Grow Your Reader List. Build Your Author Business.

An ad sends a stranger to a page and asks them to decide quickly. If the page is confused, the ad buys you a confused stranger. If the page is absent, the ad buys you a click that dies. The website does not need to be large before you spend money. It needs to answer four questions without making the reader hunt: who you are, what the book is, how to read something now, and how to hear from you later without giving you their entire life.

Build that, on a phone, before you open an ads manager. A quiet site with a working file will teach you more than a week of boosted posts pointed at a homepage that still says "welcome to my journey."

What is the smallest site that tells the truth?

Four pages are enough. You can do it in fewer if one page is disciplined. You cannot do it with a single social profile, because you do not control the order, the links, or whether the profile is reachable tomorrow.

Home. Your name, the kind of books, the newest book or the series in the right order, and one next step. The next step is either "start with this book" or "read the free story." Not both competing at the same size, and not a grid of every network you have ever joined.

The book. Title, cover, a blurb that matches the book, the content notes a fair reader needs, and links to the stores where it is actually for sale. If a store is out of stock or the link is an old preview, take it off. A dead retailer button is a broken promise you are paying to advertise.

The magnet or the reader page. One free piece, described specifically, with the format and the email form. The writing of that piece is in How to write a reader magnet that converts. If you do not have the piece, do not advertise a form that says "free book" and then sends a delayed apology.

Contact and the unglamorous pages. A way to reach you, a privacy note that says what the form does, and the honest review policy if you run advance copies. These pages are short. They are how you look like a person who will still be here when the download fails.

An about page can be a paragraph on the home page. A long origin story is optional and usually in the way. Readers came for the book. Your childhood can wait until they have finished one.

If you want the advance-copy page hosted with the file delivery, list your book and link to that page from the site. Do not paste the file on the homepage. Open beta does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027. The site is still yours to make clear. The about page on ReaderMagnet is an example of a platform explaining itself. Your site should explain the books, not the software.

What has to work on a phone before you spend anything?

Sit in a hallway and open the site on the phone you actually use. Do not use the editor's preview as the test.

• The first screen names you and the book or the series.
• The type is large enough to read without pinching.
• The button is a button, and it does the thing it says. "Get the story" goes to the story, not to a second essay.
• The images load. The cover is the cover, not a stretched thumbnail.
• The form can be completed with a thumb. If it asks for six fields, cut it down to the email and, if you truly use it, the name.
• Nothing covers the button with a cookie banner you cannot dismiss, a chat widget, or a pop-up that appears before the title.

If a song plays, remove the song. If a modal asks for the email before the visitor has seen the book, remove the modal. You may ask for the address after they know what they are getting. Asking first is how you train people to type fake addresses.

Check the magnet delivery the same day. Claim it yourself. If the welcome arrives and the file opens, you have a site. If it does not, you have a brochure, and an ad will scale the brochure. The welcome is specified in Building an author newsletter welcome flow.

What should the page say about money, mail, and reviews?

Say true, small things.

If the book costs money, link to the store and let the store show the price. Do not invent a discount on the website that the store link does not honor. Price panic is a separate problem, handled in Pricing your first ebook without panic. The website's job is to not contradict the store.

If you will email them, say how often in the same words the welcome uses. "Release notes, not a weekly letter" is a gift if it is true. Put the unsubscribe where the mail tool already puts it, and do not design a site form that adds people to a second list they did not see.

If you offer advance copies, say that reviews are optional. Link the policy. Do not put a testimonial slider of only five-star quotes above the claim button. A slider is not a policy, and a curated slider is a mood you built. The disclaimer on a site like this one is a reminder that educational pages are not a lawyer. Your site can have a one-line note that the review policy is the rule for ARCs and that store policies are the rule for store reviews.

Privacy can be a short page: what you collect (an email), why (to send the file and the notes you described), and that you do not sell the address. If your form tool's default policy says something you did not read, read it before you send traffic. You are responsible for the form you embedded.

What should you delete before an ad, not add?

Delete the unfinished series page that says "coming soon" for a book you have not started. Delete stock photos of people who are not you if the site is pretending they are your readers. Delete the sidebar of badges from groups that do not mean anything to a stranger. Delete autoplay video. Delete the pop-up.

Add nothing decorative to "look professional." A readable page with a real cover looks more professional than a theme full of animations and an empty blog. You do not need a blog to advertise a novel. If you write essays, keep them off the path from the ad to the book. The ad path is: sentence, cover, button, file or store. Essays can exist one click away for people who already care.

Do not add a new magnet the week you start ads. Use the one you have tested. A new file plus a new ad plus a new page is three experiments. You will not know which one wasted the money.

Do not buy ads to a retailer page you do not control if the store page is missing the blurb, the cover, or the sample. Fix the store page first. Sending paid traffic to a blank retailer listing is a fast way to feel that "ads don't work." The listing did not work. The ad was the delivery.

How do you know the site is ready for a small test?

Run this list once. If any line fails, do not buy the ad yet.

1. A stranger can tell the genre from the first screen.
2. There is one next step, and you completed it yourself on a phone.
3. The file opens, or the store link shows the correct book.
4. The welcome mail matches the page.
5. Contact, privacy, and the review policy are real pages if you need them.
6. You can afford to lose the test money without changing the book's price in a panic.

Then spend a small amount to a specific page, not to the whole domain, and not to a social profile. Send it to the magnet or to book one, whichever you chose as the door. Give it enough time to be boring. Read the claims and the failures with the method in Tracking magnet performance without vanity metrics. Turn the ad off if the page is attracting the wrong genre or the file is failing. Fix the page. The ad can wait.

If you are comparing where the file should live while you do this, the tool comparison is BookFunnel vs ReaderMagnet. The website still has to point at whichever door you pick. A tool does not replace the home page.

What a reader should feel in the first minute

They should feel oriented. This author writes this kind of book. This is the one to start with. This is how to get it, or how to read a complete short piece first. Nothing is playing music at them. Nobody is promising a life change. The review, if one is mentioned, is optional. The mail, if they ask for it, has a frequency they can picture.

That minute is the whole foundation. Ads are a way to invite more people into a minute you have already made honest. If the minute is not honest yet, spend the week on the page. It is cheaper than discovering the problem at the price of a click, and the readers who already want you will have a place to stand while you write the next book.

How should the pages be ordered for someone who has never heard of you?

A stranger does not want your site map. They want a path. Put the path in the navigation in the order they will use it: Books, Free story, About or Contact. If you have one series, the books can be a single page with the volumes in reading order, not a blog category you hope they will decode.

Reading order is part of honesty. If book two spoils book one, the page should say "start here" next to book one and "spoils the earlier books" next to the later ones. A grid sorted by publication date, with a prequel dumped in the middle, creates mail you could have prevented with a sentence. The same warning belongs on an ARC page for a mid-series book, which is why landing pages for ARCs insist on saying "this is book three" in the first screen. Your permanent site should be at least that clear, because it stays up longer than a campaign.

Write the home page as a stack, top to bottom: name, genre, the book to start with, one button, then a short list of the other books. Resist a slider. Sliders hide the second book behind a swipe many people never make, and they tend to move while someone is trying to read the blurb. A stack sits still.

If you have two pen names, give them two sites or two clearly separated sections. A shared homepage that alternates romance and military history will advertise both to the wrong reader the moment you pay for a click. The genre filter you would use for a swap applies to your own navigation. Choosing genres for cross-promo is the longer version. The short version for the site is: do not make a visitor guess which name they are meeting.

What belongs in the footer, and what is clutter?

The footer is where policies go to be found, not where you park every icon. Include contact, the privacy note, and the review policy if you have one. Include a retailer link only if it is the same book featured above. A footer full of old promo graphics looks like a site that was abandoned in a launch week. Remove dated badges. "Participant in a 2022 bundle" is not a reason to trust the download button.

Keep the copyright line accurate. Keep the mailing address off the public footer unless you are required to show it there. The address belongs in the commercial email, where the CAN-SPAM guide expects a physical postal address for commercial messages. The website can point people to the email they already receive rather than publishing more personal detail than the form needs.

Test the footer links once after you think you are done. A privacy link that 404s is a worse signal than no privacy link, because it says the site was assembled and never walked. Walk it.

A magnet is working when the right readers can get the file, some of them finish it, and a few of them take the next step you actually offered. You can observe pieces of that without a dashboard full of borrowed numbers. You cannot observe "brand awareness." You should not pretend a screenshot of someone else's list is a target.

This page is a notebook you can keep in a simple document. It assumes you will not invent a conversion rate, a benchmark, or a promise about sales. If a tool offers those, ignore the decoration and keep the counts you can explain to a friend.

What are you trying to learn, in one question?

Pick the question before you pick the metric. Otherwise you will collect everything and conclude nothing.

Useful questions:

• Are strangers able to claim the file and open it?
• Did the people who claimed it come for this book, or for the word free?
• Of the people who had a clear next step, did any take it?
• Which page sent them, so you know what to fix if the claims are from the wrong audience?

A bad question is "Is my funnel healthy?" You do not have a universal healthy. You have a file, a page, and a list of humans. The piece itself is designed in How to write a reader magnet that converts. If the story is a brochure, no metric will rehabilitate it. You will only measure the brochure more precisely.

Write the question at the top of the note for the month. At the end of the month, answer it in words. The numbers are evidence for the sentence. They are not the sentence.

Which counts are real?

Claims. A claim is a person who asked for the file and left an address you can see. Count claims per week, and write down what you did that week. A mention in the back of the novel, a single newsletter, a quiet page on your site. If you change three things in one week, you will not know which one moved the count. Change one.

Failed deliveries. Count the replies that say the file would not open, and note the device if they told you. A rising claim count with rising failures is a broken file, not a growth story. Fix the export before you send more people. The checklist is in Formatting EPUB ARC files. It applies to magnets too.

Unsubscribes in the first week. These are people who wanted the file and not the ongoing mail, or people who were surprised by what the mail was. Read the timing against your welcome flow. A spike on the day of email two means email two broke the promise on the landing page. The number matters less than the day it happened.

The next step. If the back matter has one link to book two, you can look at clicks on that link or sales you are willing to attribute because there was no other campaign that week. If you used seven links, you chose not to learn. Take links away until the next step is visible.

Replies that mention the story. Do not turn these into a quota. Do read them. "I liked the sister more than the detective" is product information. "Please send me more free books, any genre" is audience information. They imply different fixes.

Source, if you truly have it. A link from the novel's back matter is a different source from a link you posted in a chat. Tag those two links differently if your tool makes that easy. If tagging is becoming a project, use two obvious paths and write down which is which. A notebook line that says "March 3, mentioned in the cozy readers chat" is a source. A pie chart you do not trust is not.

That is the list. You can keep it in a text file. You do not need a warehouse.

What should you refuse to track?

Refuse numbers you cannot define.

A "reach" figure on a social post is not a claim. A follower count is not a reader. An open rate is a guess the mailbox provider may hide, sample, or change without telling you. You can glance at opens if your tool shows them, and you should not manage the book by them. A low open rate on a letter you sent to people who joined for a different genre is a targeting problem, which belongs to When to kill a newsletter swap, not a subject-line emergency.

Refuse benchmarks copied from a thread. "A good magnet converts at 40 percent" is meaningless unless you know the denominator. Percent of what? Page visitors who were already fans? Ad clicks from people who wanted any free file? The denominator is the whole statistic. Without it, the percentage is a mood.

Refuse income forecasts. Claims times a guessed buy rate times a price is a story generator. It will give you a monthly number that feels like a plan. It is arithmetic performed on a wish. If you want money facts, read your store report after the month has happened.

Refuse vanity comparisons with authors who will not show you their traffic source. Their screenshot is an advertisement for the screenshot. You can be glad for them and still not adopt their number as your failure.

How do you look at a month without lying to yourself?

Make a short note with the same headings every time so you are not inventing a new religion in April.

1. The question for the month.
2. Claims, and the one change you made.
3. Delivery failures, and whether you fixed the file.
4. What the next step was, and what you saw.
5. Two sentences from real replies, copied, not paraphrased into something nicer.
6. What you will not change next month.

The last line is the discipline. If you change the magnet, the page, the welcome, the price, and the swap schedule in one month, the next note will be fiction. Hold still long enough to see the file and the page.

Compare months that had similar behavior. A launch week is not the baseline. A holiday is not the baseline. A month where you mailed your own list once and did nothing else is a useful baseline. Write "launch week" in the margin when it is one, so future-you does not treat it as normal.

If the month was quiet, the answer might be that fewer people saw the page. That is distribution. It might be that people saw the page and did not claim. Read the page on a phone and see whether the promise is specific. Vague pages produce vague, small numbers. The fix is the sentence, not a new analytics product.

How do ads and other people's audiences distort the note?

An ad can create claims from people who wanted a free download and will never open your genre. If you turn on ads, mark those claims as a separate line. Do not average them with the readers who came from the back of the book. You will conclude the magnet "stopped working" when what changed was the room you invited.

The same split applies to group promotions and swaps. A spike from a bundle is not the magnet's organic behavior. Record it as the bundle. If those subscribers leave during the welcome, you learned about the partnership, not about the short story. The partnership filter is in Choosing genres for cross-promo carefully.

Do not buy traffic to a magnet you have not personally claimed on a phone. You will pay to learn that the button was broken. The site and the file come first. Author website basics before you buy ads is the sequence. Tracking does not replace it.

ReaderMagnet can show you claims on a campaign you host here. It will not invent a quality score. List your book if you want that page. Bring your own note. Open beta does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027, and it does not include a magic reader who finishes every file.

What about series book one, if the magnet is the novel?

If the free object is the whole novel, claims are a weaker signal. A download of a free novel is easy to collect and easy to misread. Add the question "Did book two move among people who had book one?" if you can see it at all. Even a rough look at whether book two sold in the weeks after a free run, when you did nothing else, is more honest than celebrating the download total.

Be explicit in the note that you cannot see finishes unless the store or the file delivery actually tells you. Most authors cannot see finishes. Do not estimate them. "I hope half of them read it" is not a metric. Leave the cell blank and write "unknown." Unknown is a true value. A fabricated completion rate is a lie you will quote later by accident.

The tradeoffs of using the novel as the magnet are in Series starters as magnets. The tracking note should say which object you gave away, so you do not compare a 7,000-word story to a free novel as if they were the same offer.

A notebook that stays small enough to keep

Once a month, fill the six lines. Once a quarter, read three notes in a row and write what stayed true. If the true thing is "the file fails on one kind of phone," fix the file. If the true thing is "chat promos bring claims and no replies about the story," stop the chat promo. If the true thing is "the back-of-book link brings a few people who mention the sister character," keep the link and leave the rest alone.

You can use the magnet ideas tool when you are choosing the next piece, not as a scoreboard. Ideas are not performance. Performance is the claim, the failure, the next step, and the reply, written down without a costume.

The work is to stay honest about what you saw. A small note you believe will beat a dashboard you perform for. Keep the note. Change one thing. Write the next book.

How do you write the note when the month is messy?

Some months are not a clean experiment. You got sick. A retailer changed a category. A swap you had forgotten fired on a Tuesday. The note should record the mess instead of forcing a lesson.

Write what happened in the order it happened. "Claims were quiet until the 18th, when the old swap sent. The replies that week asked for the other author's genre. I did not change the magnet." That is a complete finding. It tells you the magnet was not the variable. It tells you the leftover automation was. Turn the automation off, and do not "relaunch" the magnet to compensate. Compensation is how a messy month becomes two messy months.

If you lost the count because a tool reset, say the count is missing. Do not backfill it from memory. A blank week is more useful than a number you invented to keep the column pretty. The point of the notebook is that you can believe it later. A believed blank beats a fictional total.

When you are tempted to add a new metric because the month felt bad, wait until the next note. Add a metric only when a real decision required it and the current lines could not answer. Most bad months are a file problem, a promise problem, or a traffic source problem. You already have lines for those. Fill them in sentences. Then go back to the draft. The notebook is a fence against superstition, not a second job.

What does a useful comparison look like across two magnets?

When you retire a magnet and publish another, keep the notes in the same shape so you can see the change without performing a study. You are not running a laboratory. You are trying not to fool yourself.

Compare the same kind of week. A week when both magnets were mentioned once in the back of the same novel is a fairer look than a week one magnet spent in a group promo. Write the source beside the claims. If the second magnet draws fewer claims and the replies are more specific to the book, that can be a better magnet. Specific replies mean the promise matched. A larger claim count from people who ask for "any free book" is a worse magnet even though the column is taller.

Do not average the two. An average hides the source. Keep them in separate notes and read the sentences. If you cannot decide, wait another quiet month rather than rebuilding both files. Indecision is cheaper than a third version you export on a Sunday because the numbers felt thin. Thin and honest is a result. It often means the book needs readers from the pages you already control, not a new lead magnet to distract you from the novel.

