INDIE BOOK EXCHANGE
Trade books for readers,
and readers for books.
A collective of self-published authors who want to make more money with their ad spend, grow their email lists, and help get more books into the hands of the readers who love them—joining forces to help everyone win.
FREE TO JOIN — Fill out the interest formTurns out, writing the book was the easy part...
Maybe you didn't realize this when you were first starting out, but as soon you finished your first book, it was clear that becoming a self-published author also means becoming a full-time content creator, ad buyer, funnel builder, email marketer, web designer, and data analyst. Marketing and sales for authors has never been easy, but it's even harder now that organic reach has all but dried up, the cost of paid ads keeps going up and up, while the price of books has stayed flat for decades...Â
 These days, you can expect to spend as much on ads finding your reader as you earn selling your book in the first place.
With the deck stacked against you, it can feel impossible for new authors to stand a chance at finding their readers, and making any money doing it. Even more established authors are under pressure to publish more and more books because they know a deep backlist holds the key to staying profitable as an author. There's pressure to write in series (even if you'd rather write standalone books) and to publish as often as you can (even if you'd rather talk your time).
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...What if there's another way?
Just because you're self-published, doesn't mean you have to do everything all by yourself.
What if, instead of every author fishing alone, you joined forces and offered every reader you find in your funnel as many great books as they are willing to buy?
It's called cooperative cross-selling and in the Indie Book Exchange, it works like this:
Step 1:
Offer up your book
The "catalog author" offers their book—for free—to a "marketing author" to sell inside their existing marketing and sales funnel as an upsell, order bump, or post-purchase email offer.
Step 2:
The funnel does its thing
The sale runs through the marketing author's website and they keep the proceeds, creating more value from their ad spend and their marketing efforts—without writing more books!
Step 3:
Everyone grows!
The reader gets the book through the catalog author's Bookfunnel link, and enters their email. The catalog author grows their email list with zero ad spend or marketing effort!
One reader. Two authors. Everyone wins.
You have the funnel.
You poured yourself into figuring out ads, a website, an email list—and that's time you didn't spend writing and publishing more books for you to sell in the meantime. Find authors with books they typically give away for free to attract new readers and join forces—lift your average order value with titles you didn't have time to write, and help another author grow their reader list (so they can sell more books too)!
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You have the books.
You have spent your time building up a backlist of books rather than try to figure out how to build your own direct sales funnel. You're willing to try just about anything to get your the first books in your series into the hands of eager readers so you can sell them the rest of the series, or your backlist. You've even spent money on campaigns just to give your book away for free, so you're happy to help another author's sales funnel become more profitable while you grow your email list for free without any hassle. This way, you can keep focusing on what you love most—writing.
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You have both!
You have a growing marketing and sales funnel and a growing catalog of books you've written (or plan to write!) but you know readers will always want more of what they love, and you're happy to give it to them if it means making more money and supporting another author along the way. You can sell other author's books, offer yours for sale on other author's funnels, or do a swap with another switch author. Either way, you're either making more money or growing your email list—which will hopefully make you more money in the end!
 Stop hustling all on your own.
Join the Indie Book Exchange todayÂ
FREE TO JOIN — Fill out the interest formA NOTE FROM THE FOUNDER
Hi, I'm Jenna.
I'm a brand-new self-published author—one non-fiction book (and one guide) out this year, and about ten more in my head I'm itching to write. But figuring out how to market and sell my books has been so exhausting, it's been stealing the time and energy I'd rather spend writing.
The books I want to write are mostly standalone, across all kinds of topics. There's no future where I find one reader and sell them my whole backlist the way some other authors can. I'll always be hunting new readers, and always just breaking even on the ads I use to find them.
I don't want to change how or what I plan to write, so instead, I decided to rethink how I sell. If I'm basically giving my book away for what I spend on ads, why not let a fellow author sell it through their funnel, and let me do the same with theirs? I figured other authors might feel the same.
So I'm building what I hope to benefit from, as a self-published author myself. Hopefully through this exchange, I can find other authors writing and selling books like mine, and we can grow together—along with loads of other authors, too.
This exchange is for authors,
by an author.Â
I hope you'll join me.
BEFORE YOU ASK
