Rutgers University Press, Johns Hopkins University Press, Georgetown University Press, West Virginia University Press, Kensington, Scholastic, New Harbinger, Abrams, McFarland, Red Wheel/Weiser, Page Street Publishers, Bolinda Audio. (Odd how many university presses are in this category.) **_Literary Agents_** Before the claims filing window closed, I heard rumors that some literary agents were considering making claims on books they’d sold. The general consensus among people I talked to about this was “Nope”. The Anthropic settlement arose from a class action lawsuit; the class, and therefore those eligible to participate in the settlement, is limited to rightsholders. Agents are not rightsholders in the books they sell. It appears, though, that at least some agents don’t agree. So far this morning, I’ve heard from five authors with six different agencies that have made claims for between 15% and 25% of the allocation on books they repped. Speaking as an author, I would absolutely contest those claims. **_Educational Publishers_** Educational publishers (defined in FAQ #22 on the settlement website as publishers that “specialize in creating and publishing works, including but not limited to textbooks, for the instruction of students and professionals, which are distributed for and through educational and professional markets,”) are exempt from the default split. I’ve heard from authors with Wiley and Pearson that the publishers are claiming between 75% and 90% of the allocation. This isn’t necessarily a wrongful claim, but I’ve seen advice to contest it anyway and let the settlement administrator sort it out. **_Other Discrepancies_** I’ve also heard about a number of issues that fall more into the types of snafus or opportunism you might expect in a massive claims process around works that are in sometimes extremely complicated publishing arrangements. * A book originally published in the UK whose author and publisher are each properly claiming 50% but whose US publisher is claiming 100% * A trade publisher claiming a higher percentage than the 50/50 default * Works by a defunct publisher that are being claimed by a company the authors have never heard of * Conflicting claims around anthologies and individual stories in anthologies * A self-published book that somehow, between the author filing a claim and the correction notices going out, acquired PRH as an additional rights holder * A rights-reverted book with an outstanding audio contract where the audio publisher is making a 100% claim * An in-print book with the same audio publisher, also making a 100% claim * An author whose publisher probably filed a claim, but who missed the deadline to file their own claim. Per the settlement FAQ #46, this wouldn’t necessarily lock the author out of the settlement, but any payment would presumably be up to the other party. ### What Should You Do If You Receive a Notice? If there’s a claim on your work that seems wrong to you, follow the process to make corrections. _Gather documentation_ : rights reversion letters, publishing contracts (look for language in the Copyright clause that stipulates an equal split between you and the publisher of any recovery from copyright litigation), anything else that supports the correction you want to make. _Access the disagreement portal_. It’s here: https://secure.anthropiccopyrightsettlement.com/allocation. You’ll need both a claim number and a PIN, both of which should appear on the notice you received. _If there’s a disagreement, you’ll see it on the Disagreements page._ There’s a No Disagreements page too, for works with no conflicting claims. You can access it at the link above even if you haven’t received a notice. _Review the information, make the corrections, and upload any supporting documentation._ Instructions for doing that are here. You’re supposed to get an email confirming your corrections. _Additional suggestion:_ if your publisher is making a wrongful claim, _contact it to ask why_. I’m guessing that many publishers will respond that it’s a mistake, especially with the 100% claims on in-print books. It can’t hurt to get that in writing. Some authors are encountering portal glitches (the portal won’t log their corrections) or expressing frustration with the instructions, including the lack of clarity on what happens after corrections are filed. Author Shelley Powers has written about this. Helpful social media threads from Courtney Milan, who has been on top of the Anthropic settlement from the start: * On the general process of correcting a claim * On what to do if a publisher makes a claim on a rights-reverted book ### How Big Are These Problems? My guess: big. Obviously I can’t say for sure–it’s a huge settlement, with tens of thousands of authors and hundreds of thousands of works. So any insight I have is just a peek through a small crack in a massive wall. But the unusually large number of reports I’ve received over the last two days, as well as the fact that authors are reporting the exact same errors over and over, suggest to me that these aren’t the kind of routine glitches you might expect from such a large operation, but something much more widepread and systemic. I’ll continue to report on all of this as information comes my way. Stay tuned for updates. ### Share this: * Share on X (Opens in new window) X * Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Facebook * Share on Threads (Opens in new window) Threads * Share on Reddit (Opens in new window) Reddit * Share on Mastodon (Opens in new window) Mastodon * Share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window) LinkedIn * Share on Bluesky (Opens in new window) Bluesky * Share on Tumblr (Opens in new window) Tumblr * Email a link to a friend (Opens in new window) Email * Print (Opens in new window) Print * Share on Pinterest (Opens in new window) Pinterest * Share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window) WhatsApp * More * * Share on Telegram (Opens in new window) Telegram * Share on X (Opens in new window) X * ### Like this: Like Loading… ### _Related_

