Marketing is a challenge that’s hard to get right. You want to attract as many readers as you can, but you also want to attract only the right readers, who will love your book and want to share it with their friends. To boot, you need to get your book into reader spaces, places where readers regularly interact with one another and talk about books. Book clubs offer a seemingly easy solution, but how do you find the club that’s right for your book?

Several platforms have attempted to provide an answer to the question, each in their own ways. Fable is a social app for readers that allows groups to set up serialized discussions, post about books, and leave reviews, but there is no author-facing element by which to track usage. Authors can only participate in book clubs if they create them themselves or have connections with the creators, though they can use Fable as a marketplace to sell the book to club members. NetGalley and other review generators promote books, but once they’ve delivered the book, most of the interaction stops. 

Enter The Pigeonhole. The Pigeonhole is an award-winning mobile book club that offers readers free interactive books and promises authors authentic reviews and reader interactions. Launched in the UK in 2014, the platform provides a modern twist on nineteenth-century serials. By releasing books in serialized increments, they encourage users to read together and participate in discussions. Bonus content, like playlists, author interviews, and historical context, appears in the margins to further spark reader engagement. 

At this time, the platform seems to be one of a kind. It certainly defies the word’s most restrictive definition. After five years in business, The Pigeonhole is the largest digital book club platform in the UK and has developed relationships with several UK traditional publishers. Now the company is looking to expand its reach to publishers worldwide, including indie authors.

Reader Experience

On The Pigeonhole, readers choose from a library of classics and new releases, sign up for a club or solo experience, and receive installments of a story, called staves, through the app on a prearranged schedule. Readers who join a club already in progress, or who struggle to keep up with the serialization schedule, will receive all pre-released staves at once and continue to have access to them for two weeks after the book club ends.

Available books are categorized as “In Play,” for books that are currently part of a serialized event, or “At Your Leisure,” for books that can be read at your own pace. Readers who select from the At Your Leisure list may create their own private book club with people they know, or read and react to the book on their own. Most of the books in the At Your Leisure section are public domain classics. All books include a free sample extract before readers commit to reading.

While reading, users can leave in-text comments and respond to the comments of other members of their club. Notifications can be customized or turned off, letting readers know when new staves have dropped or when other readers have commented. Readers can also access bonus material provided by the author through purple icons at the edge of paragraphs. At the end of the final stave, readers will find links to review the book on Amazon and Goodreads.

There are no fees required to participate in book clubs. However, for £2.99, readers get unlimited sign-ups, and for £7.99, readers get priority access to exclusive book offers and their name on the platform’s patrons page. 

How Does It Work?

The reader experience may sound similar to Fable, Kindle Vella, or other serial reading services, but this platform serves a different purpose for its authors. While The Pigeonhole markets their platform to readers as “the book club in your pocket,” their publisher-facing side highlights their review service as “the publishers’ secret weapon.” The Pigeonhole is not selling books directly; readers access their stories for free. Publishers instead come to the platform to build hype for new book launches and to generate reviews. Think of it as a curated selection of your most engaged ARC readers. 

Authors release their books through the Pigeonhole app in “staves” that take about a half an hour to read. According to CEO Mark Blayney, this length was originally chosen to cater to commuters, but authors can set their preferred level of serialization or “let the whole book drop as a single stave so readers can binge-read if they want.” Audiobooks may be incorporated into the serial, if you have the files available.

Pigeonhole staff use your marketing copy, cover imagery, blurb, and author bio to build a page for your book, which they then promote on social media and via the platform’s email list. Authors are encouraged to share their posts with the page link as well. There is no minimum number of readers required to start a project. As for the maximum your club can hold, reader slots are released in blocks of one hundred to create a sense of exclusivity—the next block of one hundred will not be released until the first block is full.

Once readers have signed up to read your book, a dedicated project manager grants you access to the release, allowing you to engage and respond to readers’ comments. These interactions between authors and readers drive initial efforts at review generation, but The Pigeonhole also contacts readers at the end of the serialization event to remind them to leave reviews. 

Authors receive extensive data collections once the read-through is over. According to their authors’ and publishers’ guide, “Within a week of your serialisation’s completion, we [Pigeonhole Publishing] will send you an Excel file of all comments.” Additional information on how users read includes where they stopped, when they commented, and whether they left reviews. Fifty percent of Pigeonhole readers leave reviews, averaging fifty-two reviews per three-week project, according to the guide. An upcoming option to offer exclusive reading opportunities to Pigeonhole patrons, dedicated readers who pay for optimized use of the platform, may provide improved results.

Getting Started

To promote a book through The Pigeonhole, authors start by choosing from four paid tiers. Once you’ve selected a promotional level, you complete an application that includes a sample of your book. The Pigeonhole may not accept your book if it doesn’t meet the company’s standards of quality and presentation. The platform may also reject a book if there are already too many books scheduled in a particular genre. If your book is declined, you will be refunded in full.

According to a genre interest chart Blayney shared, the most popular genres on The Pigeonhole are Mystery, Literary Fiction, and Historical Fiction, though other genres are well represented, including those in nonfiction and poetry categories. 

The Pigeonhole highlights a few books from each list as “Pigeon Picks of the Week” to help draw attention to them. Authors who purchase one of the higher tiers of service may also have their book featured on the homepage or run additional rounds of promotion for the serialization event.

If you’d like to add your book to the At Your Leisure section as a perma-free option after serialization, you may do so at no cost. These books may be featured in book clubs set up for specialist reader groups, like those created for people in the care sector.

Pricing

The Pigeonhole offers both flat-rate and pay-per-review tiers, depending on your goals with the site:

• Flying Pigeon: a pay-by-results service reaching up to two hundred fifty readers (Cost: £17 per review generated, with a nonrefundable £100 deposit upfront)
• Nesting Pigeon: a tier offering the book exclusively to up to one hundred of The Pigeonhole’s particularly dedicated patrons (Cost: £249)
• Homing Pigeon: a tier offering your book to up to two hundred fifty readers, both patrons and free members (Cost: £499)
• Racing Pigeon: includes the same features as Homing Pigeon, but with additional marketing and branding opportunities, data collection, and a videoed Q&A event (Cost: £649)

The digital author reading and Q&A event, which will be added to The Pigeonhole’s YouTube channel, can be attached to the Flying Pigeon, Nesting Pigeon, and Homing Pigeon tiers for an additional fee of £150. Check for discounts on this, though. Blayney says the platform will have special offers while they build their list of author interview videos. 

Whichever tier interests you, consider contacting General Manager Joanna McQueen before committing, as the website is not currently up-to-date.

Potential Challenges

The company has undergone some changes in the past year, including new leadership, and is still working to improve the user experience for both readers and authors. In the meantime, McQueen responds efficiently to reported errors.

There is currently no integration with other author tools, and the app’s security measures prevent direct email collection. So if you want your readers on The Pigeonhole to join your newsletter list, you will have to invite them to your own onboarding system. Previous free services for beta readers have been discontinued.

Final Thoughts

Authors looking to increase engagement and to build a bank of reviews for their work may benefit from The Pigeonhole’s services. This platform’s fusion of the reader community with author analytics could create a team of engaged readers who are more likely to follow through with reviews, and more importantly, invest in the author’s future work. Despite the negative connotations of the verb, as a noun, a “pigeonhole” refers to a small cozy space, where pigeons or letters might rest. The Pigeonhole’s online book clubs may offer your book exactly the space it needs to grow. 

Jenn Lessmann