Giving away book one is the most expensive magnet you can make, and sometimes it is the right one. The reader gets a whole novel. You get a person who already knows whether they want book two. That is a cleaner test than a short story, and it is a harder promise, because you have taught the market a price. Free is a price. You should choose it on purpose, for a series that can survive it, and you should know what you will do if readers thank you and never pay.

A short story or a prequel is the smaller door. That choice is the main subject of How to write a reader magnet that converts. This page is only about using the novel itself.

When does a free book one actually help?

It helps when three things are true at the same time.

The book is a complete, satisfying novel, not a prologue with a checkout button. Readers who feel held hostage do not become buyers. They become reviewers of your tactics. If book one does not stand as a story, fix the book before you make it the magnet.

Book two exists, or it is close enough that you can name a season. A free book one with a sequel "someday" collects a list you cannot serve. You will spend a year writing apology notes instead of chapters. If the series is three books and only one is drafted, a short story is the safer magnet. You can still sell book one.

The later books are easy to find and clearly not free, unless you have decided the whole series is a loss leader for something you can name. The back matter of the free book should point at book two in one link. The store page should not make the reader hunt. Confusion reads as a trick even when you meant it as a gift.

A free first novel also helps when you already know the book's problem is obscurity rather than the ending. If everyone who finishes it asks for the sequel, and almost nobody finds it, widening the front door can be rational. If people who finish it do not ask for the sequel, free will not create the appetite. It will create more people who stop at the same chapter.

What does free train the reader to expect?

Readers learn your prices from what you repeat. If every book one you ever publish is free, your new series will be evaluated as a free sample even when you want it to be a paid standalone. That can be a brand. It can also be a trap you built one generous decision at a time.

Inside a single series, free book one tells the reader that the audition is free and the rest costs money. Many readers accept that. Some will still write to ask when book two will be free. You should decide the answer before you get the email. "Book one stays free. The sequels stay for sale" is a stable answer. "Maybe I'll make them all free if the month is bad" is how you train the question to come back.

A temporary free run is different from a permanent price of zero. A limited promotion has an end date you put on the calendar and honor. A permafree book is a catalog decision. Do not slide from one to the other because you forgot to restore the price. The restore is the whole difference. Price mechanics, including why a fear price is not a plan, are in Pricing your first ebook without panic. This article will not invent a royalty outcome for either choice. The store's current help page is the math. Your sales report is the result.

Box sets and later bundles should still make sense if book one is free. A set that includes the free book and charges more than the paid sequels alone will look sloppy. Add the prices yourself before a reader does.

How is a free novel different from a short magnet?

A short magnet proves voice and points at the novel. A free novel is the novel. The reader does not have to imagine whether you can hold a plot for four hundred pages. That is the advantage. The disadvantage is that you have nothing left to sell them except the sequel, the merch, or the next series. If the sequel is not ready, the advantage becomes a waiting room.

A short magnet can stay up while book one is for sale at a normal price. You get the audition and the sale. Some readers will still wait for a sale. That is ordinary. It is different from a catalog whose front door is permanently zero.

A short magnet is easier to keep spoiler-free and easier to replace if you change pen names or tone. A free novel is the book. Replacing it means unpublishing a novel people already have. Think about whether you want that object to be the first search result for your name in three years.

If you are unsure, run the smaller magnet first. You can make book one free later. You cannot easily unteach a year of "her books are free."

What has to be true in the file and on the page?

The free book still has to be formatted like a book someone paid for. A sloppy EPUB does not become charming because the price is zero. The file checklist is in Formatting EPUB ARC files. Use it even though this copy may not be an ARC.

The store page and your own page should say "book one" and "free" without also saying the reader owes you a review. A download is not a contract for stars. If you also run advance copies of the sequels, keep that ask on the ARC page and out of the free book's back matter except for a single optional line. The standard to publish is the honest review policy.

Back matter in a free book one should be calmer than back matter in a short magnet, because the reader just finished a novel and may be tired of you talking. One paragraph: what book two is, where it is, that it costs money, and how to hear when book three exists if they want that. Then stop. A twelve-page guide to your universe feels like the toll for the free book.

If the free copy is delivered from your site rather than the store, the welcome mail should deliver the file and state the sequel plainly. Do not enroll them in a swap sequence as the thank-you. The welcome is in Building an author newsletter welcome flow.

What goes wrong even when the book is good?

The series never continues. The free book becomes a monument to a sequel you do not want to write. Be willing to say "this one stands alone" in the back matter if that is the new truth. Do not leave "book two next month" up for a year.

The readers are collectors of free, not readers of you. You will see downloads and few finishes, if you can see finishes at all. That is a sign the offer attracted the price. Tighten the page so the genre and the tone are unmistakable, and stop advertising the book only as "free." Free can be the fact. It should not be the hook. The hook is the story.

You resent the book. If you start to dislike readers for taking what you offered, the offer was not honest. Change the price going forward, leave the existing readers alone, and write the next book as a paid book with a clear description. Resentment in the newsletter is audible. It does not convert.

The rest of the series is hard to buy. Broken links, a sequel under a different author name, a store page with no sample. The free book did its job and the storefront did not. Fix the path before you send more people.

You stack more free novels on top. Book one free, the holiday novella free, the prequel free, the "just this once" bundle free. At some point you are not running a magnet. You are running a library. That can be a mission. It is rarely an accident you can afford. Choose.

How do you decide in one sitting?

Write two sentences.

"If a reader only ever gets this book from me, the experience is still fair, because the novel is complete."

"If a reader wants more, the next paid book is available or dated, and the page says so."

If either sentence is false, do not make book one the magnet this season. Write the short story, sell the novel, and revisit when the sequel is real.

If both sentences are true, set the price with a date you record, point the back matter at one link, and tell the list you already have. Then watch the next book, not the download count. Downloads of a free novel will look like success even when nobody starts chapter two. The number that matters is whether book two finds readers who came through book one. How to look at that without a vanity dashboard is in Tracking magnet performance without vanity metrics.

You can host the reader page for the series on ReaderMagnet by listing the book. The price on the retailer is still your decision, not the platform's. Open beta does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027. It also does not require you to give the novel away.

A series starter can be a generous front door or a permanent discount you regret. The difference is whether the rest of the series exists, whether the first book is actually finished, and whether you can say the price out loud without hoping the reader will volunteer to pay anyway. Decide that before you hit publish. The readers will take you at your word.

What should book two's page say about the free first book?

Book two is where the paid relationship starts, so the page has to be as clear as the free offer was. Say that book two is a sequel, say whether it stands alone, and say that book one is free if that is still true. A reader who pays for book two and then discovers book one was free may feel fine about it, or they may feel they were upsold in the wrong order. You cannot control the feeling. You can control whether you hid the order.

If book two does not stand alone, do not advertise it as the front door in the same season book one is the magnet. Pick one door. Sending ads or swaps to book two while book one is the free start splits the audience into people who are lost and people who skipped ahead. Author website basics before you buy ads is the place to make that path obvious before you pay for traffic.

Inside book two, a brief "previously" is a kindness if the gap between books is long. Keep it to the facts a returning reader needs, not a recap that spoils book one for anyone who samples book two first. And do not fill the front of book two with an apology that book one was free. The price is not a wound. State the next price, tell the story, and let the store sell the book you are actually charging for.

If you later put a price on book one, update the back matter of any short magnet, the website, and the book two page on the same day. Leftover "free forever" lines are how a reasonable change looks like a bait and switch. The readers who already downloaded the free file can keep it. The public sentence has to match the button in front of a new reader today.

What if the series is novels plus a novella, or the starter is not book one?

Authors sometimes make a holiday novella the free front door and leave the novels for sale. That can work when the novella is a complete story and does not spoil the main plot. It fails when the novella only makes sense after book three, or when it is so much lighter than the novels that the reader who loved it feels misled by book one. Match the tone in the description. "A small side story with the same detective, written to be read on its own" is a fair door. "The start of the series" is a lie if the series actually starts with a darker novel.

If you later write a true prequel, decide whether it replaces the free novel as the front door. Two free entrances split attention and double the formatting work. Prefer one door. Keep the other story as a bonus for people who already like the series, delivered after they have book one, not instead of it. The bonus can live in the welcome mail months later. It does not need to be the ad.

Numbering should stay boring. If the free book is "book zero" or "a 1.5," say that in words. Clever numbering is a support ticket. Readers should not need a chart to know whether the free file spoils the wedding. Tell them, then let the story be the part that is clever.

A newsletter swap is a trade: you recommend someone else's book to your list, and they recommend yours to theirs. It is worth doing when the readers could have found each other anyway. It is worth ending when the trade becomes a chore, a genre mismatch, or a reputation you would not put your name on. Ending it is not a failure of nerve. It is maintenance.

The reason swaps feel hard to quit is that they look like progress. The list count moves. A stranger thanks you. Another author is warm in a chat. None of those events prove that the readers wanted your book. The way to tell the difference between a magnet and a borrowed room is laid out in Reader magnet vs newsletter swap. This page is the exit.

What are you actually trading?

You are trading attention your readers gave you. They gave it because of a book, a magnet, or a promise about how often you would write. When you spend it on someone else, you are telling them the other book belongs beside yours. If that stops being true, the trade is a withdrawal from an account you do not personally own. The account is the reader's patience.

You are also trading your name. In a group promo, your recommendation sits next to every other author the organizer accepted. Readers do not draw a careful line between "she chose this book" and "she was in the bundle." If the bundle contains a book you would not hand to a friend, you have already been associated with it. The genre filter that should have caught this earlier is in Choosing genres for cross-promo carefully. Use it before the next yes. Use this page when the yes is already on the calendar and it needs to come off.

You are not trading a guaranteed number of sales. Anyone who frames the swap as a quota is describing a different deal. Do not accept the frame. You cannot promise your partner a sales figure, and they cannot promise you one, because neither of you controls the other's readers.

Which signs mean the swap should stop?

Look for a pattern you can describe in a sentence. One quiet email is not a pattern. A season of mismatches is.

The readers tell you. Unsubscribes that say "this isn't what I signed up for," replies that ask why you are mailing horror, complaints that a linked book was explicit when you promised closed-door. Believe the specific complaints. You do not need a percentage. You need the same kind of sentence more than once. If you only measure a rate and ignore the words, you will keep a swap that looks fine on a chart and feels like a betrayal in the mailbox.

You cannot describe their book without flinching. If you would not put their blurb in your own voice, do not put it in your mail. The flinch is information. It arrives before the angry replies, and it is enough.

The partner's list is not readers. Some "lists" are recycled group-promo addresses, contest entries, or people who were added because they once clicked a giveaway. You may not be able to audit their list. You can audit their behavior. A partner who will not tell you what the magnet was, who the readers are, or when they last mailed a real letter, is asking you to trust a number. Decline the number.

The labor has swallowed the writing. A swap that requires a new graphic, a new blurb, a form, a group chat, and a deadline every week is a part-time job. If the job is displacing the book, kill the job. The list does not need you to be a full-time recommender.

The reputation risk is no longer theoretical. Review quotas, paid praise, fake scarcity, or a partner who argues with negative reviews in public. You do not have to wait until your name is in the screenshot. Leave when you see the practice. Your own standard should already be written down. An honest review policy you can publish is the page to compare their ask against.

You are staying because quitting feels rude. Rudeness is sending a bad fit to people who trusted you. A clear no is ordinary business. Authors survive nos. Lists do not survive a long run of mismatched mail.

None of these signs require a secret benchmark. There is no universal open rate that means "quit." Open rates move when mailbox providers change the rules, when you alter a subject line, and when the list is full of people who never asked for you. A drop is a reason to read the mail and the source of the addresses. It is not, by itself, a verdict you can copy from another author's screenshot.

How do you leave without a speech?

Say what is ending, and when. You do not owe a critique.

"I'm stepping out of swaps for the rest of this series. I'll keep the mentions I've already promised through March, and I won't book new ones. Thanks for the earlier trades."

If a specific promo is the problem, be narrower. "I can't send this one. The heat level doesn't match what my list signed up for. I don't need a revision. I just need to be out of this round."

Do not announce the partner's faults to your newsletter. Your readers need to know you will be choosing books more carefully, not that you have a grievance. A single sentence in your own mail is enough if you have been swapping so often that the absence needs a note: "I'm recommending fewer outside books for a while so this list stays about the series you joined for."

Honor the sends you already committed to, unless the commitment itself is the harm. If the booked email would put a book in front of readers you now know will feel misled, cancel that send and say so. A promise to another author does not outrank the promise you made to your list when they subscribed. Apologize briefly to the partner. Do not negotiate your readers' trust.

Then leave the chat, or mute it. Staying in the room after you have quit is how the next "quick favor" finds you on a tired night.

What do you do with the subscribers the swaps brought in?

Do not delete people in a panic. Do not keep writing as if they all came for the same book.

Watch what they do when you go back to mailing only your work. Some will stay and become real readers. Some will leave when the borrowed promotions stop. Both outcomes are healthy. The welcome flow is a good place to restate the promise for anyone new: what you send, how often, and how to leave. You do not need a special "sorry about the swaps" sequence. A clear ongoing letter is the correction.

If you can tell which subscribers arrived from a particular partner, you may mail them the promise once and let the unsubscribe work. You should not build a second persona to keep a segment that wanted a different genre. That is how pen names get invented by accident and then neglected.

Measure the next month with the tools you actually have. Claims on your own magnet, replies, sales you can attribute to a link you control. The method is in Tracking magnet performance without vanity metrics. A smaller list that reads you is the goal. A larger list that misses the group promos is not a crisis.

What can replace the swap without recreating it?

Recommend a book you finished and would put next to yours, with no trade required. The recommendation is cleaner when you want nothing back. Readers can feel the difference.

Write the next useful letter about your own work. Point at your magnet or your next chapter. The front door you control is still the asset. If that door is a private reader page, list your book. If you are deciding whether a delivery tool's swap marketplace is even the right room, read the StoryOrigin alternative notes and then decide. Leaving a marketplace feature is allowed. You can use a tool for file delivery and refuse its promo board.

Keep a short list of authors whose promises match yours, the ones you would still mention with the trades turned off. Those are colleagues. The swap was only one way to talk about them. It is not the relationship.

How do you avoid rejoining out of loneliness?

The week after you quit, the calendar looks empty and a friendly invite will arrive. Read it against the same signs. If you want a rule you can keep when you are lonely, use this: no new swap unless you can say, in one sentence, why your readers would thank you for this particular book. If the sentence is about your list count, the answer is no.

You can revisit the decision in a season when you have a finished book and a list that has heard from you recently. A swap can be a good visit. It is a bad home. The home is the mail you can sign without explaining yourself, sent to people who still want the books you actually write.

Kill the swap when the trade costs the trust, the time, or the standard you published. Thank the people who were careful. Leave the rest. Then write the letter only you can send.

What if the organizer, not the author, is the problem?

Group promos add a layer. You may like the individual author and still need to leave the organizer's machine. The machine is the problem when the lineup changes after you agreed, when your book is placed next to titles you were promised would not be there, or when the organizer emails your readers a follow-up you did not approve. Your list is not a rental inventory. Anyone who treats it that way does not get a second date on the calendar.

Ask, before the next promo, for the final lineup and the final email on a date you can still exit. If the organizer will only show you the lineup after the mail is scheduled, you are not a partner. You are a source of addresses. Decline. If they add a review requirement at the last minute, decline in writing and keep the email. That requirement collides with a policy you should already have published. You do not need a meeting to reconsider it.

When you tell the organizer you are out, keep your copy short and do not litigate it in the group chat. Chats turn a clean exit into a spectacle, and spectacles recruit the kind of attention that does not read your book. If they ask you to find a replacement author, you may say no. Recruiting is their job. Your job is the list you already promised to treat carefully.

Afterward, look at the subscribers who arrived from that promo the same way you look at any borrowed audience. Some will stay because they liked the book. Some will leave when you stop sounding like a brochure. Do not build a special sequence to hold them. A normal letter about your next chapter is the test. If they wanted you, they will recognize it. If they wanted the bundle, they will go, and the list will be closer to the one you can write for without explaining yourself.

How do you restart, if you restart, without sliding back?

Give it a season. A season is long enough to remember what your own mail sounds like when it is not negotiating. During that season, recommend books only when you have finished them and would buy the sequel. Keep a private list of those titles so you are not scrambling when a letter needs a postscript. The postscript is optional. The letter can be only your work.

If you try one swap again, cap it. One send, one partner, one book you can describe honestly, with an end. Do not rejoin a monthly calendar as a "light" return. Monthly is how the job comes back. After the send, read the replies for the same warning sentences as before. If they appear, you have the answer and you do not need a second test to be polite.

Tell the partner the cap when you agree. "I can do this Tuesday, and I'm not booking a series of them." A partner who needs a standing commitment needs a different list. Yours is returning to the magnet, the books, and the readers who stayed. That is a complete program. A swap can visit it. The visit does not get a key.