Want to find new readers by making your book free? Here's how to make the most of your promotion, and three easy places to start.

* 1 * 0 * 0 * 1 Listen & Subscribe: Apple Podcasts Spotify YouTube ### About the Episode: Your email list is your most valuable asset as an author, but how do you actually grow it beyond people who already know you? The answer is a lead magnet: free content you offer in exchange for an email address. In this episode, Ricci Wolman and Ferol Vernon break down the full system: what to give away, where to host it, how to deliver it, and how to drive traffic. ### What you’ll learn: * The difference between a lead magnet and a reader magnet, and why you need both (one reaches strangers, one converts existing readers) * What to give away: chapter, novella, or full book, and why novellas hit the sweet spot for most authors * The KDP Select caveat: why giving away a full book can violate exclusivity terms and what to do instead * The 4 components of a working lead magnet system: content, landing page, delivery, and traffic * The best tool for author-specific lead magnet delivery, and why BookFunnel handles customer service so you don’t have to * How to use Meta ads (Facebook and Instagram) to drive lead magnet sign-ups starting at $5/day * Free traffic options: newsletter swaps and group promos, plus their real limitations * The biggest mistake authors make after running a successful lead magnet campaign (and it’s not the ad) * What your landing page actually needs to say (spoiler: very little — keep it simple) * A preview of WWM’s new Reader Reach™ Lead Magnet product (coming soon!) Also: the Pacific Northwest trip recap, three new national parks checked off, and Ricci’s first marmot sighting. ### Resources Mentioned: * The Comprehensive Guide to BookFunnel Novel Marketing Podcast * Vellum – Create beautiful books * BookFunnel: Essential Tools for Indie Authors * Beehiiv – Home for Growing Newsletters | Made by Creators, for Creators * Kit (formerly ConvertKit) – Creator-first email marketing and newsletter platform * HubSpot – Software & Tools for your Business * MailerLite: Create Email Marketing Your Audience Will Love * EmailOctopus: Email marketing made easy * WordPress.com: Everything You Need to Build Your Website * Meta Ads – Build lasting connections with customers * Reader Reach™: Find More Readers with Ads by Written Word Media * Bargain Booksy Feature: Written Word Media Author and Publisher Payment Portal * How to Grow Your Author Email List (and Why It Matters More Than Ever) * See past podcast episodes here ____ Click here to view a raw transcript of this episode Ferol Vernon (00:09.848) Hello, authors, and welcome to the Written Word Media Podcast. I am Ferol here again with Ricci and Ricci. we are coming as we record this to the end of the summer. Camps are over, our kids are waiting around to go back to school, playing video games, and we are recovering from travel. but looking forward to to the fall and all that that brings. Ricci (00:33.745) Yeah, absolutely. I think everyone’s ready to get back into routine. Maybe us more than everybody, the parents are ready. We’re ready. but it has been like a really, really cool summer. we as a family are trying to visit all the national parks in the US. I believe there are sixty-three. And so coming back from this trip and having gotten three more under our belt, we went and checked out the Pacific Northwest and it was really incredible. Ferol Vernon (00:36.398) Well our the parents are ready. We’re ready. Yeah. Ricci (01:01.882) best place to visit in the summer, so I highly recommend. saw a new animal. I saw a marmot for the first time. Had never seen one of those before. So that’s probably my highlight. Ferol Vernon (01:09.037) That’s right, the marmots. It was a cool animal to see. Yeah, and to hear. They make this incredible noise, which was really cool. Ricci (01:18.266) Yeah, it’s just cool to like, you know, at this point in my life I thought maybe I’d seen all the animals, but no, there are still new animals to see and hear. So that was pretty cool. Ferol Vernon (01:27.476) Yeah. And you know, we actually visited a lot of really interesting bookstores out there. And in the Pacific Northwest, they were having all the local bookstores were having this like where’s Waldo competition? And so there was like little kids walking in the bookstores looking for little taped up waldos everywhere, which was like kind of a neat thing. Whenever we travel, obviously we’re in the book business. We always stop by book bookstores as much as we can. so it was really cool to see some that are all the way in the other country from from where we are. Ricci (01:54.565) Yeah, India bookstores are the best. I mean, they each have their own character. They’re so beautiful. They’re so well merchandised. that’s always a highlight. So yeah, overall really good. but yeah, also nice to be back. Lots of exciting things going on in the world of books and authors and marketing, and excited to chat about that today. Ferol Vernon (02:14.719) Yeah, and and one of the one of those marketing things that we’ve we get a lot of questions about this, and it’s something that we’ve recommended kind of in passing on a couple episodes. And so based on sort of feedback, we thought, hey, let’s a whole episode on this. And that is really what the sort of marketing world calls a lead magnet. And the lead magnet will explain all the stuff about this, but the lead magnet, interestingly, is not really something that’s only specific to authors and in depublishing, which a lot of y’all listening are in that world. Lead magnets are things that marketers have been using for decades at this point to try to drive action to sell everything from, you know, physical products to digital products, to all sorts of things. Ricci (02:57.325) Yeah, absolutely. I think lead magnets are actually the most popular when it comes to B2B marketing. generally B2B marketers use lead magnets like white papers or research