#4 Starting an Author Newsletter

Something I hear often is how much authors hate marketing. In fact, in an email conversation this week, one of my editing clients signed off with the comment – and I quote – “Keep your Marketing Made Easy(er) podcasts coming because, even though I’m sure that marketing is of undeniable benefit, it is a subject I truly hate.”

I know a lot of you feel this way. I also know that when you think of the marketing tools you need to market and sell your children’s or young adult books, most of the time, you’re thinking of social media, and that to grow an audience you need to be on all the social media platforms, or have a lucrative ad budget and learn how to make Facebook ads, or set up complicated sales funnels to help you promote your book. I’m here today to tell you there is a fun, creative, easy marketing tool that you can learn to use which also happens to be one of the most important elements you need to market yourself and your work. This tool is one of my favourite marketing tools to teach and to coach authors about, and once you understand just how easy it is to set up and use, you might find yourself loving it just a little bit and looking forward to doing it more often…

So, what am I talking about? What is this magic tool in your marketing toolkit that I’m waving in front of you like a cookie?

It’s the author newsletter!

Why create an author newsletter?

Now, I can actually hear you over the Interwebs reaching for the STOP button on your podcast player. And if you’re not doing that, you’re probably thinking something like:

• “But I have social media – why do I need a newsletter?”
• “I don’t read newsletters, so why would I write one?”
• “I barely have time for writing, I don’t have time for a newsletter!”

I hear you. Those are all valid points. But let me list five important facts about newsletters for you to consider:

1. You don’t own your social media followers. If you’ve spent months connecting with people on Instagram and they change the rules or they close the platform down, you’ve lost those connections. You’re basically renting space on social media, whereas your newsletter subscribers are yours for as long as they’re subscribed to your newsletter.
2. There aren’t any pesky algorithms messing with your visibility in newsletters. On Instagram, for example, only 7-10% of your followers even see your posts whereas you know that 100% of your email subscribers are receiving your newsletters.
3. When people make the decision to subscribe to your newsletter, they’re basically giving you permission to email them and are telling you that they want to hear from you.This is a precious group of loyal readers or potential superfans and customers that you can contact with a click of a button to share some of your goodness, promote your books or ask for reviews, and they’ve given you permission to do that!
4. Your newsletter is an extension of YOU. It’s one of the best ways for you to build superfans – those people who love what you do, are inspired by you, have read all of your books and look forward to reading what you’re writing now.
5. Writing a newsletter is fun! It’s a creative writing project you can use to deliver value to the people who are interested in you and your books. A newsletter isn’t click-bait or a cold, tiled showroom where you sell, sell, sell. It’s a place where you get to invite subscribers into your home for a cosy chat. What are you going to chat about? Anything you like – maybe you’ll share links to articles or videos you think other people will enjoy, give them sneak peeks into your current writing project, book recommendations, what you did at the weekend or just share a photo of your sleeping upside-down dog. You’re a children’s or YA author, you’re a creative, you can create something that is engaging, fun and imbibed with the essence of you – that’s what you do!

To sum up, your newsletter isn’t a marketing tool to help you sell books, it’s a tool that will help you create deeper connections with readers which has a greater possibility of leading to actual sales at some point down the line. In fact, it has a greater possibility of leading to sales than any other marketing tool out there. Think about that.

Starting an author newsletter

So in today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the three elements that you need to set up your author newsletter and get started creating connections.

The first thing you need is an email service provider (or an ESP). You may have heard names like MailChimp, Flodesk, Brevo, Mailerlite. There are a lot of them out there and it’s easy to become quickly overwhelmed when trying to choose one. So, I suggest you look for an ESP in terms of the following three elements:

• You want to find an ESP that is easy to embed in your website. This is going to be the place where people go to actually subscribe for your newsletter. So, having an embedded sign up place is going to be key. Finding an ESP that makes that process easy is going to be very important.
• You want to make sure that it’s easy to design and distribute your newsletter. So, choose an ESP that makes it easy for you to format, prepare and send out your newsletter.
• Find out about cost. All ESPs have free options or free trials to see if they work for you. But you also want to consider what it is that you can pay per month in order to sustain your newsletter when you start getting a lot of subscribers.

The second element to consider is how you’re going to get people to sign up. There are a lot of names for this step: freebies, newsletter incentive, opt-ins, carrots, cookies…they’re all the same thing.

But what are they? They’re free downloads that you provide for your newsletter subscribers when they actually subscribe to your newsletter. You may be wondering why you need to do this. Here’s my answer: I often see author websites with a button inviting readers to sign up to a newsletter and above that button, there’s a sentence that says something like:“Subscribe to my newsletter for updates.” I always stop and think, “Updates of what? That sounds vague and uninteresting. When and how often will I be getting these vague updates?” The world is a noisy place right now and promising vague updates isn’t enough incentive to get people to actually give you their email address. But if you give subscribers something they can use, learn from or enjoy, then they’ll feel like they’re making a fair trade – their email address for this great thing they really want that you are offering them.

So, what can this freebie be? What it’s not is something that you send via the post. It’s not a physical product but rather something they can download from their computer, smartphone or iPad. It can be a free sneak peek into your next book, or some sample chapters or a worksheet or fun character quiz or something valuable that will save them time. For example: I have quite a few different freebies that people can choose from when they decide to sign up to THE KIDLITTER LETTER, which is my newsletter. I have a list of 44 children’s and teen magazines looking for writers, a rhyming starter kit for kidlit authors who want to learn how to write poetry or a rhyming picture book, a book marketing starter kit and even a beta reader worksheet you can give children to fill out when you ask them to beta read your book.

And last, the third thing you need to organize when you start your newsletter is a solid plan. Now, that sounds as vague as “Sign up to my newsletter for updates”! So, let me explain. This plan involves two elements:

• Think about how often you can realistically send out a newsletter in order to be consistent. If this is something that’s brand new to you, start with once a month. And then as it becomes more of a habit, you can increase the number to twice a month, or even once a week if you want. But whatever you decide to do, make sure that you choose an option that is sustainable for you for the long term. Ask yourself, “What is realistic for me?”
• I’m willing to bet that one of your biggest questions about this newsletter project is, “What will I talk about?” The good news is that you already have a whole lot to talk about! Think about what you already have. Maybe you write a blog, or have some really great social media content that you share, or you have research information that you used in the past when writing a book… all of these things are a great way to get started. If you’ve decided that you’ll be doing a monthly newsletter, that’s only 12 topics that you have to come up with. You’re a writer – you can come up with 12 things to talk about!

I’ve thrown a lot of information at you in one podcast episode and you’re probably scrambling for cover. DO. NOT. PANIC! I’m going to be talking about starting an author newsletter over the next few episodes to make it easier for you. I’m also in the process of creating a starter course for kidlit author newsletter newbies which will be available later on this year, so sign up to my newsletter to make sure you don’t miss the announcement when it comes out!

Links

• The Kidlitter Letter
• 44 Children’s and Teen Magazines Looking for Writers
• A Rhyming Starter Kit for Kidlit Authors
• A Book Marketing Starter Kit for Kidlit Authors
• Ask a Child to Be Your Beta Reader