An ARC landing page is a set of answers arranged so a reader can claim a book without writing to you first. Every paragraph that is about your feelings, your launch goals, or your other books is a paragraph that pushes those answers down the screen. The reader is on a phone. They are deciding whether this file is for them and whether the download will work. If the page makes them ask you, the page is unfinished.

Support mail is not a sign of a devoted audience. A pile of "where is the file" and "what format is this" means the page failed in public. You can prevent most of that mail with fields, a short FAQ, and file notes written in the same words you would use in a reply. The campaign around the page is in How to run an ARC campaign. This page is the page itself.

What does the reader need to see without scrolling?

The top of the page should settle the decision.

• Title and author, matching the cover.
• One sentence of genre and tone, including the content a mismatched reader needs. "Cozy mystery, no on-page violence, the cat is never in danger" is more useful than "a twisty tale of secrets."
• The format: EPUB, PDF, or both, and which one you recommend for reading on a phone.
• The window: when new claims close, in a date, not "soon."
• The ask: a review is welcome, optional, and unpaid. Link the honest review policy instead of pasting the whole policy here.
• The claim action: an email field and a button that says what happens next. "Email me the EPUB" is clearer than "Submit."

Put the cover where it can be seen, but do not let a giant cover push the format and the date below the fold. A beautiful cover with no file type is how you get "I thought this was a paperback" emails.

If the book is mid-series, say so in the first screen. "This is book three. It spoils the ending of book one." That sentence prevents a kind of ticket that is really a bad review in disguise. Series starters as a free front door are a different product, discussed in Series starters as magnets. An ARC of book three is not a magnet for strangers unless you are honest about the spoilers.

Which fields are worth asking for?

Ask for the email address you will use to deliver the file and to send the few campaign notes. Ask for a name if you will use it. Do not ask for a mailing address, a phone number, a favorite trope survey, or a social handle. Each extra field is a reason to abandon the form, and none of them help the file open.

If you offer two formats, a single choice of "EPUB or PDF" can cut the wrong-file tickets in half. Default to EPUB for a novel. Explain the choice in a line under the control: "EPUB lets you resize the type. PDF keeps the print layout." The work of making those files is in Formatting EPUB ARC files. The page should not offer a format you do not actually have.

Do not ask people to agree to a star rating in a checkbox. A checkbox that says "I will leave an honest review" sounds polite and functions as pressure. The policy says the review is optional. The form should not quietly un-say it. ARC compliance is the short public version of why that pressure is a bad trade.

If you need to know whether someone has read the earlier books, ask in the blurb, not in a required dropdown. A required dropdown that says "I have read the entire series" will be answered by people who have not, because they want the file. You will have collected a lie and still not prevented the spoiler complaint. Better to warn them and let them choose.

What FAQ actually prevents mail?

Write the questions you have already answered twice. If this is your first campaign, write the questions you would ask if you were tired. Five is enough. Twelve is a second website nobody will open.

When does this close? Repeat the date. Say whether the download still works after claims close, if that is true. People begin books late.

What if I don't finish? Say they owe you nothing. Say it in the FAQ even though it is also in the policy. This is the question polite people are afraid to ask, so they ask you by email instead.

What if the file will not open? Give one step, then a person. "Try the EPUB in the reading app you already use. If it is still blank, email support with the device and a screenshot." Link ARC support when the campaign is on ReaderMagnet. Do not attach a twelve-step Kindle manual. The people who need the manual will not follow twelve steps, and the people who do not need it will think the file is fragile.

Which version is this? If you replaced the file, say "Updated on October 6. If you downloaded before that and the old file was broken, use the link again." Silence here creates a ticket per reader.

Where should a review go, if I want to leave one? Name the stores and use the review links tool so the URLs are the real book and not a search page. Say the review is optional in the same answer. Do not bold the word optional and then write three sentences about how much reviews matter. The reader can count.

Is this the full book? Answer yes or no. A "full book" that ends on a cliffhanger with "continued next year" will generate angry mail. If it is a novella, say novella and give a word count or a page count you measured.

Skip the FAQ about your writing playlist, your pets, and your publication history. That is bio. Bio can be one line under the title. It does not answer a ticket.

How should the page sound when someone is annoyed?

Write the file-help sentence as if the reader is already annoyed, because the people who need it are. Short words. No jokes about technology. No "oops, bookworms and their gadgets!" A person who cannot read the file is not in on the joke.

Avoid countdown language unless a real date is attached and you will honor it. "Only a few copies left" on a digital file is not true. Digital files do not run out. False scarcity trains people to distrust the rest of the page, including the format notes.

Avoid a pop-up that asks them to join a newsletter before they have the file. They just gave you an email to get the file. A second ask is how the claim feels like a funnel. If you want them on the ongoing list, say that the campaign notes are separate and they can leave after the book. The design of those notes is in Building an author newsletter welcome flow.

What should you test before you send the link to anyone?

Open the page on a phone, on the connection you have in a hallway, not only on the laptop where you built it. Confirm:

• The title is the book's title.
• The cover is the cover you are publishing, not last month's draft.
• The button works and the confirmation tells them what to check, including spam.
• The file that arrives is the file you tested, in the format the page named.
• The date, the optional-review sentence, and the support link are visible without hunting.
• The page still makes sense if you have never heard of your series.

Ask one person who is not an author to claim a test copy and to tell you where they hesitated. Do not narrate the page to them. Their hesitation is the sentence you should move up.

Then read the page next to the delivery email. If the email contradicts the date or the format, fix the email. The sequence is in ARC email sequences that don't nag. A careful page with a sloppy delivery note still creates tickets. The ticket will quote the note, not your intentions.

How do you keep the page from rotting after launch day?

The page rots when the campaign ends in your head and stays open on the internet. Close new claims when you said you would. If the download remains available for people who already claimed, say that. If it does not, take the link down and leave a sentence: "This advance copy is closed. The book is on sale here." A dead button is a ticket.

When you update the manuscript, update the note on the page the same day. When you change the cover, change the image. When you change the genre description because early readers misunderstood the tone, change the first screen. The page is an instruction sheet. Instruction sheets that drift become fiction, and then the mail starts again.

If you are hosting the campaign on ReaderMagnet, list your book with the title and the file you mean. Open beta does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027. The page still needs your sentences. The software will not invent a clear warning about book three.

What a quieter inbox looks like

You will still get some mail. A device you have never heard of will fail. Someone will ask a question the FAQ answers. Reply once, with the FAQ's sentence, and then consider whether that sentence was actually visible. If three people miss it, it was not visible. Move it up. Do not add a second paragraph that repeats it in a warmer voice. Move the original.

The page is done when a stranger can tell what the book is, how long the window lasts, what file they will get, that a review is not the rent, and where to write if the file is blank. Everything else can wait until they have read the book. That is the courtesy. The courtesy is also the support strategy.

What should the confirmation say after the button, and what should it never say?

The moment after the click is when a lot of tickets are born. The reader is staring at a confirmation and wondering whether they did it right. The confirmation should say three things: the book title, where the file will appear, and what to do if it does not appear within a few minutes. "Check the promotions tab, then write to us with your device" is a complete instruction. "You're in! Watch your inbox for a surprise" is how people write to ask what the surprise was supposed to be.

Repeat the format in the confirmation. If they chose PDF, the confirmation should say PDF. A generic "your book is on the way" restart the confusion the form just solved. Use the same support address as the page. A confirmation that points at a different inbox splits the mail and makes you look like you lost them.

Do not use the confirmation to introduce a new offer. No second magnet, no swap signup, no "while you wait, follow these accounts." They are waiting for a file. The only extra line worth adding is the close date, so they know the favor has a boundary. If the mail is delayed because a tool is slow, say the delay on the page before they click, not in an apology after they have already started to worry.

Keep a test claim on the page the day you invite anyone. If the confirmation you see is an old campaign's text, you duplicated a page and forgot the title. That single mistake produces a thread of "you sent me the wrong book." Fix it before the invite goes out. The invite is in ARC email sequences that don't nag. It should describe the same title the confirmation just showed you.

How do you handle a page that serves more than one edition?

Sometimes the ARC is a paperback proofreader's PDF and an EPUB of the same text, and sometimes an audiobook is not ready and people will ask anyway. The page should list only the editions you can deliver this week. If audio is coming later, do not put a grayed-out button on the form. A dead choice becomes "the audio link is broken" mail. Say "EPUB and PDF only for this window" in the first screen so the absence is a decision, not a defect.

If a retailer edition and the ARC differ by a note, a map, or a corrected name, say which file the reader is holding. "This advance file is the text we intend to publish, minus a map that will be in the print edition" is a specific sentence. It prevents a review that complains about a missing map you never promised them. It also prevents you from "fixing" the ARC three times as the map arrives. Freeze the file. Describe it. Let the print edition be the print edition.

When two editions exist, pick a default in the confirmation email so a reader who ignores the form still gets a readable novel. Then offer the other format in one line they can reply to. Reply-based swaps are more work for you and less work for the dozens of people who were happy with the default. That trade is correct. The page is supposed to reduce tickets, not to demonstrate that you can build a format menu.

Readers forgive a sentence they dislike. They do not forgive a file that will not open, a chapter that is one long block, or a table of contents that jumps to the copyright page every time. The ARC is already a favor. A broken file turns the favor into a support ticket, and the review you might have received becomes a note about the download.

You do not need to become a typesetter. You need a reflowable file a phone can open, with chapters a reader can find, and a cover that does not explode into a blank screen. EPUB is the format built for that. The spec the reading systems are aiming at is EPUB 3, maintained by the W3C and published as the EPUB 3.3 recommendation. You do not have to read the specification to export a clean book. You do have to open the file you exported and read ten pages of it on a device that is not your computer.

What should you hand a reader, and what should you keep back?

Hand them the book. A complete draft, in reading order, with a title page that matches the book you described on the landing page. If you are still moving scenes around, you are not ready to send the file. Say so and move the window. An ARC can contain a typo. It should not contain a note that says "TK chapter 12" or a comment bubble that says "make her meaner."

EPUB is the default for fiction because the reader can change the type size. That matters on a phone, which is where a lot of advance copies are actually read. A PDF can be the right extra when the book is heavily illustrated, is a workbook, or is the print layout you need a proofreader to see. PDF is a poor default for a novel. The type is frozen. The reader pinches and drags. They will not pinch and drag through 400 pages, and they should not have to.

If you offer both, say which one is the reading copy. "EPUB for reading, PDF if you specifically need the print layout" prevents a dozen emails. The page that should say this is covered in Landing pages for ARCs that reduce support. When the file fails anyway, the reader needs a person. On ReaderMagnet that door is ARC support.

Do not send a folder of chapter files. Do not send a link to a cloud document that requires the reader to make an account. Do not send the book as a stack of images. Those choices feel convenient on your side and hostile on theirs.

How do you structure the inside of the file?

Think of the EPUB as a sequence of chapters the device already knows how to navigate.

Start with a cover image that is an image of the cover, sized as a normal ebook cover rather than a poster. A cover that is tiny, or enormous, or a screenshot of your desktop, is a quality problem before the first sentence. Then a title page: title, author name, and the words "Advance reader copy" if you want the reader to remember the file is early. Then the story.

Use real chapter breaks. Each chapter should start in a way the reading system can list. If your tool has a style called Heading 1, use it for chapter titles and for nothing else. If you paint the chapter title by making the body text large and bold, many exporters will not build a table of contents, and the reader is stuck scrolling.

The table of contents should list chapters, not every scene break. A contents list of two hundred "scene" entries is not more professional. It is a maze. Front matter can be in the contents if it is long enough to need finding. The copyright page does not need to be the first place the file lands when the reader opens it. Set the start to the first page of the story, or to a title page, and then check that the device obeyed you.

Scene breaks inside a chapter should be a visible mark: a blank line with a simple ornament, or a centered asterisk. A string of empty paragraphs will collapse on some devices and the scenes will run together. That reads as a mistake even when the prose is fine.

Italics should be italics, not a different font you applied by hand. Tabs and manual spaces for indentation will not survive. Let the ebook style indent the first line, or do not indent and use space between paragraphs. Pick one. Mixed systems look like a paste from three different drafts, because they are.

Images, if you have any, need alt text when they carry meaning, and they need to be compressed enough that the file is not a brick. A novel does not need a full-bleed photograph between chapters. A cookbook might. Know which book you are formatting.

What should you remove before you export?

Remove the drafting furniture.

• Comments and tracked changes. Accept them or reject them. An export that preserves your argument with yourself is not an ARC.
• Highlighting you used as a reminder.
• Running headers from the print layout, page numbers, and "Chapter 1" repeated in the header. Reflowable books do not have stable pages. A header that says the old chapter while the reader is in the new one is worse than no header.
• Hyperlinks to your private notes, your source spreadsheet, or a localhost address.
• Dummy sentences left over from a template, and the line "end of sample" in the middle of a chapter.
• Another author's worksheet you copied as a template, still full of their characters' names.

Run a search for the drafting marks that have embarrassed authors before: a note-to-self abbreviation, a row of Xs, your editor's first name if it only appears in notes, and the title of the previous book if you reused the file. Search is cheaper than a reader's screenshot.

If the book quotes song lyrics, private emails, or a long passage from someone else, make sure you have the right to put that in a file you are distributing. An ARC still circulates. "It was only the review copy" is not a license.

How do you export without creating a new problem?

Use one tool for the export and learn its two buttons: the style that becomes a chapter, and the command that writes the EPUB. Switching tools the night before a send is how a clean draft becomes a file with no chapters.

After export, do not trust the exporter's green checkmark. Open the EPUB in a reading app on your phone, and open it in at least one other environment if you can. Read:

• The first page the device shows. If it is the copyright page or a blank cover, fix the start.
• A chapter jump from the table of contents, including the last chapter.
• A page with italics, a scene break, and any special character you use, such as an em dash or an accented name.
• The file size. If a novel is inexplicably huge, an image is probably uncompressed.

Change the type size while you read. If the chapter title overflows or the scene break disappears when the type is large, the styling is brittle. Readers with low vision will hit that setting on purpose. A file that only works at your preferred size is not finished.

If you have a PDF as well, build it separately. Do not print the EPUB to PDF and hope. And do not flatten the EPUB into a PDF and call it both.

The campaign mail should link the file you just tested, not the previous export still sitting in the downloads folder. That mistake is so common it deserves a line in the checklist. The mail around the file is in ARC email sequences that don't nag.

What do you do when a reader says the file is broken?

Ask for the device and what they see, in one question. "Blank after the cover on a Kindle" is a different fault from "the ZIP downloaded and I don't know what an EPUB is." The second person may need the store's own app, or a different format if you offered one. The first person may be hitting a broken stylesheet.

Do not send five attachments in one reply. Send one replacement, named with the title and the date, so everyone can tell which file is current. If you replace the file on a private page, say so. A silent swap is fine only if the old file was unreadable. If you changed the ending, tell the people who already downloaded it. They cannot review a book you quietly rewrote.

Keep a short reply you can paste:

"Sorry the file failed. Tell me the device and whether you chose EPUB or PDF. I'll send one replacement. You don't need to do anything else, and you don't owe a review."

That last clause matters. A broken file plus a review nag is how a one-star review gets written before the story starts. The promise you want in public is the honest review policy.

If several readers hit the same fault, stop new sends until you re-export. Hoping the next person has a more forgiving app is how the ticket pile grows. How to run an ARC campaign assumes the file is the book. When it is not, the campaign waits.

What is worth paying someone else to do?

Pay a formatter when the book has illustrations, footnotes, poems, or a structure your tool keeps flattening, or when you have already lost a day and the file still has no table of contents. Pay for a single clean EPUB, and ask them what they need from you: a styled manuscript, not a PDF of a paperback, unless they specifically want the PDF as a guide.

Do not pay for a file you cannot open yourself. The handoff includes you reading the first chapter on a phone. A formatter cannot see that you uploaded the wrong draft. You can.

Do not pay for "conversion" that is a free export you were avoiding because the menu was unfamiliar. If the book is a straightforward novel, an afternoon with one tool is enough. The afternoon is part of publishing. It is less painful than forty emails titled "it won't open."

A checklist you can run the day you upload

1. Comments off, drafting marks searched, correct draft.
2. Chapter titles in a real heading style.
3. Table of contents lists chapters and opens.
4. Cover looks like the cover. The story starts where you think it starts.
5. Italics and scene breaks survive a larger type size.
6. You read ten pages on a phone, including a jump to the last chapter.
7. The filename includes the title and the date.
8. The landing page names the format.
9. You know where a broken-file reply goes.

Then upload that file and stop tinkering. A new export every night means nobody, including you, knows which version a review describes. Freeze the ARC. Fix true errors. Save the stylistic restlessness for the next edition, and tell readers if the file they hold has actually changed.

If you want the private page and the file in one place, list your book. Bring the EPUB you already opened on a phone. The page cannot repair a file you have not read.