papers that they they put up online. And then in order to access it, whatever niche industry you’re in, you have to hand over your email address and usually some additional information about you. And then that company, you know, uses that to try and sell you on their product. And so It’s exactly the same concept when it comes to authors. we’re using lead magnets to get readers to sign up for your list and and then hopefully get them to buy your books. Ferol Vernon (03:37.511) Yeah. So let’s take a minute here and just like define what we’re talking about. So basically a lead magnet, like we said, is when you give a piece of content to someone in exchange for them joining your mailing list or taking some kind of action. For the most part, what we’re going to talk about today is joining your mailing list. And so the trade goes like this: Hey, you give me your email address, now I can talk to you, and I’m going to give you something for free. And if you haven’t listened to one of our first episodes, it about the the psychology around free promotion, but this is something that people have been using literally for centuries. giving somebody something for free is not only very effective, but it makes them feel very positive about you. So while you might cringe a little bit and say, like, I don’t want to give something away for free, there’s a lot of marketing and business value that goes along with doing this. So I encourage you to have an open mind as we start walking through the different parts of this and Understand that this is a really powerful technique that you can use. Ricci (04:36.363) Yeah, also when somebody receives something for free, there’s a feeling of reciprocity that arises. And so they’re like, you gave me something for free. I would like to give something back to you. And so it is a very powerful technique. what’s great about lead magnets when it comes to authors is that generally the thing you’re giving away is your work. And this is perfect because the readers the thing that they’re getting for free. Ferol Vernon (04:40.516) Exactly. Ricci (05:05.769) is actually marketing you and getting them familiar with your writing, your genre. So you’re hooking them into your world, into the way that you write, which then hopefully gets them to go on and purchase other books in the series or in your backlist. Ferol Vernon (05:19.601) Yeah. So let’s, you know, I was listening actually to the novel marketing podcast the other day, and they had Damon from BookFunnel on it. And he had a really like it’s a small part of the episode, but I thought it was a really cool insight. And basically they talk about the difference between a reader magnet and a lead magnet. Okay. And so the distinction they make, which we’ll unpack for for folks in a minute, is that there’s a lead magnet. So this is like a lead. So again, marketing terms, it’s like somebody who may turn into a fan or a reader or a purchaser. but these are strangers. So you’re you’re figuring out a way to reach out to people who have never heard of you, and you’re offering this exchange content for email address. And that’s sort of what we call a lead magnet, right? And then a reader magnet is extraordinarily similar, but also different. It’s a different context. And so this is a technique that’s used when somebody already knows about your content. Let’s say they’ve finished reading your book, and then you say, Hey, do you want something for free to go a little deeper? but The difference is that a reader magnet is somebody who’s already familiar with you, where as a lead magnet, those are strangers. That’s marketing sort of that you’re trying to get new people into your orbit. And I thought that distinction was was both really interesting and really important for authors to understand. Ricci (06:32.306) Yeah, that’s a cool distinction. And I like the nomenclature. what’s important is in both these scenarios, what you’re trying to do is get that person on your email list. And I know we talk about this every every episode, but your email list is your most valuable, your most valuable asset as an author. And you always want to get people, get as many people as you can onto that list. when it’s strangers, you’re pulling them on and then you’re selling them and and educating them on who you are. When it’s somebody who’s read your book and there there are tons of people out there who Ferol Vernon (06:41.913) Right. Ricci (07:01.64) have purchased your book, wherever it might be from, on some retailer who are not on your list. And so when they get to the end of the book, you can now offer this reader magnet in exchange for getting them onto your list. And now you actually own the relationship with that reader instead of having to rely on third party platforms. Ferol Vernon (07:17.816) Yeah. And the placement of that reader magnet call to action, that link, that ask that you have at the end of the book is often called your back matter or the stuff that’s at the end of your book. It’s the same place where you ask for review or thank people that helped you write the book. It’s sort of that that part of the of the book. and you know, when you run a promotion, if you have that reader magnet call to action in your book, it makes everything that you do more powerful. So like when you run a free book see with us or you run any kind of marketing promotion with us, if you have that reader magnet call in your book, every individual click, every individual read that you get and every dollar that you put into marketing becomes more effective because that’s an opportunity for you to convert that reader into a mailing list subscriber, which we know is more valuable. Ricci (08:04.082) Yeah, absolutely. So, you know, reader magnets are a both of these I think are must do techniques for your marketing toolkit. But the reader magnet is is really a must do and it takes two seconds to put a couple lines of text in your back matter. if you’re not putting a reader magnet in, you f should at the very least be saying, Hey, sign up for my