August 30, 2022
Hello, BFFs!
Welcome to this week’s Featured Feature, where we talk about all the amazing things you can do with BookFunnel. Today’s feature: Book Gifting!
Book gifting (or, Gift a Book on your dashboard) has been around for a very long time. It was one of our earliest features, and we’re celebrating seven years this October.
With book gifting, we wanted to give authors a way to quickly send a book to anyone!
Email automations and download links and signup pages are all delightful and absolutely necessary. But, what about the one-offs? The prize for an online giveaway winner? The ARC for that HUGE blogger who just reached out? The thoughtful gift when one of your biggest fans is going through a difficult time?
Sometimes you need to send one gift, or one ARC, or one thank-you, and doing that should take less than one minute:
- Select the book you want to gift
- Paste your reader’s email address
- Tap out a personal message (or not, our default message is lovely!)
- Click Send
- BookFunnel sends your reader a personalized email and link to download your book.
It can’t get much easier than that! Our goal was fast and simple, and, we nailed it. But, book gifting is so much more than just a time-saver. We packed a lot of power into this petite crowd-pleaser, and it’s a favorite for a reason!
What else do you get when you gift a book? So glad you asked…
🧡 Unique download links
Book gifting generates a unique download link just for that one reader. The link is tied to their email address, and it will expire if it’s shared online with others. The link is emailed directly to the reader so that they can download your book.
🧡 Watermarked EPUB and MOBI files
When you gift a book to a reader, whether it’s by email or just generating a link, BookFunnel watermarks your files so that we can know who received them. If your books end up shared somewhere they shouldn’t, we can track down who they were sent to.
🧡 Tracking and reporting
BookFunnel keeps a record of every gift email you send and every link you generate. You can see who they were sent to, when they were sent, and whether the reader viewed the link and/or downloaded their copy. Like all things BookFunnel, you have the data to know what is happening with your books.
🧡 Simple email templates
This is a brand new feature we just added! Now, when you email gifts to your readers, you can save your message as a template and quickly select it again the next time. Have a birthday email template you send to readers on their special day? Just select the book, pick the template, paste their email, and away it goes!
🧡 Private and personal delivery
Until very recently, book gifting emails were always sent from help@bookfunnel.com. But, what if you don’t have the reader’s email address? Or what if you don’t want to share their email address with us? No worries!
Now you can generate one-time links that don’t get emailed. You generate the link. You send it to your reader. BookFunnel will just handle the download!
How can I use book gifting?
- Send a book to a new reader you just met
- Send out gifts to readers on their birthday
- Follow up with a reader who never received a promised book
- Send an audiobook to a reviewer
- The sky’s the limit!
Click Gift a Book on your BookFunnel dashboard when you need to send just one book (or audiobook!) to just one reader.
We’ll take care of generating the link, sending the email (if you choose), and tracking the downloads. And, of course, if your reader has any trouble, they’re only a click away from our amazing support team!
So, that’s book gifting in a nutshell. If you’ve never explored this small-but-mighty tool (and even if you have), take a look! Book gifting got some snazzy new bells and whistles that you’re gonna love. Learn more about book gifting in our author knowledge base!
Until next time, authors.