How do series files and accessibility survive the export?

If the ARC is book two, the file should not assume the reading system will explain the series. Put "Book two of the North Ferry mysteries" on the title page in text, not only on the cover image. Cover text is invisible to a reader using a screen reader, and it is easy to miss inside a sample. A one-sentence note that the book spoils the previous volume belongs in the front, before chapter one, so a mistaken claim can back out before they are invested. That note should match the landing page. When the file and the page disagree, the reader trusts the file and then blames you.

Accessibility is not a separate deluxe edition. Real headings, a table of contents, and text rather than pictures of text are the accessible version. If a character name uses a special character, confirm it did not turn into a box on the phone. If you marked emphasis with a color, add italics or bold as well. Color alone disappears in a device set to a night theme, and it disappears for readers who do not see that color the way you do.

Series box sets should be separate exports, not three novels pasted into one file with no breaks. A reader who wants chapter one of book two cannot be asked to scrub through book one again. Give each novel its own contents entry. Then open that entry on the phone and see where it lands. If it lands on a blank page, the export added a section you did not notice. Delete the blank. The reader should never have to pass through your formatting debris to reach the story.

This is a publishing explanation you can adapt for your own site. It is not legal advice. Store rules change, and the law that applies to you depends on where you live and where you sell. Read the current policy on each retailer you use. If you need advice about a contract, a paid partnership, or a complaint, ask a lawyer. ReaderMagnet's own public rules are on the honest review policy and the ARC compliance page. Yours should match the way you actually behave, not the way a template sounds.

A review policy is a public promise about what you will and will not ask of a reader. You publish it so a stranger can see the terms before they take a free book, and so future-you has something to point at when a well-meaning friend offers to "round up five-star reviews." If the policy says one thing and your email says another, the email is the real policy, and the page is decoration.

What is the policy trying to protect?

Three things, in this order.

The reader, who should be able to take a free copy without owing you a mood. The store account, which can be damaged by reviews that look bought or required. Your future self, who will be tempted, during a bad launch week, to hint that advance readers should "help the book" by polishing a rating.

The policy is not a marketing asset. It should not be cute. It should be specific enough that a reader can tell whether they are allowed to dislike the book in public. If the answer is no, you do not have an honest-review policy. You have a fan club with extra steps.

Readers who want the short public version of how ReaderMagnet treats this can start at Become a reviewer. Authors who want the campaign around the policy can read How to run an ARC campaign.

What should the page say in plain language?

Use headings a person can skim on a phone. Here is a structure that covers the decisions. Rewrite the sentences in your voice. Do not publish them if you will not follow them.

The copy is free. The review is not required. Say that the advance file is a free copy, not a payment for a rating. Say that a reader may stop, may skip the review, and may post a negative review. Say that you will not charge them, punish them, or remove them from a list as revenge for a low star count. You can still choose not to invite someone back if they abused the file or harassed you. Those are different facts. Write them as different facts.

Honesty includes the parts that did not work. Say you would rather have a specific two-star review than a vague five-star review the reader does not mean. You do not have to sound thrilled about negative reviews. You do have to stop asking people to hide them.

Disclose the free copy. Tell readers that if they post, they should follow the store's current disclosure rules. A simple line they can use, if it still matches the store's language when you publish: "I received a free advance copy. The review is my own." Do not hand them a paragraph of praise and call it a disclosure.

No payment, gifts, or extra books for a rating. Ban the obvious deals: gift cards, cash, a bonus novella, a place in a contest, or entry into a street team that requires stars. A free advance copy is already the access. Adding a prize for a positive review changes the nature of the post. The FTC's Endorsement Guides are the public explanation of why a material connection between a reviewer and a seller has to be clear. Read them. Do not rely on this article as a substitute.

You will not coach the wording. Say that you may send a link to the store page. Say that you will not send required phrases, forbidden phrases, or a target star count. Say that you will not ask a reader to change a review because it hurt your feelings or your rank.

Where reviews can go. Name the stores you care about. Tell readers a review on a retailer, a bookseller page, or a reader site is their choice. Do not require a screenshot as proof. Screenshots of stars are how policies become quotas.

How to reach you. Give one address for file problems and a different instruction for reviews: file problems come to you, reviews go on the store, and you do not discuss the star count by email. ARC support is the support door when the copy is hosted on ReaderMagnet.

Updates. Put a date on the page. When you change the policy, change the date. A policy with no date looks copied.

What should you explicitly forbid?

Write the bans as behaviors, not as attitudes.

• Do not require a review in exchange for the file.
• Do not require a positive review, a minimum star rating, or a "helpful" tone.
• Do not pay for reviews, directly or through a prize that depends on the rating.
• Do not ask readers to review a book they have not read, including a book they returned or did not finish. Some stores allow a review after a partial read. Your policy can still say you only want reviews from people who are telling the truth about how much they read.
• Do not review-trade with other authors in a way that exists to inflate both of you. A sincere review of a book you finished is different from a pact. If you cannot tell the difference in a sentence, do not do the pact.
• Do not ask family members to post as if they were customers who stumbled on the book, if the store forbids that kind of close relationship. Read the store's current rule rather than guessing.
• Do not use a review policy page to attack a reader who left a review you dislike. The page is terms, not a rebuttal.

If a service offers "guaranteed reviews" or "verified five stars," the policy should be the reason you say no. Put that refusal in the page if you want the reminder in public. "I don't hire review services" is a useful sentence on a bad afternoon.

How do you publish it so people can find it?

Put the policy on your site at a stable URL. Link it from the ARC landing page, from the delivery email, and from the magnet's back matter if you also ask for anything that could be confused with a review. One link is enough. You do not need a pop-up.

On the landing page, a short version can sit beside the claim button: "Reviews are optional and unpaid. The full policy is here." The long version can live on its own page so the claim screen stays readable. Landing pages fail when they become the policy. The split is described in Landing pages for ARCs that reduce support.

Match the email sequence to the page. If the page says optional and the third email says "I really need your review today," you have unpublished the policy. The mail should be able to survive being read next to the page. See ARC email sequences that don't nag.

If you use ReaderMagnet, you do not need a second, contradictory policy for the same campaign. Point at one page. During open beta you can list your book without a card until January 1, 2027, and the reviewer-facing language should still be yours.

Add the link to your author site in the footer or the book page, not only inside a PDF nobody will reopen. People look for policies when something feels off. They will not look inside the EPUB.

What do you do when a review hurts?

Follow the policy you published. Read the review once for a real error: a broken file, a missing chapter, a description that promised a different book. Fix the error if it is in your control. Do not reply on the store if the store tells authors not to argue with reviews. Do not write to the reader asking them to revise the star count.

You may write a private thank-you if you already have a relationship and you can do it without a request attached. Many authors should not. The urge to "clarify" is the urge to manage the record. The policy exists to interrupt that urge.

If the review reveals a private detail or is abusive rather than negative, use the store's report tools. That is not the same as disliking a paragraph about your pacing. Learn the difference before you are angry, and write it into an internal note if you need to. The public policy can stay short.

A thin launch with honest reviews is a better record than a padded launch you have to worry about later. You cannot unpublish the fact that you asked for a quota. You can decide not to ask.

How do you keep the policy true six months from now?

Reread it when you copy a campaign forward. The dangerous moment is not the day you publish the page. It is the day a promo service, a group admin, or a tired co-author suggests a workaround. Compare the suggestion to the bans. If it conflicts, decline. You do not need a new philosophy for each offer.

If your practice changes, change the page first, then the emails. Do not let the mail drift for a month because you are busy. Drift is how authors end up with a policy that forbids paid reviews and a calendar full of "reviewer appreciation gifts" that only go to five-star posts. If the gift depends on the stars, it is not appreciation. It is a payment. Take it out, or take the policy down and stop calling the process honest.

Keep a copy of what you sent. If a retailer asks what you promised readers, you want the email and the page, not a memory of your intentions. Intentions are not the record. The sentence "in exchange for an honest review" is a record, and it is the wrong sentence even when you meant well. Prefer "if you want to leave an honest review, here is the link."

The disclaimer posture is the right one for the footer of your policy too: you are telling readers how you run the campaign, and you are not offering them legal advice either.

A page you can finish this week

1. Write the bans as a list you are willing to follow on launch day.
2. Write the positive promise in a paragraph a tired reader can finish: free copy, optional review, disclosure, no coaching.
3. Add the date, your contact for file problems, and links to the retailer policies you actually checked.
4. Put the page on a URL you will not change.
5. Link it from the claim page and from the delivery email.
6. Delete any older template that contradicts it, including the one in your downloads folder with the subject line "review swap."

Then stop decorating the page. A plain policy that you follow is the whole assignment. Readers do not need a manifesto. They need to know they can tell the truth and keep the book.

How should co-authors and early trade reviews be named?

If the book has two authors, the policy should say which of you talks to readers and that neither of you will coach a rating. A reader should not get one email from each of you with a slightly different ask. Pick one sender for the campaign. The policy page can name both authors and the single address for file help.

A trade with another author is the situation most likely to rot a clean policy. You may read their book because you want to. You may post about it if the store allows that relationship and you describe it honestly. You may not agree, even informally, that you will exchange positive reviews of a specified star level. Write that refusal down. In the week a friend is scared about a launch, the written line is easier to keep than a vibe.

If you quote a reader in your own marketing, ask first, quote the words they actually wrote, and do not attach the quote to a star graphic they did not approve. A policy that forbids coaching reviews and then mashes those reviews into advertisements will not survive a careful reader. Either leave the quotes off the claim page or treat them as heavily as you treat the review itself: accurate, optional, and not a condition of the free copy.

Cross-promotion works when a reader can finish one author's book and recognize the next author's book as the same kind of afternoon. It fails when the only thing the books share is "both writers would like more subscribers." Genre is the shorthand readers use for that afternoon. If you treat it as a tag you can stretch, you will borrow an audience that feels tricked, and you will spend the next month explaining yourself in the replies.

This is a filter for partnerships: group promotions, newsletter swaps, shared anthologies, and the "I'll mention you if you mention me" notes that happen in group chats. It is not a rule that you may only ever write one shelf. You can write widely under different names, or even under one name if your readers came for the range. You cannot quietly hand a grimdark list a cozy mystery and call it a bonus.

What does "the same genre" miss?

The bookstore shelf is the start, not the test. Two romances can be incompatible. One is a closed-door small-town story with a wedding at the end. The other is an erotic dark romance with a morally ruined lead and an ambiguous ending. Both are filed under romance. A reader who wanted the wedding will not experience the second book as a gift. They will experience it as a breach.

So the filter is the promise, not the BISAC code. Write the promise the way a picky reader would.

• What emotion does the ending deliver?
• How much sex is on the page, and how is it handled?
• How much violence, and is it the point or the cost?
• Is the world contemporary, historical, or secondary-world?
• Does the series require the previous book?
• Is the tone funny, earnest, bleak, or devotional?

If you cannot answer those for your own book, you are not ready to swap. You will say yes to the wrong room because the room was friendly. Friendliness is not a genre.

A practical way to see the promise is to read your own blurb and the first page, then read the partner's blurb and first page, out loud if you can stand it. If you would be startled to find their first page at the end of your book, do not send them your list. The longer argument for why a borrowed room is different from a magnet is in Reader magnet vs newsletter swap.

Which neighbors are actually neighbors?

Some adjacencies are real. A reader of historical mystery often can enjoy a historical novel with a crime in it, if the violence and the research tone match. A reader of cozy fantasy often can enjoy a low-stakes contemporary fantasy. A reader of practical nonfiction about newsletter writing can enjoy a case study from a neighboring craft, if you do not pretend the case study is the same book.

Some adjacencies are wishes. "Readers who like books" is not a segment. "Women aged 25 to 45" is not a genre. "People who bought something on sale" is not a promise. If the partnership's targeting is a demographic and a discount, you are doing a flyer drop. Flyer drops collect addresses. They do not collect readers of your next chapter.

Series position matters as much as shelf. Book one is a reasonable introduction. Book four, with a spoiler in the blurb, is a poor introduction. If your partner only has a mid-series book to offer, ask whether a short story exists. If the answer is no, a swap may still be fine for their existing fans and a bad fit for yours. You can decline without insulting the series.

Heat level and content warnings are not optional details you add if you have time. They are the difference between a thank-you and a furious unsubscribe. Put them in the swap copy in ordinary words. "On-page sex, including a scene that is not tender" is clearer than a chili-pepper scale only your group understands. "The dog survives" belongs in the copy if your genre has taught readers to be afraid. You are not spoiling a theme. You are preventing a betrayal.

How do you read a partnership offer on one pass?

When someone invites you, ask for four things before you agree. If they cannot send them, the offer is not ready.

1. The blurb and the first page, not a vibe description.
2. The exact audience they will send to, in their words. "My list" is not a description. "Readers who joined for a free romantic suspense novella, mailed about once a month" is a description.
3. The date, the send format, and whether you can see the final email before it goes out.
4. What they want from you, in the same detail.

Then compare the promise to yours. A mismatch you can explain in one sentence is a mismatch you should decline. "You write bleak war fiction and I write comic cozies" does not need a trial swap to gather data. The data will be unsubscribes.

Also look at the company if it is a group promo. One mismatched author in a bundle of twelve still puts that author's cover in front of your readers. You are allowed to ask who else is in the promo. A organizer who will not say is telling you the lineup is the part they hope you will not inspect.

ReaderMagnet is not a swap marketplace. If you are comparing tools that are, the public framing is on the StoryOrigin alternative page and in the BookFunnel comparison. Use those pages to choose a delivery tool. Use this page to choose a partner. The tool will not rescue a genre mistake.

How do you decline without making an enemy?

Most authors are not trying to trick you. They are hoping the overlap is bigger than it is. You can say no in four lines.

"Thanks for asking. I don't think our readers want the same book. Mine expect a quiet contemporary romance with no on-page sex, and yours is darker than I can put in front of them. I hope the promo fills. I'll cheer from outside it."

Do not invent a fake scheduling conflict if the real reason is the genre. A fake conflict expires, and they will ask again. The genre reason stays true. Do not critique their book. You are declining a trade, not issuing a review.

If you want to keep the relationship, offer a narrower yes. "I can't swap lists, but I will mention the book to the small group who already told me they read military history." That is a different, honest channel. Only offer it if you will do it.

If the person pushes after a clear no, you do not owe a second explanation. Silence is allowed. A partnership that starts with pressure will not be careful with your list later.

What if the genres are close and you are still unsure?

Run a small test that cannot hurt the whole list. Mention the other book to a segment that already reads widely, or to the people who replied to a question about what else they read. Do not send a cold partner to every address you have ever collected.

Ask for the same restraint from them. A "test" that is actually a full send to both lists is not a test. It is the partnership.

Afterward, read the replies and the unsubscribes with their words, not with a vanity rate. "I didn't sign up for horror" is a genre finding. A quiet week is not. One angry letter is a reason to look at the copy. It is not, by itself, a reason to swear off every collaboration. The decision to end a standing swap is in When to kill a newsletter swap. Use it when the pattern repeats, not when one email was awkward.

You can also ask your own readers, once, what they want more of. Believe the specific answers. Ignore the polite "I like everything you recommend." That sentence is kindness, not a targeting plan.

How do anthologies and shared worlds change the filter?

An anthology with a stated theme gives the reader a container. They can accept a range inside the theme if the cover and the introduction tell the truth. A holiday romance anthology that slips in one bleak literary story will still feel like a broken promise. The container has to be real.

Shared worlds need an editor, or at least a written agreement about tone, canon, and content. Without that page, the cross-promo is a group chat with a cover. Write down the rules the reader will feel: whether magic is rare, whether endings are happy, whether sexual content is fade-to-black. If a contributor cannot work inside the rules, they can write a different book. They should not be in the bundle.

You are allowed to leave a project in progress if the manuscript that arrives is not the book that was pitched. Leaving is uncomfortable. Shipping a surprise to your list is worse. Read the story before your name is on the promotion. "I trusted the organizer" is not a defense your readers have to accept.

What do you put in the email so the reader can opt out in their head?

Even a good match deserves a true sentence. "This is a gothic romance with a haunting and a wedding" lets the wrong reader skip. "You will love this" does not. You do not control taste. You control whether you lied about the ingredients.

Link to the book's page, not to a maze. If the partner's magnet is the offer, say it is a free story and name the genre again. If it is a paid book, do not call it a gift. Words like gift, exclusive, and limited are how a normal recommendation starts to sound like a funnel. Your list already gets enough of that from other senders.

Keep your own next book in the mail too, once, so the list remembers why they joined you. A swap email that is only other people's books teaches readers that you are a brochure. Mention the partner, then return to your work. The magnet and the list you built on purpose are still the asset. Cross-promo is a visit, not a new front door. The front door is the piece you control, which starts at list your book if you want the reader page hosted here, and at your own site if you already have a clean one.

When is the careful answer "not this year"?