email list, but your conversion rate is going to be way higher if you say, Hey, do you want one final chapter? Ferol Vernon (08:24.215) Right. Ricci (08:30.806) in romance books, this is traditionally a one year later, right? Like everyone lives happily ever after, and then it’s the baby chapter. Everyone loves that, everyone wants to read that. but it’s some piece of content that actually links to the book that the reader has just read. and you get to the end of a book and usually you’re sad. You’re like, my book’s finished. And so if you see a little thing that’s like, you can get one more chapter, just put in your email address, and then you send that chapter to the reader. Ferol Vernon (08:35.276) The the baby chapter? Ferol Vernon (08:49.804) Yeah. Ricci (08:56.833) your conversion rate’s gonna be higher and once again you’re just giving them something super valuable. Ferol Vernon (09:02.976) Yeah. So let’s let’s talk about mechanics in a minute. But before we do that, let’s unpack what are the different like pieces of content that you’re going to need. So we talked about for your reader magnet, this is something that’s going to be an ancillary story. Maybe it’s a backstory for a secondary character, right? Maybe it’s that final chapter, like Ricci talked about. all those things. For a lead magnet, you know, I I think this is a really interesting thing. And Ricci, as the as the marketer on the pod, like, What are some of these things that authors should be thinking about doing for a lead magnet that are going to be different from the reader magnet? And like, how can they decide what you put in front of a stranger that actually gets them excited about coming into your work? Ricci (09:40.772) Yeah. So read a magnet, I think, is easy and we’re probably not going to spend much more time on that, right? It’s just like it’s an extra chapter or an extra couple pages, whatever it is that is connected to the story or the book that someone just read. In nonfiction, this could be like a worksheet or, you know, some something of value like that. so read a magnet’s, you know, pretty simple. lead magnets, I think the options here are really you could offer a full book, novella, or a chapter. Ferol Vernon (09:45.161) Right. Ferol Vernon (09:57.258) Yeah, great example. Yeah. Ricci (10:11.375) I personally am a fan of the novella because one, it’s a little bit more comfortable for authors because they’re not you don’t feel like you’re giving away like an entire book that you’ve you’ve put your you know blood, sweat and tears into. it’s a little better than a chapter. What we see when we actually run ads is that the conversion rate’s slightly lower when you s tell somebody, hey, sign up for a free chapter, because the author kind of knows it just doesn’t feel as valuable and they kind of know, like, well, now I’m gonna read a chapter. Ferol Vernon (10:13.898) Mm-hmm. Ricci (10:39.532) I’m not going to have a full experience. You’re basically selling me on buying the rest of the book. But if you’re like, I’m really not comfortable giving away a full story, a chapter is fine. and then there’s you could actually give an entire book away, which what we tend to see is as authors start to have really large backlists, it’s less painful to take one of those books and say, hey, I’m gonna use it as a lead lead magnet instead. It’s kind of run its course as say a revenue generating asset for me. Ferol Vernon (11:01.3) Right. Ricci (11:09.396) and so that’s a good option as well. So chapter, novella, full book are all the things you can use as a lead magnet. What’s most important is that whatever you’re offering is in the genre that you write, and ideally it’s a prequel to a series world that you’re trying to get your readers to buy into. Because if you provide a novella and it’s a pre story, a prequel. to some series where you have ten books, what you’re doing is you’re giving a full experience to the reader and you’re really hoping that they get so engaged with that world that then they go on to purchase books ones, two, three, four, et cetera. So it does double duty. It doesn’t just add someone to your list. It actually helps you to drive read through across your series. Ferol Vernon (11:57.682) Yeah, and just you know, one one cautionary note, if you do decide to go the route of giving away a full book, which, you know, we see works really well, like, you know, book one of the series, whether it’s sort of a novella or what, but if you’re in KDP select, you have to be careful about giving away f a free book and make sure that that doesn’t violate the the terms of service, which is part of the reason why we sort of think novellas kind of that sweet spot between giving a good amount of value to the reader. but you know, you don’t have to worry about sort of violating any terms if you’re if you’re exclusive to Amazon. If you’re if you’re wide, obviously it doesn’t matter. but that’s just a quick cautionary note as we kind of go through this. Ricci (12:36.053) Yeah, I think a lot of authors will use a piece of content that’s not actually publicly published anywhere because that adds to the allure of like you can’t get this anywhere else. The only way to get it is by signing up for my list. However, if you are wide and say you have a book one that’s free wide on all the retailers, and you want to use that book as your lead magnet to get people to sign up, that’s perfectly okay as well, just as long as the content’s not in KDP Select. Ferol Vernon (12:41.019) Right. Ferol Vernon (13:03.194) Right, exactly. And so, you know, from a mechanical standpoint, like, you know, hey, what do I give away? And like what we’re talking about is you’re giving away an EPUB or like a PDF, right? Of of the actual content. And like really those are the two most important formats. And, you know, in terms of like how to create those formats, you can use a tool like Vellum, which is a great, great service, very easy to use, or a lot of if you’re into some of the AI tools are also really good at creating EPUBs and