Writing a newsletter is probably one of the most loathed and procrastinated-on tasks on an author’s to-do list. But it’s one of the most valuable tools in your author marketing arsenal, and well worth spending the time on it to cultivate it.
The main reason why people always harp on about taking care of your newsletter is that it’s YOURS. If all the social media platforms somehow disappear, or you get locked out of your account, you still have a way to communicate with your fanbase with your newsletter.
Also, a newsletter tends to feel a bit more personal. Anyone could stumble upon a post of yours thanks to an algorithm, but they invite you into their inbox by signing up for your newsletter. Not everyone gets that privilege, so make it worth it for them to open up your email.
How do you do that?
Don’t only send out a newsletter when you’ve got a new book out or a sale. People will catch on fast that you’re only popping into their inbox to try to sell to them, and that’s likely going to turn them off, possibly even enough to unsubscribe.
Make it interesting. A friend of mine who’s an aspiring romance writer was telling me the other day about how she’s signed up for a bunch of authors’ newsletters lately to get a sense of what works for when she has to write her own, and she remarked that the best ones are the ones that give you some kind of look into the author’s life and/or process. Share research from your WIP, talk about how your writing has affected your life or vice versa, tell them what’s inspiring you lately.
People signed up for your newsletter because they liked your writing and want to support you, and that usually means that they also want to know more about the person behind the writing. (We can definitely have a long discussion if it’s a good or bad thing that social media has seemingly required the author to share their lives—to whatever extent—with their readers. I have mixed thoughts on it.) It can foster a connection between author and reader, and get the reader invested in your success so that you can continue writing books that they want!
However, that doesn’t entitle them to full access to you, of course. You don’t have to go super deep and share everything about your life. What would you tell to a person you’ve just met and are making small talk with? That totally depends on your own comfort level—for example, you might show them pictures of your kids, or you might feel that that’s too much. Your own sense of privacy will determine how much you want to share, so just go with what feels best for you.
Set up expectations for your newsletter. This takes a while to land on something that works for you, but once you do, you can prime your readers to keep opening your newsletters knowing that they’ll get, for example, a look into your latest work, a funny story or picture or GIFs, and a little nudge for a sale at the end.
With my own newsletter—if you’ve been on here a while—I hope you open it knowing that you’re going to get a fairly lengthy but insightful discussion of something related to writing/romance/marketing with actionable steps that you can apply to your own romance writing career. That’s my goal.
What I never thought my newsletter would do would make someone actually quit their job—that was NOT clickbait! My friend Beck wrote this post on Instagram about how my January newsletter about comfort zones helped in her decision to quit her job, and how February’s newsletter on lack of inspiration allowed her to give herself time and space. Go give it a read—it’s brave and honest and impressive. If you ever doubted how powerful newsletters could be, this is your sign that they are!
I’ve also hand-sold books by my clients by featuring them at the end of my newsletter, and while those couple of sales are just a drop in the bucket (because the point of my newsletter isn’t to sell books), you can definitely optimize your newsletter as a vehicle to sell. I said above that you don’t want to make your whole newsletter about buying your books, but if you’re dropping in links as they relate to whatever the subject of your newsletter is, well, that’s just synergy, right?
Newsletter swaps with other authors are also a great way to get exposure to readers who may have never heard of you before, and you can share new-to-them authors with your subscribers as well. (I think this works best if you can talk about what’s special about the book/author to you, rather than just recycling the copy the author provided to you—knowing it’s coming from you makes it feel more personal. And if the author you’re swapping with can do this for you too, even better.)