Skip cross-promo when you have no book a stranger can finish, when your list is mostly people who have not heard from you in a year, or when you are exhausted enough to say yes so the conversation will end. A tired yes is how mismatched genres get into the calendar.

Skip it when the partner wants your list but will not show you the copy. Skip it when the payment is a review quota. Skip it when the genre "fit" depends on you not mentioning the parts of their book that would make your readers leave.

A year with no swaps is a respectable year if the books came out and the mail was true. You can partner later, when you can describe both promises in a sentence a stranger would recognize. Until then, recommend books you have read and would put next to yours on a table. That is the entire standard. Everything else is a negotiation you are free to walk out of.

How do pen names and nonfiction crossovers change the yes?

A pen name is a promise of consistency. If the other author writes one genre under the name they are promoting, judge that name, not the other books they publish elsewhere. You are not obligated to investigate their entire career. You are obligated to read the book they want you to send. If they are using a shared list for two pen names, ask which readers will actually receive the mail. A list that mixes both names is not a genre match for either of you.

Nonfiction cross-promo fails in a specific way. A practical book about drafting a novel is not the same audience as a book of literary theory, even though both are "about writing." A memoir is not a how-to, even when it contains lessons. Ask what the reader will be able to do, or feel, after the partner's book. If you cannot tell, the blurb is not ready to forward. Decline until you can describe the outcome in the same concrete way you would describe a novel's ending.

You can still mention a nonfiction book you personally used, inside your own letter, without a swap. That is a citation, not a trade. Keep it specific and optional. Your fiction readers did not sign up for a syllabus. One title, one reason, then back to the story.

A welcome flow is the short run of emails a person gets after they ask for the magnet, the ARC, or the list itself. It is not the newsletter. The newsletter is what you send later, when you have something to say. The welcome is the handshake: here is the file I promised, here is what I will send, here is how to leave.

Authors overbuild this. They design eight emails of autobiography because a template said "nurture the subscriber." The person who just typed an email address wanted the story, or the ARC, or a note when the book is out. They did not apply to read your memoir in installments. Give them the file, set the expectation, and invite one easy reply. Then get out of the way until you have a real letter to send.

What did this person think they were joining?

Read the page they just used. The welcome has to match it. If the page said "a free short story and occasional release notes," email one should contain the short story, and email two should not announce a weekly craft essay. If the page was an ARC claim, the mail is logistical and the review is optional. That sequence is different and lives in ARC email sequences that don't nag. Do not drop ARC readers into a magnet welcome that congratulates them on "joining the reader family."

Write down the promise in the words the page already uses. The welcome is a delivery of that promise, plus a map of what happens next. If you cannot point at the sentence on the page, the page is the problem. Fix the page before you automate five emails that apologize for it.

Two lists are cleaner than one clever tag system you will forget. Magnet readers and ARC readers can be the same humans, but the first week of mail should not be. A person who claimed a launch copy does not need a tour of your backlist on day two. A person who downloaded a prequel does not need three reminders to review a book they have not bought.

The piece they were promised is described in How to write a reader magnet that converts. If that file is not finished, do not turn on the flow.

What should the first email do, and what should it leave out?

Email one delivers. Subject line: the title of the thing they asked for. Body: the link or the file, the format, and a single sentence of thanks that does not grovel.

Include the support line. "If it won't open, reply with the device" will save you a week of mystery complaints. Point ReaderMagnet readers at ARC support when the file is an advance copy hosted here. For a magnet, your own reply address is enough if you actually read it.

Leave out the catalog, the social icons row, the request for a review of a free story, and the origin story of your pen name. Those can exist later, in smaller doses, if you still want them. They do not belong in the email that is supposed to get a file onto a phone before the reader goes to pick up a child.

Send it immediately. A welcome that arrives tomorrow feels like a leak. If your tool cannot send immediately, say so on the page: "The file arrives within the hour." Then make that true.

Check the links on a phone after you connect the tool. A desktop preview will not show you that the button is an image with no alt text, or that the link still points at last year's story. The technical side of the file itself is in Formatting EPUB ARC files.

What is email two for, if email one already delivered?

Email two sets the calendar. Wait two or three days. Some people need that long to notice email one. Do not wait two weeks or they will forget they signed up and mark you as spam.

Tell them what you send, how often you actually send it, and what you will not send. Specific is kinder than "valuable content."

"I write when a book is ready and occasionally when a short story is finished. That has been about once a month this year, sometimes less. I don't send daily prompts. If you only wanted the short story, you can unsubscribe at the bottom and keep the file."

That last sentence is doing real work. People who wanted the file and not the relationship should leave now, while the memory is fresh. A list of willing readers is smaller and more useful than a list of people who are one more email away from a complaint.

If you sell books directly, this is also the email where you can name the next book once, with a link. Once. The same link you put in the magnet's back matter. Do not add a second series "while I have you."

Commercial mail in the United States has to meet the CAN-SPAM rules the FTC publishes in its CAN-SPAM compliance guide. The practical pieces authors skip are a working unsubscribe and a valid physical postal address. Your email tool may add both. Open a test message and confirm they are visible. A pretty template that hides the unsubscribe in a light gray image is how you collect complaints. If you are outside the US, or you mail people who are, read the rules that apply where you and your readers are. This page is not a legal memo.

Should you ask for a reply, and what are you asking?

One low-pressure reply does more for you than a survey. On email three, a few days after email two, ask a question a human can answer in a sentence, and only if you will read the answers.

"What are you reading this month, besides mine?" is enough. "Reply with your favorite trope and your birthday and your review of my last book" is a form. People do not reply to forms from strangers.

Why ask at all? Because a reply tells the mailbox that a person wanted this conversation, and it tells you whether the magnet attracted readers of your genre or readers of free files in general. You are not required to ask. If you are in a season where you cannot answer mail, skip email three. An unanswered question is ruder than silence.

Do not automate a follow-up that says "I noticed you didn't reply." That is nagging, and it is creepy. The ARC rule applies here too: one ask, then stop.

If someone does reply, answer them. A personal sentence is the whole point. A canned "so glad you're on this journey" undoes it.

What happens after the welcome, on an ordinary week?

You send the newsletter you promised, at the frequency you named. If you named "when a book is ready," you do not invent monthly filler to stay "top of mind." Filler is how the welcome's honesty dies. A short note that a book is delayed is better than a recycled quote graphic.

Between books, you can send a letter when you have a scene, a research find, or a real question. You can also send nothing. The list will not evaporate in six quiet weeks. It will evaporate if every quiet week produces an email that exists only because a calendar said so.

Keep a reserve of one letter you are proud of, so a bad week does not push you into a panicked send. Do not keep a reserve of eight automated essays that could be from any author in the genre. Readers joined for your voice. The magnet was supposed to prove it. The ongoing mail has to sound like the same person.

When you do have a launch, you can mail more often for a defined window, and you should say so. "Three notes this month because the book is out, then back to the usual pace" is a contract. A launch that quietly becomes the new pace is how you train unsubscribes.

The decision to stop a swap, or to stop a collaboration that feeds the list, is separate. If the list is growing through borrowed audiences that do not read you, fix that at the source: When to kill a newsletter swap.

How do you welcome someone who found you on your website?

The site and the welcome should agree. If the homepage says release notes and the welcome says daily craft, you wrote two brands. Author website basics before you buy ads is the checklist for the page. The form on that page should name the magnet in the same words as email one.

Use a single form for the magnet if you can. A form for "the newsletter," a form for "the free book," and a checkbox labyrinth produce duplicate subscribers and a welcome that delivers the wrong file. One promise, one form, one first email.

If you are collecting addresses on ReaderMagnet as well as on a site form, decide which tool sends the welcome. Two welcomes in one hour is an accident. During open beta, listing a book does not require a card until January 1, 2027. The path is list your book. Your email tool still has to be one you can open. ReaderMagnet is not a reason to start a second welcome sequence you will not maintain.

How do you test the flow before a stranger hits it?

Send every email to yourself, on the phone you actually use, from the same tool that will send to readers. Click every link. Unsubscribe from the test address and confirm that it works, then re-subscribe a different test address. Open the file. Read the from-name and the reply-to. If replies go to a no-reply address, you do not have a reply-to. You have a wall. Change it if email three asks for a reply.

Read the three emails back to back. If they repeat the same paragraph, cut the repetition. The reader may see them on the same day if they are bored and click through. Repeated paragraphs feel automated because they are.

Ask one friend to sign up with an address you do not control. Watch what arrives, and when. Their confusion is the revision list. Do not explain the email to them before they read it. The explanation is cheating.

Then turn it on and leave it alone for a month unless a link breaks. Tweaking subject lines every week means you are not writing the next book. A plain subject with the story's title will beat a clever one you keep changing because you are nervous.

What does a welcome flow refuse to be?

It refuses to be a launch sequence, a course, a survey, a review mill, or a daily habit. It refuses to hide the unsubscribe. It refuses to pretend you mail more often than you do. It refuses to enroll people who asked for one file into a different author's promotion without a clear, separate opt-in.

If a template you bought has eight emails, you are allowed to delete five of them before you connect it. The template was written for a business that mails as its product. Your product is the book. The mail is the hallway.

Three notes are enough: the file, the expectation, the optional reply. After that, write when you have something a reader of that magnet would actually open. That is the whole system. It is small on purpose, so you will still be willing to run it when the draft is hard.

What do you do when the same person signs up twice, or with a pen name?

People will use a second address because the first one buried your mail, or because they forgot they already had the file. Your tool should not send them the entire welcome again if you can help it. If it does, the second delivery email should still be the file, not a scolding. A one-line subject, "Your copy, again," is kinder than a sequence that restarts the autobiography.

If you write under more than one name, the welcome has to come from the name on the book they asked for. A from-name that is your legal name, or a shared "author updates" identity, breaks the promise the cover made. Set the from-name and the reply-to before you invite anyone. Send the test to yourself and read the sender line on the phone, where it is truncated. If the visible part is a company you do not actually have, shorten it to the pen name.

Do not merge two pen-name lists because a tool made merging easy. The reader who wanted the mystery did not consent to the romance. A welcome that delivers the wrong world's file is a targeting error you will see in the replies within a day. Fix the form, not the reader's confusion.

This is an educational note about how indie authors set a list price. It is not tax advice, accounting advice, or a promise about what you will earn. Royalties depend on the store, the territory, delivery costs, returns, and the price you actually enter. Read the current help page for the retailer you use before you publish. ReaderMagnet does not set your book price and does not take a cut of it.

The panic usually comes from treating the price as a verdict on the book. It is not. It is a number you can change, inside the rules of the store, after you see whether anyone can find the book at all. Most first novels are hard to sell at any price because nobody knows they exist. A clever price does not fix that. A readable book and a way for the right readers to meet it will do more than a weekend of spreadsheet anxiety.

What are you pricing, exactly?

You are pricing one edition in one store. The ebook is not the paperback, and the paperback is not the audiobook. Readers compare them, but the costs are different, and the stores publish different rules.

For a Kindle ebook, Amazon's KDP help page on eBook list price requirements is the table that matters. As of the note published there, effective July 7, 2026, the 70% royalty option on Amazon.com runs from $2.99 to $12.99, wider than the older $2.99 to $9.99 band. Other KDP marketplaces have their own minimums and maximums for the 35% option and the 70% option. Those bands can change. The page is the source. A blog post, including this one, is not.

If you publish wide, each store has its own deal. Do not copy a Kindle price into every retailer and assume the royalty math followed. Check the store you are actually using.

A free ebook is a price, too. Free can be a temporary promotion, a permafree series starter, or a magnet. Those are different decisions. Permafree book one is discussed in Series starters as magnets. A free short that is not the novel is the usual magnet, covered in How to write a reader magnet that converts. Do not make the novel free because you are nervous about asking for money. Nervousness is not a strategy. It is a feeling you can price around by starting inside a normal band and changing one variable later.

How do you pick a first number without a ritual?

Look at books a reader would buy in the same afternoon as yours. Same genre, similar length, similar newness. You are not studying "the market." You are checking whether your number looks like a mistake next to the books your reader already sees.

A few honest constraints:

• If you want the 70% option on Amazon.com, your list price has to sit inside the band KDP currently publishes. Outside that band you may be on the 35% option even if the book is excellent. Read the table. Do not trust a screenshot from a Facebook group.
• A 40,000-word romance and a 140,000-word fantasy are not the same object. Readers notice. You do not have to price by the word, but a very short book at the top of the band needs a reason the reader can feel, such as a famous series or a highly produced edition. A first novel usually does not have that reason.
• Series book one is often cheaper than book three, because book one is the audition. That is a common pattern, not a law. If book one is the whole story and there is no sequel, price it as a standalone.
• Paperback prices have printing costs. Do not set the paperback at the ebook price or you will learn about printing on your first statement. The ebook is the simpler first decision. Do the paperback with the printer's calculator in front of you.

Pick a number you can say out loud without apologizing in the newsletter. Then stop browsing. Another hour of comparison shopping will not produce a truer price. It will produce a second-guess.

Write the reason in a note: "Book one, mystery, about 85,000 words, priced at $4.99 to sit in the 70% band beside other debut mysteries I would actually read." Future-you will want that sentence when a stranger tells you to drop it to ninety-nine cents.

What price experiments are real, and which ones are superstition?

A real experiment changes one thing and gives it enough time that you are not measuring a weekend.

Change the price, or change the cover, or change the blurb. Do not change all three on Thursday and conclude the price failed. You will not know which one the reader saw.

Give a price at least a few weeks unless the store is clearly rejecting it for a policy reason. A launch week is a bad laboratory. Everyone who was going to buy because they know you will buy in that week at almost any reasonable price. The quieter weeks tell you more, and even those weeks are polluted by whether anyone saw the book.

Ninety-nine cents as a permanent home for a full novel is usually a fear price. It can be a short promotion. It can be a store's countdown deal if you are in a program that offers one. It is a bleak default, because it trains the reader that the book is a bargain-bin object, and because the royalty on the 35% option at that price is small even when a copy sells. If you run a sale, put the end date on your calendar and restore the price. A sale that never ends is just a lower price you were afraid to choose.

Raising the price is allowed. Authors act as if the first number is a tattoo. It is not. If the book is finding readers and the reviews describe a full novel, a move from the bottom of the band toward the middle is a normal edit. Tell your newsletter if you promised them a launch price. Then change it.

Do not invent a conversion rate for these experiments. "I heard $3.99 converts 20% better" is the kind of sentence that travels without a method attached. If you did not run the test on your book, you do not have the result. Record your own units sold and your own page reads if you are in a borrow program, and compare periods you can explain. A holiday week is not a fair comparison to a random Tuesday.

How should series, bundles, and box sets affect the number?

Price the series so a reader can understand the offer without a chart.

• Book one can be lower than the rest if you want it to be the sample they pay for.
• Later books can share one price so you are not re-deciding every launch.
• A box set should not cost more than buying the books one at a time unless it includes something a completionist wants and you say what that is. Readers can add. They notice when the set is a worse deal.

If book one is free, the price of book two is the first time you ask for money. Do not hide that. The back matter of book one should name the price of book two in plain words if the price is part of the promise, or at least link to a page where the price is visible. A surprise at the store is how you get a review about the author rather than the story.

Bundles and "complete series" discounts are optional. They are not required to look professional. A single book with a clear price is easier to explain than a ladder of coupons.

What does ReaderMagnet's price have to do with the book's price?

Nothing direct. The book's list price is yours. ReaderMagnet's author tools are a separate bill, and during open beta they do not ask for a card until January 1, 2027. After that date the public pricing page is the source for tentative plan prices. Read pricing when you want the current table. Do not budget your household on a number you saw in an old screenshot.

Comparing delivery tools is also separate from the ebook's list price. BookFunnel vs ReaderMagnet and the comparison page are about where the ARC or the magnet lives, not about whether the novel costs $3.99 or $5.99. You can have a sensible book price and a messy delivery setup, or the reverse. Fix the one that is actually blocking a reader this month.

If you are tempted to raise the book's price to "cover" a software subscription, notice that those are different ledgers. A tool should earn its place by removing a job. It should not be justified by adding a dollar to a novel that did not need the dollar.

How do you talk about price in public without sounding defensive?

You rarely need to talk about it. The store shows the number. Your newsletter can mention a sale when there is a sale, with the dates. It does not need a paragraph about how awkward it is to charge for art.

If someone asks you to justify the price in a comment, you can ignore the comment. If you answer, answer once: the book is a full novel, the price is the price, the sample is there for anyone who wants to try before they buy. Do not argue a stranger down to a discount. Do not apologize in the blurb. "I know it's expensive but I worked hard" makes the page about your feelings. The page is about the story.

Retailer pages also collect reviews that mention price. You cannot manage those reviews with a follow-up email that asks for a higher star count. You can make sure the sample and the blurb match the book so the buyer is not surprised by length or by content. Surprise is what makes price feel like a trick.