PDFs for you from your content that you’ve written in. you word or whatever composition tool that you’re using. So that has become really easy with modern tools to actually create the file. But I want to talk a little bit about like once you have the file and you know you you’ve decided which piece of content to give away, like what’s next for the author? Like, okay, how do I actually set this up? What tools do I use to make this work? Ricci (13:55.144) Yeah, there are basically four components to having a lead magnet work. Component one is the content. component two is the landing page. Where are you going to send people to actually sign up for your list? Component three is the delivery. Once someone has signed up, how are they going to actually receive that PDF that you or EPUB? And then component four is the marketing and the traffic because you can put up a website, say you’re giving away something for free, have the delivery set up, but unless you’re driving traffic to that page, you’re not going to get any sign ups. So we’ve talked about the content piece. Let’s talk a little bit about the landing page, Ferol. Ferol Vernon (14:33.658) Exactly. Ferol Vernon (14:41.048) Yeah. So, you know, the one of the best tools, and we mentioned Damon earlier is BookFunnel, and they’ve been around forever. They make a really good product. And a lot of authors are already using them. You can like upload your file that we just talked about creating, and you get that landing page, and then BookFunnel handles both the serving of that landing page and the delivery of the file. they do a great job. there’s some other tools in the industry that do similar things, but there’s also a lot of modern ESPs. That actually do this for you. So like a Beehiiv or like a kit used to be called convert kit, actually have this kind of built in. And like we said at the beginning of the show, those like the ESPs are kind of built for the the B2B marketer, right? For giving away a white paper to, you know, sign up for something. But you can use the same infrastructure that they have to, you know, upload your PDF and have it give away. It just takes a little bit of tooling. Sort of the, the, the trade-offs there is like if you’re already using the ESP, one of these ESPs. You might as well explore doing that. book funnel is built directly for authors, essentially independent authors. So it’s a really nice tool that way as well. Ricci (15:47.259) Yeah, I think the other thing about BookFunnel is not only do they deal with a delivery, they also deal with a customer service. So what’ll end up happening is the book will get sent out to readers and then some readers will struggle with like, how do I download this? How do I get it onto my Kindle? And so those types of questions BookFunnel will answer on your behalf. If you do like a kit or a Beehiiv or a hub spot, Ferol Vernon (15:53.368) Exactly. Ricci (16:10.72) those those reader questions, customer service questions will come directly to you and you just have to be willing to, you know, sit there and help people troubleshoot and be tech support for some of the readers. which if you are personally answering those emails, is a connection point. You know, if you’re like, hey, I’m the author and you get to like actually chat with readers, I think that could be powerful. But it is work. And if you want to outsource all of that, book funnel will do it for you. Ferol Vernon (16:27.255) Totally. Ferol Vernon (16:37.495) Yeah, exactly. So there’s basically th those are the two ways. if you know WordPress and you like fit, like you could build this yourself, right? You could s kind of like put this together. But you know, our recommendation would be to use one of these solutions that’s sort of kind of already, already constructed for you. And then once you have that set up, so you’ve got your file, you’ve got your landing page delivery system, then you have to figure out how to get people there. And this is like the the great question, right? Is like how do I get readers to Ricci (17:01.359) Right. Ferol Vernon (17:06.752) drive traffic to that landing page to give away that thing. And there’s a bunch of different ways that we can do that. So one of the ways that is very cost effective, but has some sort of issues, which we’ll talk about in a minute, is these like group promos or newsletter swaps, right? So this is where you’re using sort of author community contacts, usually in the same genre. you’re either doing a newsletter swap where I send my reader magnet or my lead magnet to your audience and you send one to mine. We kind of trade. That can be really economical because it’s essentially free. the only downside is there’s an equity sort of fairness issue, like, hey, your list is bigger than mine. So how do we handle that? so there’s a little bit of sort of social dynamics for you to handle. but on those newsletter swaps, it can be a pretty economical way to to grow your list. Ricci (18:22.904) Yeah, and then Ferol, explain what group promos are. Ferol Vernon (18:33.651) Yeah. So I’ll talk a little bit about this. I am not the expert, but the thing about a group promo is it’s there’s a lot of different ways that they work. Right. So some authors pool together their resources and try to drive sales on a retailer. So like Amazon. So they’ll have one, you know, email or web page. It’s got, you know, 30 different links on it. that’s one technique. The technique that makes the most sense here is where people do like free giveaways and they all put their lead magnet landing page links on one page and they all agree to drive traffic to it, right? So there’s like a newsletter swap is like author A helping author B. a group promo is the same thing, but just with, you know, 15, 20, 30 people involved. so those are like really economical ways to grow your list and use this lead magnet technique. But it comes with the social dynamics. It comes with you have to find them. So, like BookFunnel has some ways you can find them. A lot of them are organized outside of tools, like