The tools I used to run my ARC campaign (on the cheap)
In the last post I covered how I found ARC readers. This one is the other half: what I actually used to run the campaign without it collapsing into chaos. Because once you’ve got 60 strangers who want your book, you hit a very real logistics problem — how do you get the file to all of them, keep track of who has it, make sure it isn’t leaked, and nudge people to actually review?
I cobbled my system together from free and cheap tools, and it works. I’ll be straight with you, though: none of this is hard, exactly — but it’s a lot more moving parts than anyone warns you about, and it’s admin, not writing. The tools are the easy bit; it’s the keeping-track that quietly eats your time. The trick is to stop thinking about it as a pile of apps and see it as one pipeline with three jobs: collect the readers, deliver the book, communicate with them. Here’s each piece.
1. Collect — a free Google Form → Sheet
This is the backbone, and it costs nothing. Make a Google Form for sign-ups and ask for:
- Name and email
- Their Instagram or social handle (optional)
- Where they’ll post their review (Amazon, Goodreads, StoryGraph…)
- Preferred format (EPUB, PDF, or Kindle)
- A yes/no: can you read and review by launch day?
Then the bit people miss: in the Form, link the responses to a Google Sheet (Responses tab → the green Sheets icon). Now every sign-up drops into its own row automatically. Add a few columns of your own — sent? · downloaded? · reviewed? · notes — and that one sheet becomes mission control for the whole campaign. You can see at a glance who’s gone quiet and who’s come through. This is the form my £10 (~$13) Instagram ad pointed to, and it’s the single most useful free thing in my stack.
The one field I’m so glad I asked for was their social handle. It gave me a direct, personal way to reach each reader — to say thank you, to reshare their post, to actually build a little relationship rather than just firing a file into the void. It made the whole thing feel human. Fair warning: it doesn’t scale unless you’ve got the time, because personally thanking dozens of people is real work — but for a first launch, that personal touch was worth every minute.
2. Deliver — get the book out securely
You could just email everyone an EPUB — and honestly, depending on how much you trust your readers, you could risk it. I preferred not to. The moment your file is floating around inboxes, you’ve lost all control of it, and there’s no way to tell where a leaked copy came from. Paying a small amount for proper delivery buys you two things: a secure, expiring link instead of a loose file, and — crucially — the ability to trace a leak back to a person. That traceability alone was worth the money to me.
Here’s my honest take on the main options.
BookFunnel — my pick. It sends each reader a private, secure link with a download limit and an expiration date, so copies can’t spread endlessly. The First-Time Author plan is about £16 (~$20)/year and genuinely covers a launch. The catch, and the reason I track things manually: on that cheapest tier you can’t collect emails, see who downloaded, or send automatic reminders. Those live on the Mid-List plan (~£80/$100 per year), which adds “Certified Mail” — private links plus automatic nudges to anyone who hasn’t opened the book. If you want the campaign to chase reviewers for you, that upgrade is what does it. I chose to stay cheap and do the chasing myself (see step 3).
Booksprout — good for a team, not for launch discovery. Booksprout hosts your ARC and its readers can claim it, and it automatically chases reviews for you, which is a genuine plus. But I was underwhelmed, on two counts. First, the pricing: its free plan can’t actually run a review campaign at all — it only lets you set up and hold an account between releases — so to really use it you’re paying from around £8/month (~$10), or roughly £70/year (~$90). Second, my book was one of many in a long catalogue, so Booksprout’s own discovery brought me very few sign-ups. My verdict: it’s genuinely useful if you want to build a reliable review team over time — but you can do that slowly, across future books, so for a debut launch it wasn’t worth the monthly fee to me.
Worth knowing about: BookSirens works differently again — you pay to reach their database of vetted reviewers, roughly £8 per ARC plus £1.60 per download (~$10 + $2), or £80/year (~$100) for unlimited. It’s handy if you don’t yet have readers of your own to invite.
3. Communicate — MailerLite (or EmailOctopus)
Collecting emails is pointless if you never use them. This is where an email tool comes in, and it’s the piece that made my cheap BookFunnel setup work: since my tier couldn’t send reminders, I used MailerLite to do it instead. Your reader emails go in, and you send a warm welcome (“here’s your copy, here’s what I’m asking”), then a gentle reminder or two as launch nears (“two weeks to review!”). That reminder is what turns sign-ups into actual reviews.
Two honest caveats. MailerLite cut its free plan in mid-2026 to 250 subscribers and 2,500 emails a month — fine for an ARC round of 60–100, but it fills up fast, and prices on tools like these do tend to creep up over time. EmailOctopus looks like a more generous free option (around 2,500 subscribers), so it could be worth a look — but I haven’t tested it myself, so take that as a lead to investigate and make your own call, not a recommendation. MailerLite is the one I actually used and can vouch for.
And here’s the quiet bonus: the email list you build for your ARC readers is the beginning of your author newsletter. These are the exact people you’ll want to tell about book two. So this isn’t just launch admin — it’s the first bricks of the mailing list every author-platform guide nags you to start. (More on that in the author-platform guide.)
What to actually send them
Whatever tools you use, your welcome message should be short and cover:
- The link to the book and which formats are available
- A clear deadline — ideally a review posted on or around launch day
- Where you’d love them to post it
- Any content warnings
- A reminder to add the honest-review disclosure (that they received a free copy)
- A genuine thank-you — they’re doing you a real favour
The tools at a glance
Rough costs, mid-2026, in £ with approximate $ conversions (tools actually charge in USD) — always check current pricing, it shifts:
| Tool | What it’s for | Rough cost | My take |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Forms + Sheets | Collecting & tracking sign-ups | Free | The essential backbone |
| BookFunnel | Delivering the book securely | £16/yr ($20) → £80/yr ($100) | My pick for delivery |
| Booksprout | Delivery + auto review-chasing | £8/mo ($10) or £70/yr ($90); no free campaigns | Good for building a team, not launch discovery |
| BookSirens | Reaching new reviewers | £8/ARC ($10) + £1.60/download, or £80/yr ($100) | If you have no readers yet |
| MailerLite | Emailing your readers | Free (250 subs) / from £8/mo ($10) | My pick — the one I used |
| EmailOctopus | Emailing, bigger free tier | Free (2,500 subs) | Untested by me — investigate |
My actual stack, for the record: a free Google Form, the cheap BookFunnel tier, and MailerLite. Total spend, a few pounds — plus the £10 ($13) ad from the last post. Everything else was my own time.
That’s the whole system: collect, deliver, communicate. I won’t pretend it’s glamorous — honestly, babysitting the spreadsheet and writing the reminder emails was the fiddliest, most unglamorous part of my entire launch, and the part that pulled me furthest away from the actual writing. None of it is difficult on its own; it just piles up. But a simple pipeline keeps it from eating you alive, and watching those “reviewed?” boxes tick green is weirdly satisfying. Once the reviews start landing, the next question is where they all live — Amazon, Goodreads, StoryGraph and the rest — and how to claim your author profile on each. That’s a guide of its own, coming soon.