The disclaimer on this site is the right posture for anything that sounds like a rule about money or reviews: we are explaining the work, not acting as your lawyer or your accountant.

What should you ignore while you set the first price?

Ignore advice that comes with a guaranteed ranking, a guaranteed income, or a required countdown schedule. Ignore anyone who needs your login to "optimize" the price. Ignore a single viral book that was priced at ninety-nine cents and sold a number you cannot verify. You do not have their traffic, their backlist, or their luck. Copying the price copies the least important part of that story.

Ignore the urge to price the book at zero because a magnet article said free books build lists. A magnet can be free. The novel can be for sale. Those can be true on the same day.

Ignore vanity calculators that ask for your "expected conversion rate" and then print a monthly income. The rate was a guess. The income is the guess multiplied by another guess. It will feel like a plan. It is not one.

A calm way to finish the decision this week

1. Open the current price-band page for the store you will use. Write down the band you are willing to be inside.
2. Look at five comparable books. Note their prices without building a spreadsheet empire.
3. Choose a number inside the band that does not require an apology.
4. Write one sentence explaining the choice. Save it.
5. Publish or schedule the book.
6. Put a reminder on the calendar for a month later to look at units, not at your mood. Change the price only if you can say what you learned.

Then go back to the readers you can actually reach. A price cannot introduce the book to them. A page can. If the advance copy is how those readers will meet it, set that up without mixing it into the list price: list your book and keep the review ask optional.

The first price is a draft of a number. The book is the thing you are asking someone to spend a weekend on. Treat the number as editable. Treat the book as the part that has to be finished.

An ARC email sequence has four jobs: invite the right people, deliver a file that opens, help the ones who are stuck, and close the window. It does not have a fifth job called "extract a review from anyone who has gone quiet." Silence is often a life, not a verdict. The sequence that respects that fact is shorter than the one most authors draft at midnight before a launch.

Reviews stay optional. That is not a tone preference. It is how you keep the ask legal and how you keep your storefront accounts out of trouble. The public version of that rule is on ReaderMagnet's honest review policy. If you want language you can paste onto your own site, use An honest review policy you can publish and then edit it until it sounds like you.

Who is this sequence for, and who should not automate it?

Use a sequence when you are inviting more people than you can personally write to, and when those people already expect a book. Twenty newsletter readers who asked for the next ARC can get four plain emails. A street team that lives in a chat does not need a marketing automation clone of the same chat. A list you bought needs to be deleted, not sequenced.

Skip the sequence entirely if the book is not finished. "Coming soon" emails to ARC readers are how you spend trust before you have a file. Also skip it if you cannot answer a reply for two weeks. Automation that invites people into a room you will not staff is worse than a short personal note to twelve readers.

The campaign around these emails is described in How to run an ARC campaign. This page is only the mail. The page they land on is a separate problem, covered in Landing pages for ARCs that reduce support.

What does the invite say, and what does it refuse to say?

The invite goes to people who can still say no. Send it before the file, not as a surprise attachment.

Say what the book is, how long it is in pages or words you actually counted, when the window closes, and that a review is welcome and not required. Name the genre the way a reader would, including the parts that cause returns: on-page violence, explicit sex, a bleak ending, heavy faith content, or a cliffhanger if the book is mid-series.

A usable invite looks like this. It is an example, not a script you must copy:

"I'm sending advance copies of North Ferry on Monday. It's a 320-page coastal mystery. The window runs four weeks. If you want the EPUB, reply or use the claim page. A review is optional. If you don't finish, you don't owe me anything. If you know you hate books where the dog is in danger, skip this one. The dog is fine, but the book spends time making you worry."

Do not say "in exchange for a review." Do not say "I need twenty reviews by Friday." Do not offer a second book, a gift card, or a shout-out for a star rating. Those sentences turn a favor into a transaction. Amazon's own review guidance, and ReaderMagnet's ARC compliance notes, are there because storefronts treat required praise as manipulation. You do not need a lawyer to avoid the obvious version. You do need to read the current retailer page before you invent a cleverer version.

Also say how to get out. One line: "If you don't want ARC mail, say so and I won't offer the next one." People who decline are doing you a favor. They will not clutter your "maybe" pile.

What belongs in the delivery email, and what can wait?

Send the delivery note when the file is actually available. If the claim page generates the message, read it before you open the campaign. A default that buries the download under your biography will create tickets.

The delivery email needs:

• The download, once, in the format you promised.
• The title and the date the window closes.
• The review links, labeled optional, for the stores you actually care about. The review links tool is a place to gather those URLs so you are not hunting them on launch morning.
• A support line: what to do if the file will not open, and where to write. ARC support is the public door for ReaderMagnet readers. If you are delivering from somewhere else, name that inbox.
• Nothing else that competes with the file. No newsletter signup pitch to people who just signed up. No request to follow you on three networks. No excerpt. They have the book.

Subject lines should look like mail from a person who has their file. "Your copy of North Ferry" is enough. "Last chance" is a lie on day one. "I can't wait for you to love this" asks for a feeling they have not had.

Wait a week before you write again, longer if the book is long. The reader has not failed you by having a job.

What is the mid-window note allowed to do?

One note, in the middle, not a drip of three. The purpose is help, not guilt.

Thank the people who already posted, without quoting their stars in a way that tells everyone else which rating you prefer. Offer a format swap if you have one: "If the EPUB is a mess on your device, I can send the PDF." Remind them of the close date. Repeat that a review is optional.

You may ask a question that a stuck reader can answer in one line: "If the file failed, tell me the device." You may not ask "Why haven't you reviewed yet?" That question has no good reply. The honest answers are "I haven't started," "I hated it," and "My parent is in the hospital." You do not want any of those answers produced for your benefit.

If you segment, segment on behavior you actually have. People who already clicked a review link do not need the mid-window ask. People who reported a broken file need the fix, not the ask. If you cannot segment, write the note so both groups can read it without feeling scolded. "If you already posted, thank you, you can ignore the links" is plain and sufficient.

Do not add a "behind the scenes" essay in this email. They are in the middle of the book. Your process is not the help they need.

How do you close without a guilt sequence?

The close email happens when you said it would. Send it even if you are disappointed. Moving the date because you want more reviews teaches people that your deadlines are a negotiation.

Say the window for new claims is shut. Say existing download links still work if that is true, so a slow reader is not punished. Repeat the review links once, still optional. Thank them for reading or for trying. Then stop.

A fourth email "just bumping this" is the nag. A fifth email with a sad story about the algorithm is how you lose the list for book two. If the numbers are thin, the remedy is the next book's invite list and the book's fit, not another reminder. How to run an ARC campaign covers what to do when nobody posts. The short version is: count finishes if you can see them, check whether the window matched the length of the book, and do not send a scolding.

If a reader replies to the close with a late review, thank them and do not enroll them in a new sequence as a reward. If they reply with a problem in the book, fix the problem if it is real, and do not ask them to edit the review.

What should you automate, and what should stay a human reply?

Automate the parts that are the same for everyone and boring to mistype: the delivery link, the close date, the optional-review sentence, the support address. Do not automate empathy. If someone writes "this file is blank" or "I lost my spouse this month," that reply is yours. A sequence that answers those with the next scheduled pitch is the fastest way to be marked as spam.

Keep the automation short enough that you can read all four emails in one sitting every time you duplicate the campaign for a new book. If you cannot bear to read them, the readers cannot either.

Turn the sequence off when the campaign ends. Evergreen "ARC reminder" flows attached to a dead book are how old links keep creating mail. On ReaderMagnet, close the campaign when you close the window. If you also run a welcome flow for magnet readers, keep it on a different list or a different tag so ARC readers are not congratulated for joining a newsletter they did not choose. The welcome flow is a separate design: Building an author newsletter welcome flow.

How do you write about stars without coaching the review?

You can tell readers where a review can go. You can tell them it should be honest. You can tell them a free copy is worth disclosing in the review if the store asks for that. You cannot tell them the rating you need, the phrases you prefer, or the sentences to avoid because they might hurt the launch.

If you are afraid of a two-star review, the sequence is not the place to manage that fear. Do not send a "tips for reviewing" guide that is secretly a list of compliments. Readers notice. So do the stores.

A clean paragraph:

"If you finish and want to post, here are the links. Say what you thought, including what didn't work. You don't owe a positive review for the free copy. If you'd rather not post, that's fine."

That paragraph can appear in the delivery and again in the close. It should not grow.

What timing fits the book in front of you?

Match the gaps to the length, not to your anxiety.

• A novella can use an invite, a delivery the same week, one note a week later, and a close inside two weeks.
• A 80,000-word novel wants a week of quiet after delivery before the mid-window note, and a close at four to six weeks.
• A long fantasy wants the longer window you already promised in the invite. Do not "check in" every Sunday because the book is long. The length is why you gave them time, not why you get more emails.

Send on a day you can answer replies. Monday morning mail that sits until Thursday is a sequence that looks automated and unhelpful. If you write at night, schedule the send for the hour you will be awake the next day.

Time zones matter less than you think for a four-email arc. They matter a lot if you promise "the file arrives at 9 a.m." and then deliver at 9 a.m. on a coast the reader is not on. Promise the day, not the minute.

How do you keep the sequence from drifting into your newsletter voice?

ARC mail is logistical. Newsletter mail can be warmer, longer, and about the work. When you mix them, the ARC note becomes a story about your week, and the download link sinks. Write ARC mail in short paragraphs. Use the book's title in the subject. Avoid a personal essay until the campaign is over and you are writing to the people who asked to stay.

If you want to tell the story of the research, do it after publication, to the list that asked for author notes. The readers holding an unfinished file need the file.

Read the sequence once as if you did not know the sender. If any email would embarrass you when forwarded to another author, cut that sentence. The usual candidates are the apology for "bothering you again," the claim that the book will change their life, and the hint that future ARCs depend on a five-star review. Delete all three.

Then send the four notes, answer the humans, and go back to the next book. The sequence worked if the right people got a clean file and nobody was chased. The reviews, if they come, are a side effect of that, not a quota the emails were built to collect.

A reader magnet converts when a stranger finishes a real piece of your work and asks for the next thing on purpose. The email address is the receipt. It is not the art. Authors get into trouble when they write the signup form first and the story second, then wonder why the list is full of people who wanted a free file and have no interest in the novel.

This guide is about the piece itself: what to write, what to refuse, how to end it, and how to tell whether anyone wanted the book that follows. It is not a promise about open rates. ReaderMagnet will not invent one for you.

What is the job of the magnet, in one sentence?

Write the sentence before you outline. A usable version names the reader and the next book.

"A reader who likes closed-room mysteries with a tired detective will finish this 8,000-word case and know that The Night Clerk is the novel where that detective fails in public."

If you cannot name both the reader and the next book, you are not ready to publish a magnet. You may still be ready to write a short story for yourself. Those are different jobs. A magnet that points at a book you have not drafted trains people to wait for something that does not exist. A magnet that points at three different series trains nobody.

The sentence also tells you who should skip the project. If your only finished book is a romance and the magnet idea is a thriller short "to widen the audience," the sentence will look dishonest as soon as you type it. Stop there. Cross-genre experiments belong in a separate pen name or in a story you are willing to support with more of the same. They do not belong in the back matter of a book you hope will pay rent.

An ARC is a different object. An ARC is time-boxed, usually tied to a launch, and the ask is an optional honest review. A magnet stays up on a Tuesday in March when you are not launching anything. Mixing the two is how a "free book" page becomes an expired file and a support inbox. If you need the campaign version, use How to Run an ARC Campaign Without Losing the Plot. If you are choosing between a magnet and a swap, read Reader magnet vs newsletter swap before you borrow someone else's list.

Which format can you finish without spoiling the book?

Pick the smallest complete work that proves the voice. Complete means the reader can close the file and feel finished. A hostage cliffhanger is not a magnet. It is a sample with a lock on it.

A short story in the same world. This is the default for fiction when book one is already for sale or about to be. Keep it between a long scene and a novella you can revise in a week. Give it a beginning, a turn, and an ending that does not require the novel. The protagonist can be a side character. The setting can be the same town five years earlier. The rule is spoilers: if the short story reveals the killer, the secret baby, or the twist in chapter twenty, it is a behind-the-scenes extra for people who already bought the book, not a door for strangers.

A prequel. A prequel works when the novel's pleasure does not depend on wondering how the characters met. It fails when you spend the prequel explaining the lore the novel was going to reveal slowly. If you find yourself writing "this is why the kingdom fell," you are writing the book again, shorter and worse. Stop and write a side case instead.

A deleted chapter. Most deleted chapters were deleted because they do not stand alone. A dinner scene that only matters if you already love the couple is a bonus for buyers. Label it that way and deliver it after purchase, or after they have at least read the book. Do not put it on the front door.

The first chapter, extended. A sample is useful on a retailer page. It is a weak magnet because the reader can already get it by using the "look inside" feature, and because it stops. If you want the opening to be the magnet, write a new ending for that episode so the file is a whole story, then point at the novel as the longer case. Do not stop mid-sentence and write "continued in the full book." Readers can tell when they are being managed.

Nonfiction. Give them something they can use before they trust you with a longer book. A worked example beats a list of principles. A three-page teardown of one real decision, with the constraints named, beats a twenty-page ebook of generic advice. If you are tempted to cite a statistic you cannot find again, leave the number out. A magnet full of invented certainty is how you collect the wrong subscribers.

Book one of the series, free. Sometimes this is the right magnet. Sometimes it teaches the list that your novels are free. That choice has its own tradeoffs, which are laid out in Series starters as magnets. Do not decide it in the same afternoon you design the cover for the short story. They are different products.

If you want a second opinion on the shape before you write, the magnet ideas tool is a prompt list, not a ghostwriter. Use it to reject ideas, not to collect twelve of them.

How do you open the file so it sounds like the novel?

The first page should be a page from the same writer as the book you want them to buy. That sounds obvious. The usual draft violates it in the first paragraph by addressing "dear reader" and explaining the newsletter.

Start in scene, or start in the problem, the same way the book does. If the novel opens with a body in a hotel laundry room and a detective who would rather be asleep, the magnet does not open with your publishing schedule. If the nonfiction book opens with a specific author's bad launch week, the magnet does not open with "in today's competitive marketplace."

Read the first three hundred words aloud. If you hear a brochure, cut it. Brochure language includes "unlock," "journey," "exclusive content," and any sentence that compliments the reader for being the kind of person who reads. Your novel does not talk like that. The magnet should not either.

You can still be clear about what the file is. Put that clarity in the title and the landing page, not in the narrator's mouth. The landing page can say "a complete short story set before book one." The story can just be the story.

A practical test: hand the file to someone who has not read the novel and do not tell them it is a magnet. Ask what they think the longer book is about. If they describe your book, the voice survived. If they describe a newsletter, you wrote a pamphlet.

What do you put after the last line?

Back matter is where conversion either happens quietly or dies in a pile of links. Use one next step.

A shape that respects the reader:

• One sentence that names the novel and the promise, in the same tone as the story.
• One link to the retailer page or the private reader page, not both plus a store directory plus a social feed.
• One sentence about the list: what you send, and how often you actually send it. "Occasional notes when a book is finished" is honest if that is your calendar. "Weekly craft essays" is a job. Do not promise the job if you will not do it.
• If you also run advance copies, one line that reviews are optional and unpaid. The long version lives on the honest review policy.

Then stop. A second short story, a playlist, a Pinterest board, a request for a review of the magnet, and a survey about their favorite trope is not generosity. It is a second website at the end of a story they just finished. People who loved the story will still leave if the exit is a form.

If the magnet is nonfiction, the next step can be a chapter of the book that continues the same example, or a page where they can read the table of contents and decide. Do not attach a coupon code you cannot explain. Do not attach a countdown.

Affiliate links, if you use any, belong in a disclosure, not in the emotional last paragraph. If you mention a craft book, name it and mark the relationship. Stephen King's On Writing is an affiliate link. It is not a ReaderMagnet product, and it is not required reading for a magnet. It is simply one book that tells you to finish the draft and then cut.

How should the landing page talk about the file?

The page has one job: help a person decide to take the file and leave an email they actually check. Answer these in plain language, above the fold on a phone:

• What is it, in one clause? "A complete 9,000-word mystery."
• Who is it for, and who will hate it? Heat level, violence, faith content, and tone belong here if they would cause a refund on the novel.
• What format is the download?
• What will you email later, and can they leave?
• Where do they write when the file will not open?

Do not hide the genre to inflate signups. A mismatch becomes an unsubscribe, a spam report, or a one-star review of a book they were never the audience for. The page can be short. Short is not the same as vague.

On ReaderMagnet you list the book, then share the page. The author path during open beta does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027. That is the published beta window, and it has an end date. The signup is list your book: name, email, title, then a dashboard link. Cover and the magnet file can follow once the file is actually the story.

If you already deliver magnets somewhere else and you are only comparing the door, the public differences are on BookFunnel vs ReaderMagnet. Stay where the file already opens if the only problem is your draft.