they’re, you know, people you meet at conferences or just that you know it from forums. but you can’t always scale it, right? You can’t turn it on. It has to be when one of these things is organized or you have to organize it. So that’s like one of the downsides. but if you can get them done, it’s a really nice way to sort of do a little list building without having to pay any sort of outlay of cash. But the other way is paid ads. And Ricci, I’ll sort of let you talk a little bit about that. Ricci (19:55.382) Yeah, paid ads is always the answer, right? Ferol Vernon (19:57.619) Say the people that sell paid ads. Ricci (20:00.226) I’ve been doing marketing forever. and I love organic, right? Like organic has that allure of hey, it’s free and it’s organic and i maybe it’ll go viral. and there’s nothing wrong with organic. The challenge with organic is like you cannot dial it up. You you really have zero control. And so if something hits, that’s awesome. But if something doesn’t hit, then you’re sitting in there with crickets and like there’s literally nothing that you can do. and that is frustrating. paid ads on the other hand do cost money and but you are able to experiment and then dial those ads up or dial them down if you know you have budget constraints one month or the next month or you’re feeling like the quality of the readers isn’t that good. The most effective ads in our experience are Facebook ads in terms of driving lead magnet traffic and conversion and getting people onto your lists. Facebook ads continue to evolve in terms of the targeting, the copy, how you can now do video. They also have AI tools built in. so if you’re familiar with Facebook ads and you know how to use their interface, that’s absolutely where I would start. And I would start small. Five dollars a day is fine. Spend five dollars a day, and then every week see, okay, for 35 bucks, how many people actually came through? And you the cool thing about lead magnets is there’s no delay. Ferol Vernon (21:14.778) Right. Ricci (21:26.601) You’re not waiting for a retailer to update your sales. You’re not like waiting for like the royalty report to post. You can tell right away. Like if someone signs up for your list, like literally 30 seconds later, you see that person on your list. So you can see in real time how your ads are doing, who’s signing up, and then if it’s working, you can increase your your budgets. very important, just as an aside, is if you are running paid ads and you’re you’re getting leads coming onto your list. Ferol Vernon (21:27.418) Right. Ricci (21:56.467) You need to send emails to those leads. So this is actually the biggest mistake that I see is authors run effective lead magnet campaigns and they’re like, I got 200 readers on my email list, but I’m getting no sales. And when I ask, well, did you send them the next book in the series? The answer is usually no. They’re just sitting on the list. So readers are not valuable to you just for having the count. It’s not a vanity metric. The minute those readers come onto your list, they should be getting a welcome email. Ferol Vernon (21:58.755) Right. Ricci (22:24.348) And then if your lead magnet is on a specific series, the welcome email should be like, Thanks so much for grabbing the lead magnet. When you’re done reading it, please go check out the rest of the series. And then you should probably have a delay. And about two to three weeks later, you should send a reminder saying, Hey, did you finish reading this yet? Please go on to read the other books in the series. so it’s really important that if you’re running paid ads and even if you’re doing organic, that you’re actually following up with the readers and and and sending emails to them. And we have a whole we have a whole pod on like welcome emails, how often to send emails. So go and go and listen to that one. But yeah, I would say Facebook ads, if you’re going to do paid Ferol Vernon (23:03.052) And when you say Facebook ads, Ricci, do you mean Facebook and Instagram like under the sort of meta umbrella or do you specifically mean Facebook? Ricci (23:08.805) Yeah. Yeah, sorry, that’s my shorthand. Let me call it meta ads, right? So Meta owns Facebook and Instagram and WhatsApp. And so when you set up a campaign under the Meta Ads Manager, you can choose where the ads run, but Ferol Vernon (23:14.051) Yeah. Ricci (23:36.87) What I would say is let Meta figure it out. So you don’t have to choose and say, only run these ads on Facebook or Instagram. You set up the ad and let it run on all the meta properties. And that’s where we’re seeing like the best cost and affordability and the ability to scale up is on Facebook. Now, if you have if you’re really good at social media, that actually can be a very effective organic way to drive lead magnets. So if you’re doing a lot of social media content, And you have a following and you’re getting new followers. What I would say is, you know, once a week you want to be doing some kind of social organic post that says, hey, have you gotten my free lead magnet yet? And if you have an organic social post that’s doing particularly well and has a ton of comments and social proof, you can actually boost that. And that’s a little bit of like, you know, a loophole, because you don’t have to necessarily go through the whole ads manager and like figure that all out. You can just hit like boost this. and it’ll start reaching more more audience and that is a way to kind of turn up some of the organic content if you have an audience and you’re good at that. Ferol Vernon (24:42.7) Okay, yeah. And I think it’s really important and like valuable for authors to understand like you know how how to do this and the power of Facebook ads. And, you know, we at Written Word Media, we have a product called Reader Reach. So we can run those Facebook ads for you. Kind of like Ricci said, if you know how to do it and if you’ve taken some courses and you’re good at it, by all means do it yourself. but you c we can also pay us to run reader reach, you