How do you revise the magnet without sanding off the voice?

Revise for clarity and for honesty, in that order.

1. Cut any paragraph that explains the newsletter, the algorithm, or your goals as a writer.
2. Check names, dates, and spoiler leaks against the novel. A magnet that contradicts chapter four will generate mail you have to answer for years, because the magnet stays up.
3. Read the ending once for completeness. If the last page only makes sense as an advertisement, write a real last page and move the advertisement to the back matter.
4. Send the file to one person who reads your genre and one person who does not. The genre reader tells you if the promise matches. The other person tells you if the sentences are followable. You do not need a focus group.
5. Export the file you will actually deliver. A Word document that looked fine on your laptop is not the test. Open the EPUB or PDF on a phone.

Then freeze it. Magnets rot when you revise them every time you learn a new marketing term. The story can be updated when you find a real error. It should not be updated because a post told you to add a "content upgrade."

What does conversion mean if you refuse vanity numbers?

Count what you can see.

• Claims: how many people asked for the file.
• Delivery failures: how many wrote to say it would not open. A magnet that "converts" and then breaks is a support project. The fix is the file, which is covered in Formatting EPUB ARC files even when the file is a magnet rather than an ARC.
• The next step you offered: clicks or sales you can attribute because you used one link, not seven.
• Replies that mention the story. A reply is not a metric to optimize. It is evidence that a person was in the piece.

Ignore screenshots of other authors' dashboards. You do not know their traffic source, their genre, or whether the number is the list of people who ever typed an email. A large list of people who wanted a different book is a chore. The longer discussion of what to record is in Tracking magnet performance without vanity metrics.

Do not buy emails to decorate the claim count. Do not run an ad at the magnet until the page, the file, and the welcome note exist. Ads amplify whatever you already built, including a broken download. The website basics that should exist first are in Author website basics before you buy ads.

What should you do the week you draft it?

Give the magnet a container so it does not eat the novel.

• Day one: write the one-sentence job and throw away any idea that fails it.
• Day two: write the opening three pages in the novel's voice. If you hate them, the idea is wrong. Do not outline your way out of a voice problem.
• Day three: draft through the ending. Leave the back matter for later so you are not writing toward a link.
• Day four: rest, then cut the brochure paragraphs.
• Day five: back matter, landing page copy, and a phone test of the file.

If the novel deadline is the same week, the magnet waits. A late magnet is a minor delay. A damaged novel, because you spent the week on a free story, is the expensive outcome. The list can start when you have something worth joining for.

Where do you put it once the file is real?

Publish the page, tell the people who already read you, and leave it up. Mention it where readers already look for books: the back of the novel, your site, and a single line in the newsletter you already send. You do not need a launch sequence for a short story that is supposed to be evergreen.

When someone claims it, the first email should deliver the file and nothing else urgent. That welcome is its own piece of work, described in Building an author newsletter welcome flow. If the first email is a tour of your catalog, you have recreated the brochure you just cut from the story.

A magnet is a small book that tells the truth about the bigger one. Write it that way, deliver it in a format a phone can open, and point to one next step. The signup will take care of itself more often than a funnel diagram will.

If you searched for a BookFunnel alternative, you probably do not hate BookFunnel. You are staring at a pricing page, trying to decide whether Secure ARC is worth the Mid-List jump, or you are tired of paying one tool to deliver files and another to collect emails.

This is the comparison we can stand behind. Public prices only. No invented user counts. We do not undercut BookFunnel's First-Time plan — that number is $30/year. The question is which jobs you need on day one.

What does BookFunnel actually do well?

BookFunnel is a delivery company that grew a marketing layer. Authors trust it because the file usually arrives, the device help is real, and readers already know the name. If you have ever stood at a table and needed a code that works on a stranger's phone, that reputation matters.

Their public 2026 First-Time plan is $30/year. It is the magnet-delivery on-ramp. It is also capped: one pen name, and Secure ARC is not on that plan. Secure ARC starts on Mid-List at $200/year. Those numbers come from BookFunnel's public pricing page, not from a sales deck.

If magnet delivery is the only job you have, BookFunnel First-Time is a fair tool. We will say that on our own site.

What does ReaderMagnet actually do?

ReaderMagnet is an ARC page plus a newsletter signup. You list a book, we email a dashboard link, you open a private reader page, and you deliver the file. Readers who want a copy enter an email. You can connect Resend, MailerLite, or SMTP so the address lands on the list you already run. We do not lock the contacts in a format you cannot export.

Open beta is free until January 1, 2027. No credit card. From January 1, 2027, the tentative paid plans on our public pricing page are Starter $9/month or $7/month billed annually, Pro $19/month or $15/month billed annually, Publisher $49/month or $39/month billed annually. Readers stay free. We do not promise those post-beta prices will include every future idea we have not shipped.

We are not a group-promo network. We are not a swap board. We are not Amazon. We will not tell you we have "AI-powered partner matching." That line has been retired here because it was not a working product promise.

How do the public prices compare?

Need	BookFunnel	StoryOrigin	ReaderMagnet
Secure ARC / review-copy page	Mid-List, $200/year	Standard, $10/month	Included now — free until Jan 1, 2027
Reader magnet delivery	From $30/year	Standard, $10/month	Included now — free until Jan 1, 2027
Collect reader email / grow a list	Mid-List and up	Standard, $10/month	Connect the email tool you already use
Card required to try ARC tools	Yes	Upgrade required for ARC + list tools	No card until January 1, 2027
Pen-name cap on the entry plan	1 pen name on First-Time	Separate accounts per pen name	Unlimited pen names on Starter

StoryOrigin is in the table because a lot of authors stack it with BookFunnel: delivery on one bill, swaps and review copies on the other. Standard is $10/month or $100/year on their public page. If that stack is working, keep it. If the stack is the reason you searched for an alternative, you now know the number you are actually paying.

Who is ReaderMagnet a better fit for?

You will like this path if you want one signup for the ARC page and the list, you already pay for an email tool, and you do not want to hand over a card to test a private reader page.

You will also like it if you write under more than one name and you do not want the First-Time pen-name cap to decide your workflow.

You will not like it if you need BookFunnel's booth-and-code muscle this weekend, or if your entire calendar is StoryOrigin swap matching. We would rather lose that signup than onboard you into a product we are not.

Who should stay on BookFunnel?

Stay if Secure ARC is already in your budget and the support thread you opened last month got you out of a bad file. Stay if group promos are how you meet readers and you are willing to clean the list afterward. Stay if your only need is magnet delivery and $30/year is a price you understand.

Switching tools to save money you are not actually spending is a stall. Write the next chapter instead.

Who should stay on StoryOrigin?

Stay if the swap board is the main way you find other authors, and you use the review-copy tools every month. $10/month is a clear number. ReaderMagnet will not replace a marketplace we do not run.

You can still list a book here for the private ARC page and keep StoryOrigin for swaps. Mixed toolkits are normal. Tribal loyalty is optional.

What should you know before you switch a live campaign?

Do not migrate a campaign that ends on Friday. Finish it. Then open the next window on the new page.

Export your list from the old tool before you cancel anything. Confirm you can send mail from Resend, MailerLite, or SMTP. Upload the EPUB and open it on a phone. Write the reviewer guidance again in your own words so it does not sound like a terms-of-service fragment.

On ReaderMagnet the intake is name, email, and title. Cover and blurb can wait. We email the dashboard link. If the link does not arrive, write support@readermagnet.com before you assume the product is down.

How does list-building differ on each tool?

BookFunnel's deeper list features sit above First-Time. StoryOrigin treats the mailing list as a Standard-plan job. ReaderMagnet treats the list as yours: we collect the address on the claim or magnet page, then hand it to the provider you connect.

If you do not have a provider yet, you can still run the ARC page and download the addresses later. You should connect a real sender before you promise a weekly letter. A page that collects mail you never send is how you get spam complaints.

For the magnet-versus-swap decision, use reader magnet vs newsletter swap. For the campaign mechanics, use how to run an ARC.

What does "free until January 1, 2027" actually mean?

It means we do not collect a credit card to use the working author tools during open beta. It is not a perpetual-free promise. It does not mean every idea on an old roadmap is included. It does not mean reviews are guaranteed.

On January 1, 2027, the public paid plans begin unless we publish a different date. We will not surprise you inside a checkout flow we said we would not run during beta.

If you need a tool you can budget for the next five years without reading a changelog, BookFunnel's age is an advantage. We will not pretend otherwise.

How should you read competitor marketing?

Read the plan name next to the feature. "ARC tools" on a homepage is not the same as "Secure ARC on Mid-List." "Email integrations" is not the same as "we send the newsletter for you." "Free" is not the same as "free, and also here is a card form."

We try to keep our homepage, pricing page, and this article on the same facts. If you catch a drift, email support@readermagnet.com. The correction is more useful than a glowing quote.

What happens to readers during a switch?

Readers should not have to make an account to finish a book they already claimed. Keep old download links alive until the window you promised is over. Tell them if the URL changes. Do not make them join a new Facebook group to find the file.

ReaderMagnet emails a private access link when someone claims a copy. That is the reader path. Authors get the dashboard. Those are different doors on purpose.

Is ReaderMagnet a BookFunnel clone?

No. We did not rebuild group promos, in-person codes, or their support encyclopedia. We built the piece we wanted when the job was "private ARC page, magnet file, list I already pay for." If your job is bigger than that, keep the bigger tool.

A clone would also copy the $200 gate. We are not interested in that particular lesson.

How do you try ReaderMagnet without burning the old setup?

Keep BookFunnel or StoryOrigin paid through the end of the period you already bought. List one book here. Invite five people you trust. See if the page, the mail, and the file behave. If they do not, write us. If they do, move the next campaign, not the last one.

The signup is List Your Book. The search-intent pages are BookFunnel alternative and StoryOrigin alternative. Pricing with the same table lives at /pricing.

What should you put in a publisher or spouse email when they ask why you are switching?

Use facts.

"BookFunnel First-Time is $30/year and does not include Secure ARC. Secure ARC is $200/year on Mid-List. StoryOrigin Standard is $10/month for review copies and list tools. ReaderMagnet is free until January 1, 2027, no card, and includes the private ARC page. I am testing one campaign. I am not cancelling the old tool until the test works."

That email is boring. Boring is how you keep a household from treating software as a personality.

What will we not claim in this comparison?

We will not claim a reader count we cannot show. We will not claim that reviews arrive on a schedule. We will not claim that swapping to ReaderMagnet increases royalty. We will not hide the Mid-List number to make a chart look kind. This page is about the author job, not a network of other sites.

If we mention a retailer book, we use the Amazon Associates tag seperts-20. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. That is a disclosure, not a reading list.

How do you decide in one sitting?

Write down the job for the next ninety days. Circle one:

• Magnet delivery only.
• Secure ARC page.
• Swap marketplace.
• ARC page plus list signup, no card this season.

If you circled the first, BookFunnel First-Time is a clean answer. If you circled the third, StoryOrigin is a clean answer. If you circled the second or the fourth, list the book here and see if the page is enough.

Then close the comparison tabs. The book does not care which logo is on the download email. The reader cares whether the file opens and whether you told the truth about the review.

What does support look like when the file fails?

BookFunnel has years of device lore. That is a real advantage when a reader is on an old Kindle and the EPUB will not sideload. ReaderMagnet's public door is support@readermagnet.com and the ARC Support page. We will not pretend the inboxes are the same size. We will answer the campaign you opened here.

If you need a booth code this Saturday, BookFunnel is still the safer Saturday. If you need a private page for twenty newsletter readers this month, try the page here and write us if the file breaks. The honest move is to pick the support you actually need, not the logo you have seen in a Facebook group.

Where do you go next?

• List your book — name, email, title. Dashboard link by email. No card until January 1, 2027.
• Pricing — same public-price table, plus the reader plan.
• How to run an ARC — the campaign checklist.
• Reader magnet vs newsletter swap — which door to open.

Questions stay at support@readermagnet.com. If you came from a search for "StoryOrigin alternative," the same comparison is framed for that job on /storyorigin-alternative.

Authors talk about list-building as if it were one activity. It is at least two, and they train different readers.

A reader magnet is a free story, bonus chapter, or short guide you offer in exchange for an email. The reader wanted that file. A newsletter swap is a trade: you recommend another author's book or magnet to your list, and they recommend yours to theirs. The reader wanted the other author's mail, not necessarily yours.

Both can work. They fail in different ways. This is the practical version — when to use each, how to run them without training people to ignore you, and how the ARC page fits beside them.

What is a reader magnet, in practice?

A magnet is a complete extra that sits next to your paid book. The usual shapes:

• A prequel short that uses the same voice as the series.
• A bonus epilogue that only makes sense after book one, used carefully so you do not spoil strangers.
• A "start here" novella that is actually a finished story, not a chopped first novel.
• For nonfiction: a checklist or short briefing that solves one problem the book solves at length.

The magnet earns the signup because the reader wants the file. Your job is to deliver it fast, in a format they can open, and then send mail that feels like the same person who wrote the extra.

A magnet is not a cover reveal PDF. It is not a 40-page excerpt that stops mid-scene and says "buy the book." Those convert a few people and train the rest to expect a trick.

What is a newsletter swap, in practice?

A swap is a one-time or occasional mention. You write a short, honest note about another author's book. They do the same. The readers who click are curious about a neighboring shelf. Some will stay. Many will download the free thing, mute you, and wait for the next free thing.

Swaps are not evil. They are a traffic source. Treat them like a weekend market stall, not like a church you just joined.

StoryOrigin grew up around this trade. Their Standard plan, $10/month on the public 2026 pricing page, includes the mailing-list and review-copy tools authors use to find swap partners. If your whole marketing life is the swap board, that is a reason to stay there. ReaderMagnet does not pretend to be a swap marketplace. We put the magnet and the ARC page on the same list-your-book path and let you connect the email tool you already use.

When should you use a reader magnet instead of a swap?

Use a magnet when you have a file that sounds like you and a place to send people after they finish it. The magnet is the better default if:

• You are still under a few hundred subscribers and you need a page you can print on a bookmark.
• You just ran an ARC and have a short story that can stay up after the window closes.
• You hate writing "hey, my friend has a book out" emails more than you hate writing a 6,000-word prequel.
• You want the next launch to go to people who already read your sentences.

The magnet is slower at the start and cleaner later. The people who stay after a magnet opted into you.

When should you use a newsletter swap instead of a magnet?

Use a swap when you already have a list that opens mail, and you can describe the other book in a sentence you would say out loud.

Swaps help when:

• You and the other author share a genre and a heat level. A cozy mystery list will not forgive a sudden dark romance.
• You can offer a specific book, not "my whole backlist, pick one."
• You are willing to say no when the other magnet is a 3-page excerpt with a countdown timer.

A swap is a bad first move if your list is twelve relatives and a former critique partner. You will spend the goodwill and have nothing to send next month.

How do you write a magnet that does not embarrass the novel?

Write it after you know the voice of the paid book. If book one is dry and funny, the magnet cannot be a lore dump. If the novel is a quiet literary story, the magnet cannot be a thriller teaser with a fake countdown.

A working magnet has:

• A beginning, a middle, and an ending.
• One promise, kept.
• Characters who could walk into the novel without a costume change.
• A last page that offers the novel as a next step, not a hostage situation.

Length: 3,000 to 10,000 words is plenty for fiction. For nonfiction, 1,500 honest words with one worksheet beats a 40-page "ultimate guide" stuffed with definitions.

If you cannot write the extra yet, do not open a magnet page with a "coming soon" file. List the book, run the ARC, and add the magnet when the file exists. ReaderMagnet lets you add the file later from the dashboard on purpose.

How do you run a newsletter swap without training readers to ignore you?

Write the swap like a recommendation to one person.

"I finished [title] on Tuesday. If you like [specific thing your readers already like], start here. I do not get a cut of the sale. I just did not want to be the only one who read the library scene."

Then stop. Do not stack four affiliate links. Do not add a second author's magnet "while you're here." Do not use a subject line that lies about a giveaway you are not running.

After the swap, send your own next issue on the usual cadence. If the only time your list hears from you is when you are borrowing someone else's readers, you do not have a list. You have a swap slot.

What does a week of magnet work look like?

Day one: you upload an EPUB and a PDF, open the landing page, and click the link on your phone. Day two: you put the URL in the back matter of the book that is already live, under one clear sentence. Day three: you mention the magnet once at the end of a newsletter that was about something else — a research note, a failed plot, a book you read. Day four: you do not build a new funnel. Day five: a stranger writes because the EPUB failed. You send the PDF and a real apology.

That is list-building. It is boring when it works.

How do ARCs, magnets, and swaps sit together?

Think of three doors.

• ARC door: time-boxed, private, honest-review language, closed when you cannot support it. See how to run an ARC.
• Magnet door: always on, same voice as the series, delivers a file, then your normal newsletter.
• Swap door: occasional, labeled, easy to unsubscribe from, never the only mail you send.