know, ad traffic to your book funnel page or to your lead magnet page on Kit or Beehiiv or wherever you’ve set it. And a lot of these tools like a kit, a Beehiiv, your ESP, or like a lot of authors use MailerLite or Email Octopus, you can usually set up those welcome flows that Ricci was talking about very, very easily so that people that sign up through this way get a welcome email that sort of is related to the content that they talked about. Ricci (25:27.908) Yeah, and you know, one thing that we skipped over a little bit is what do you put on the landing page? So let’s just think about the funnel. So you so let’s just say you’re running ads, right? So now you have traffic, the traffic drives to the landing page, on the landing page the reader inputs their information, they then get an email that delivers the file, and then they should also be getting an email, a welcome email from you. that landing page can be super simple. So if you look at the yeah, if you look at the book funnel landing pages, you know, most of them are like a headline. Ferol Vernon (25:32.992) Yeah. Ferol Vernon (25:51.989) So simple. Ricci (25:57.219) That’s like, hey, you know, sign up to get my book free book or like get this free novella. and then it literally has like input your email address, maybe first name, last name, there’s a little opt-in button and maybe a short book description, and then you say, you know, give me my free book. So you don’t need to spend a ton of time. It’s not like a home page or a product page or maybe some of these other pages that require a lot of creativity. The ad itself or the group promo or your social is doing the job of telling people like, hey, there’s something free that you can get. And so the landing page just needs to reiterate like you’re getting something for f for free. Please input your email address and and let them go. Don’t clutter it up with other stuff. Ferol Vernon (26:40.499) Yeah, that’s right. And I think, you know, the other thing to note is like when you run meta ads on Facebook and Instagram, they’re almost all mobile. So all the ad inventory for meta and Instagram is mobile. It’s people scrolling on their phones. So like the desktop experience like almost doesn’t matter. So when you think about that, what that landing page looks at looks like, make sure to look at it on your phone, right? And it’s got to have like, you know, and you want it to be consistent. So Ricci talked about all the stages of the funnel. You want your if you have your book cover in the ad, you want your book cover on the landing page, you want your book cover or the series art on the welcome email and all the way through. And one of the things that I like to do when I’m setting something like this up is just go through and screenshot each step and then, you know, put them next to each other on like a mirror board or even just like on your desktop, like on preview or something. and that’ll give you a sense of like if I was a reader and I was going through this, does it make sense? Does it feel consistent? and it’ll help you kind of write your copy too. Ricci (27:36.853) Yeah, I that’s a huge point is that, Everyone’s on mobile, so make sure that you’re checking what it looks like on mobile. And then the other, I don’t know, it’s a double-edged sword. Good bad thing about mobile is that you can’t fit that much on the screen. So what that means is you can have like very little information and the page looks nice and full. so you don’t have to do as much work. The downside is if you do have a lot to say, not on a lead magnet or something else, then you have to use this the scroll functionality to get somebody to see it all. Ferol Vernon (27:54.96) I know. Ferol Vernon (28:12.251) I know there’s the mobile revolution as somebody who’s been I’ve been designing web pages since I was a teenager. And you know, the mobile revolution everybody’s like, it’s so awesome. And but like as as a designer, as someone who loves to like build beautiful things, like there’s one tiny little column, you know, on this tiny little phone. So I think you know, it’s a really important thing. Like your book cover is gonna people are gonna see it’s gonna be like about an inch tall on their phone when they see it in the ad and when they click through. So just make sure everything looks good at that, at that aspect ratio. Ricci (28:25.904) Yeah. Ricci (28:38.293) Yeah, and it’s all going to be stacked. So don’t spend time thinking like, what should be on the left and what should be on the right? And should I have three boxes like on mobile everything? You just have one element. So it’s book cover. Underneath book cover is your headline. Underneath that is your description. Underneath that’s your form and then your your button. So it’s really very simple. or feel simple to us, right? Ferol, you’re technical, I’m a marketer. So we’ve mentioned a bunch of the tools that are available out there if you want to kind of piece this together. Ferol Vernon (28:42.669) Next to each other, right. Ferol Vernon (28:59.684) Yeah, I mean we’ve been doing this forever, right? Ricci (29:06.613) but you know, Ferol builds a ton of products for us here at Written Word Media and so he’s working on something to do all of the things. so Ferol, you want to talk about that a little bit? Ferol Vernon (29:19.002) Yeah, very much so. So I think, you know, at Written Word Media, one of our core values, and we talk about this with our team and with our customers, is we make it easy, right? And so everything that we do, we want to make sure that it’s just drop dead easy. So when you buy a promo with us, there’s like a four-step wizard that you fill out and then you pay and you’re done. And we think that’s really important. And behind the scenes, there’s a ton of work and people and technology that goes into making sure your promotion runs perfectly, but we try to make it as simple as possible for you. So when we started looking at the sort of lead magnet product, we wanted to do the same thing. So we didn’t rebuild