Authors get hurt when they leave the ARC door open after launch and call it a magnet. The file is out of date, the review ask is stale, and the new subscriber thinks they joined a street team.

On ReaderMagnet the ARC campaign and the magnet landing page are separate. That is the product decision. We would rather you click twice than send the wrong file to the right person.

What should you measure, and what should you ignore?

Measure:

• Whether the file opens.
• Whether people who claimed the magnet still open the next two emails.
• Whether swap traffic unsubscribes in a clump the same afternoon.

Ignore:

• A dashboard that celebrates raw signups with no opens.
• A partner who brags about a list size they will not describe by genre.
• Any tool — including ours — that talks about guaranteed list growth.

ReaderMagnet will not invent an open rate for you. We will give you a page, a delivery path, and a way to drop the address into Resend, MailerLite, or SMTP.

What belongs on the magnet thank-you email?

One file link. One sentence about what they just got. One sentence about what you send next and how often. One unsubscribe path that actually works.

Do not add a survey. Do not add a launch calendar. Do not add a link to a sister site the reader did not ask for. If you later mention a book you did not write, label the affiliate tag. Our Amazon tag is seperts-20 when we link a retailer page.

How do you choose a swap partner without a marketplace?

Ask three questions:

1. Do I like their book enough to say so in public?
2. Would my readers be angry if this was the only email this month?
3. Can I find a recent issue of their newsletter, or am I trusting a screenshot?

If you cannot answer yes, skip it. A quiet month is better than a swap that makes your list feel rented.

If you do use StoryOrigin or another board to find partners, you can still deliver your own magnet and ARC on ReaderMagnet. The tools are not a religion. You can pay StoryOrigin $10/month for the board and still want a private ARC page that does not wait on their Standard gate. That mix is allowed. We would rather say so than pretend you must pick a tribe.

What are the usual ways each tool fails?

Magnet failures: the file is a teaser; the landing page promises a series bible and delivers a mood board; you never send a second email, so the address dies; you change the file URL and break every back-matter link.

Swap failures: mismatched genre; a subject line that names your book in all caps; a partner who pastes a swipe file; you swap every week until your own chapters stop arriving.

ARC failures: covered in the other guide, but the short version is an expired page left public and a review ask that sounds like a bill.

Fix the failure in front of you. Do not buy a new platform to avoid writing the next email.

Should the magnet stay up after launch?

The magnet can stay up. The promise should stay accurate. If you retire the story, change the page. If you move the file, keep the old URL working or redirect it. A dead magnet link in a paperback you cannot recall is a permanent support ticket.

ReaderMagnet's open beta is free until January 1, 2027, with no credit card. That is a statement about our author plans, not a claim that your magnet must be a perpetual loss leader. After you have a list, you can still give the story away. You can also fold it into a bundle later. Just do not surprise the people who already signed up.

How does this compare to paying BookFunnel only for delivery?

BookFunnel is very good at getting a file onto a device. Their First-Time plan starts at $30/year and covers magnet delivery. Secure ARC delivery is a Mid-List feature at $200/year. If you already like that delivery, keep it. Add ReaderMagnet only if you want the ARC page and the list signup in one flow without the Mid-List jump.

The longer, sour-and-sweet version is BookFunnel vs ReaderMagnet. The search-intent page is the BookFunnel alternative comparison.

What is a simple decision rule?

• Need a page for one extra story? Magnet.
• Need a short burst of neighboring-genre readers and you already mail weekly? Swap.
• Need a time-boxed review-copy window? ARC.
• Need all three this month? You do not. Pick the door that matches the manuscript in front of you.

If you are staring at a blank list and a finished book, start with the magnet or the ARC, not the swap. Swaps amplify a voice. They cannot create one.

How do you start the magnet path on ReaderMagnet?

List the book. Name, email, title. We email a dashboard link — no password, no card until January 1, 2027. Upload the magnet file when it is real. Share one landing page. Connect the email tool you already pay for so the address lands on a list you own.

If you would rather compare tools before you sign up, use the StoryOrigin alternative page. If you want the ARC checklist, use how to run an ARC campaign.

Questions: support@readermagnet.com.

What should you tell a friend who is about to swap for the first time?

Tell them to read the other author's last three emails. Tell them to write the mention in their own syntax. Tell them to schedule their next non-swap issue before the swap goes out, so the list hears from them as themselves the following week. Tell them to count unsubscribes without panic unless the number is a cliff.

Then tell them to go write. A list is a room. Magnets build the room. Swaps invite the adjacent hallway. ARCs ask a few people to read the new pages before the door opens to everyone else. You do not need all three rooms finished this week. You need one working door and a file that opens.

An advance reader copy campaign is not a launch party. It is a short, private reading window with a clear ask: read this book before it is widely available, then leave an honest review if you finish and want to. That is the whole job. Authors get into trouble when they treat the ARC as a numbers game, a guaranteed review machine, or a public file dump.

This guide is the version we wish someone had handed us before the first campaign: who to invite, what to send, how to ask, and how to close the window without nagging people who already did you a favor.

What is an ARC, and why do authors still use them?

An ARC is a pre-publication or early-publication file you share with readers on purpose. The file can be an EPUB or a PDF. The reader can be a friend, a newsletter subscriber, a genre blogger, or a stranger who found your public page. The point is the same: a few people read the book while you still have time to fix a typo, tighten a sagging middle, or simply collect the first honest reviews that help later readers decide.

ARCs still matter because retailers sort and display books using signals you cannot fake for long. A listing with no reviews looks unfinished. A listing with three thoughtful reviews looks like a book someone already finished. You do not need a hundred quotes. You need a handful of people who actually read the thing.

An ARC is not a bribe. The copy is the access, not payment for a star rating. If a reader DNF's the book, that is information. If they post two stars and mean it, that is also information. ReaderMagnet's honest-review rules exist because Amazon and every other storefront will eventually notice review manipulation, and because you do not want a list of people who only like you when you pay them.

How do you run an ARC campaign step by step?

Here is the sequence that holds up for a first novel, a series continuation, or a quiet backlist relaunch.

1. Pick the window. Four to six weeks is enough for a 70–90k novel if you invite people who already read your genre. Two weeks is only enough for a novella or for readers who promised a fast turn.
2. Finish the file. Do not send a draft with placeholder chapter titles. Send the cleanest EPUB or PDF you have. If you later swap a file, tell the people who already downloaded it.
3. Write the ask in plain language. "This is a free advance copy. Reviews are optional, unpaid, and should be honest. If you do not finish, you do not owe me a post."
4. Open a private page, not a public Drive folder. A unique access link is easier to revoke, easier to support, and harder to scrape. On ReaderMagnet that page is the campaign URL you share after you list the book.
5. Invite a list you can name. Start with readers who already open your mail. Add a public claim page only after you can support strangers.
6. Deliver the file once, then stay quiet for a week. The first reminder should not go out the next morning.
7. Send one mid-window note. Thank the people who already posted. Offer a format swap if someone is stuck on a Kindle or a Kobo. Do not ask the silent readers why they have not reviewed yet.
8. Close the window. Turn off new claims. Leave existing download links live so late finishers are not punished. Mark the campaign ended.

That is the campaign. Everything else — graphics, countdown posts, extra magnets — is optional seasoning.

Who should you invite to an ARC team?

Invite people who already read books like yours. A romance ARC list is the wrong room for a military history. A street-team Discord that exists to cheer you on is the wrong room if you need a cold read.

A useful first invite list, in order:

• Newsletter readers who clicked a previous book or magnet.
• People who emailed you after a library talk, a newsletter swap, or a group promo and asked to be kept in the loop.
• Genre readers who found a public ARC page and opted in with an email they actually use.
• A small number of trusted early readers if you still want line-level notes. Keep that group separate from the public review ask so you do not mix "please mark the continuity error" with "please post on Amazon if you want to."

Do not buy emails. Do not scrape Goodreads. Do not add a cousin who "might get to it." Every extra name is a support ticket you may have to answer when the EPUB will not open on an older Kindle.

If you have never run a campaign, start with twenty people you can picture. Twenty readers who finish will teach you more than two hundred claims you cannot support.

What should the ARC file and landing page include?

The file should be the book. Not a teaser. Not a sample with "buy the rest on Amazon" watermarked across chapter three. If you are nervous about piracy, use a private page and a unique link. Watermarks that scream THIS IS AN ARC across every spread make the book harder to read and do not stop a determined leak.

The landing page should answer the questions a tired reader will ask on a phone:

• What is the book, who wrote it, and what genre is it?
• When does the window close?
• What format is the file?
• What are you asking for, exactly?
• Are reviews required?
• Where should a review go if the reader wants to leave one?
• Who do they email when the download fails?

On ReaderMagnet the claim page can carry that reviewer guidance. Keep the tone adult. "Please consider leaving an honest review after you finish" is enough. "Reviews required within 7 days or you will be removed from future ARCs" is how you train people to lie.

If you mention a craft book while you are teaching yourself how to revise from ARC notes, be specific. Stephen King's On Writing is still the least mystical version of "finish the draft, then cut." That is an affiliate link. The book is not a ReaderMagnet product.

How do you ask for a review without breaking the rules?

Ask after the reader has the file. Ask once in the delivery email. Ask once in the mid-window note. Ask once when you close the campaign. Three asks, all of them optional.

Use this shape:

"If you finish and want to share what you thought, an honest review on the retailer page or Goodreads helps other readers. There is no required star rating. A two-star review that tells the truth is more useful than a five-star review you do not mean."

Do not offer a second free book in exchange for a screenshot. Do not tell readers which pull quotes to use. Do not ask them to edit a review after you disliked the tone. Do not promise that ReaderMagnet, BookFunnel, StoryOrigin, or anyone else can guarantee reviews. We cannot. Nobody honest can.

If a reader posts a negative review, thank them privately if you have a real relationship, then leave it alone. The ARC did its job: a real person finished the book and said what they thought.

How long should an ARC window last?

Match the window to the book and to the lives of the people you invited.

• Novella or short collection: 10–14 days.
• 70–90k novel: 4–6 weeks.
• Long fantasy or dense nonfiction: 6–8 weeks, and say so up front.

Open the window early enough that a slow reader can finish before the retailer page goes live. If you are aiming at a Tuesday launch, do not send files on the Sunday night before. Authors do this when they are scared of leaks. The leak risk is real and usually smaller than the risk of asking people to sprint.

Close new signups when you can no longer answer support mail. Leaving a public claim page open after you have mentally moved on is how you get a one-star review that is actually about a broken download.

What do you do when nobody reviews?

First, count finishes, not posts. If twenty people downloaded the file and three posted, you are inside a normal range. Many readers finish, mean to post, and then get a sick kid or a work week. That is not a betrayal.

Second, look at the ask. If the delivery email buried the review links under four paragraphs of biography, fix the email for the next campaign. If the book is 140,000 words and you gave people nine days, the silence is on you.

Third, send one last note after the window: "The campaign is closed. If you still want to post, here are the links. If not, thank you for reading." Then stop. A fourth reminder is how you lose the next book.

If you got zero posts from a large invite list, the book-market fit may be the problem, not the platform. An ARC cannot invent an audience. It can only ask an audience you already have.

What is the difference between an ARC and a reader magnet?

An ARC is time-boxed and usually tied to a launch or a relaunch. A reader magnet is the free story or bonus you leave up so a stranger can join your list on a Tuesday in March. Mixing them is how you end up with a "free book" page that is actually an expired ARC file and a support inbox full of 404s.

Use the ARC page for the campaign. Use a magnet landing page for the evergreen extra. On ReaderMagnet those are different objects on purpose. If you only have one short story, you can use it as a magnet after the ARC window, but change the copy so new readers are not promised a review-copy experience.

For the longer version of that choice, see Reader magnet vs newsletter swap.

Should you pay for ARC distribution?

Pay when the tool removes a job you hate or a risk you cannot carry. BookFunnel's Secure ARC tools live on the Mid-List plan at $200/year on their public 2026 pricing page. StoryOrigin puts review-copy and mailing-list tools on the $10/month Standard plan. ReaderMagnet includes a private ARC page on the author path and does not ask for a card until January 1, 2027.

That is not a claim that we undercut BookFunnel's First-Time price. BookFunnel's First-Time plan is $30/year and covers magnet delivery for authors who do not need Secure ARC. If that is you, stay there. If you need the review-copy page and you do not want to stack a second subscription, compare the actual rows on the BookFunnel alternative page.

Do not pay a Facebook group admin to "place" your ARC with readers you will never meet. Do not pay for review copies that require a five-star rating. Those offers are not marketing. They are a future account problem.

How do you keep the file private?

Use a page that issues access per reader. Do not put the EPUB in a public Dropbox. Do not paste the same Google Drive link into a Facebook thread and hope. If you need to replace a file because you found a missing scene, a silent swap on a private page is kinder than emailing a new attachment to forty people with four different versions.

ReaderMagnet's campaign page is built for that private delivery. You list the book, upload the file when you are ready, and share one URL. Readers enter an email to claim that copy. You connect Resend, MailerLite, or SMTP if you want the same address on the list you already run.

If a file leaks, assume it will. Most leaks are not professional pirates. They are a forwarded link. Revoke the campaign if you have to, post a short note, and keep writing. A leak of a midlist novel is almost never the event authors rehearse in their heads.

What does a calm ARC week look like?

Monday: you open the page and invite the first twenty readers. Tuesday: two people write because the EPUB failed on an older Kindle. You send the PDF alternative and a civil sentence. Wednesday: you do not check the claim count. Thursday: a reader posts a four-star review that mentions the exact scene you were afraid was too quiet. Friday: you write for two hours instead of refreshing the dashboard.

That week is the product. The software should disappear. If you spend the week designing a new banner for the ARC team, you are avoiding the book.

How should you talk about the campaign in public?

You can say the ARC is open. You can link the page. You should not invent urgency you do not have. "Twelve spots left" is fine when you truly cap the list. "Last chance" on day two is how readers learn to ignore you.

Do not post early review quotes without asking the reader. Do not turn a private note into a graphic. Do not imply that ReaderMagnet, or any other tool, selected the readers for quality. We did not. You did, or the public page did.

If you write a recap after launch, tell the truth: how many people claimed, how many posted, what you would change. That recap will recruit a better team next time than any screenshot of a dashboard.

What should you put in the delivery email?

Subject line: the book title and the word ARC. Body: three short paragraphs.

Paragraph one: thank them and state the window. Paragraph two: the download link and the formats. Paragraph three: the optional review ask and the support address.

Sign with your name. Not "The Team." If the file fails, they will reply to a person.

ReaderMagnet can send that access link when a reader claims the page. You still write the sentences. A generator can draft a subject line. It cannot decide whether you sound like a person who will still like the reader after a three-star review.

When is an ARC the wrong tool?

Skip the ARC if the book is not finished. Skip it if you cannot answer mail for a month. Skip it if you are only collecting addresses to hit a vanity number. Skip it if you want guaranteed stars. In those cases, hire an editor, take a week off social, or write the next chapter.

A reader magnet or a simple "join the list for the next release" form is enough when you are six months from launch and the manuscript is still moving. Open the ARC when the file can survive a stranger.

How do you start on ReaderMagnet today?

List the book with your name, email, and title. We email a dashboard link. No password. No credit card until January 1, 2027. Add the cover and the file when you have them. Share the private page. If you want the same readers on your MailerLite or Resend list, connect the tool you already pay for.

Questions go to support@readermagnet.com. Short answers for authors and readers live on the FAQ. If you are comparing tools first, the honest public-price table lives on the BookFunnel alternative page. If you want the longer BookFunnel writeup, use BookFunnel vs ReaderMagnet.

What is a realistic ARC checklist for next week?

• File exported as EPUB, opened on a phone, and skimmed for missing chapters.
• PDF alternative ready if you have readers on older devices.
• Window dates written on the page.
• Reviewer guidance that says reviews are optional and unpaid.
• Twenty names you can picture, or a public page you can actually support.
• One delivery email, one mid-window note, one close note — drafted before you invite anyone.
• Support address on the page.
• A calendar reminder to turn off new claims.

If you do those eight things, you have run an ARC. The rest is craft, time, and the book.

What questions do authors ask right before they send the first file?

Do I need a street team logo?

No. A readable page and a working file beat a badge.

Do I need to collect Goodreads emails in a spreadsheet?

Only if you enjoy spreadsheets. A private claim page already gives you the addresses of people who wanted that book.

Do I need to be on every retailer on day one?

No. Put the review links you actually have. If the book is not live yet, say so. "When the book is available, here is where I will post the link" is honest. A dead Amazon URL is not.

Can I run two ARCs at once?

You can. You should not, unless you have help. Two windows means two support queues.

Treat the first campaign as practice. The second one will be quieter because you already know where the file breaks and which sentence in the ask makes people relax.