an ESP, which is super powerful. We didn’t rebuild, you know, a book funnel or a Canva or any of these things. But what we did do is make it really, really easy for an author to fill out the same four-step, five-step wizard that they do to buy an ad with us today. And what we’ll do is actually create the landing page automatically. We will run the ads, target the ads, Then deliver the email addresses direct to your written word media author portal in real time or near real time. And so what an author can do is simply by buying a campaign with us, they’ll actually be doing all of the things that we talked about with one thing, with the landing page, the ads, the targeting, and the delivery of the file to the end reader. And we’ll support it with our customer service. And so that’s something we’re really excited about. By the time you hear this pod, there’s probably going to be a few users using it. Most likely our platinum and gold members, which thank you very much for being a member if you’re listening, who we like to, you know, give early access to products like this. But Ferol Vernon (31:00.257) It’s something that we’re really super excited about because it’s really true to our core values of like we want to give you access to audience and we want to make it just drop dead easy for you to do things that are complicated in our industry. and so we’re just really excited to see, see how it goes and see what people you know, the kind of feedback that we get from our authors on it. Ricci (31:17.999) Yeah, this is really exciting. as you can hear, it’s actually not live yet as of this recording. Ferol and the engineering team have been working on it. So we will release it in kind of beta version and then slowly release it to everyone else. But the idea is that all these four components are done for you at the click of a button. this will live under our Reader Reach family. So we have Reader Reach Facebook and Instagram ads where you can you can currently use to push traffic to book funnel or any of the lead magnets or landing pages or direct store that you already have. We have reader reach Amazon ads, which is, you know, we basically run your Amazon ads for you. And then we’ll have Reader Reach lead magnet, which is where we’ll actually run ads to a lead magnet, which we will create for you. We will also do delivery and customer service and you will get the leads just like everything else. the one thing I’m excited about is that There’s going to be an option for you to include an opt-in to Bargain Booksea on your lead magnet page. and then if you decide to do that, you get a significant discount on the product. Because although we’re not authors ourselves, every single day I’m working on getting readers to sign up for our newsletters, right? Bargain Booksey, free booksee, our whole slate of promo sites and newsletter audiences. And this is a way for us to share because people who are interested in your books and your lead magnet are also going to be very interested in receiving the Bargain Book C email. So we think that this is a really efficient way. It’s kind of bringing in that idea of the author newsletter swap or group promos, where it becomes it makes it more affordable but and more economical, but you’re sharing it with us instead of sharing it with another author. so that’s that’ll be a feature. Well maybe we’ll do another part on that in a few months’ time once we have some some early results. Ferol Vernon (33:12.456) Right, but you’re sharing with us. Right. Ricci (33:26.435) But the the concept of this product is is really exciting and hopefully it’ll be out for you guys to play with pretty soon. Ferol Vernon (33:34.782) Yeah, and if you if when you listen to the pod, if you don’t have access to the product yet, you can write into our customer service team at info at Written Word Media to request it and we’ll do our best to to give you access to the new things as they’re rolling out. But like we said, we’re really excited about about this new product. Ricci (33:51.405) Okay, great, so let’s do a quick recap. Ferol Vernon (34:13.958) Okay, so from the top, we’ve got the difference between a reader magnet and a lead magnet. The reader magnet is someone who’s already familiar with your work and you’re trying to bring them deeper into your world. The lead magnet is where you’re trying to advertise using the free content you’ve created to strangers, people that you’ve never talked to before. So that’s that. Then the way to build this is to create some content to give away. We talked about a novella, a chapter, a free book. And you’re gonna create that into an EPUB or a PDF. You’re gonna use a tool like BookFunnel or Beehiiv or Kit or one of these services to upload the file and then deliver it to a potential reader. And then the final piece is you’ve got to drive traffic to that. And we talked about a few different ways using either group promos, newsletter swaps or paid ads, which is we talked a lot about that because that’s our expertise. and then finally, you know, we’re gonna be able to help you with all of these things with our new product that should be available sometime in the next couple of weeks. Ricci, what’d I miss? Ricci (35:15.949) I think that’s perfect. I got no notes. Ferol Vernon (35:19.451) No notes. Wow. That’s great. First try, everybody. all right. Well, listen, authors, thank you so much for listening. Hopefully this was informative and helpful. As always, if there’s anything else you want to hear about, you want Ricci and I to talk about, do a deep dive, unpack, please email us. We love hearing from you. And that’s all I got for today. That’s the pod. Go, go write something. We’ll see you next time. If you enjoyed today’s episode, share it with a fellow author and leave us a review right here on Apple Podcasts. It helps more writers find the show. This episode of The Written Word Podcast was produced by Heart Centered Podcasting. © 2026 Written Word Media, Inc. All rights reserved.

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