How to Start (and Maintain) an Author Newsletter
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In today’s fast-paced world of digital marketing, it seems like there’s a new social media platform popping up every 6 months that you just need to be on. But the potential windfall that comes from going viral on “that new site” can come at the expense of established marketing channels that have been proven to succeed. Like email.
For decades, email marketing has helped businesses grow and scale; now, it’s one of the most effective ways to convert interested onlookers into paying customers. As an author, email allows you to bring your potential readers on a journey that’s tailored completely to you and your book’s mission. In contrast with social media marketing, which is a one-to-many communication flow, email marketing lets you speak directly to your customer. Think of it as the difference between a carnival barker shouting at a crowd through a megaphone versus a professional business person passing you their card.
The author newsletter is one of the most popular and effective ways to interact with your ideal readers via email. In this article, we’ll teach you everything you need to know about starting and (most importantly) maintaining a great author newsletter:
Choosing an email marketing platform
Setting up sign-up forms
Creating a landing page for newsletter signups
Determining the freebie you should give away
Generating email subscribers
Crafting content to include in your newsletters
Turning email subscribers into readers
Let’s dive in!
1. Choosing an email marketing platform
If you want to start sending an email newsletter, you need something more powerful and professional than your regular email account. Think about the emails you get from online brands and retailers — they don’t have thousands of emails CC’d on them, and neither should you!
You need to find the email marketing platform that’s right for you. An email marketing platform is where you’ll gather and store your contacts’ information (their name and email address) and where you’ll build and send your newsletters.
Thankfully, there’s no shortage of platforms you can use to start your email marketing journey. Depending on your goals and tech-savviness, the platform you should use to send your email newsletter will differ.
If you want something simple and easy to use that will let you create email newsletters and a basic email sequence, I recommend MailChimp and MailerLite.
For email marketing platforms that have more features and are better for more tech-savvy individuals, try ConvertKit and Klaviyo.
These platforms offer free plans, which I highly recommend using when you’re starting out. Only when your email list is growing by the thousands will you need to consider upgrading to a paid plan. Otherwise, the free plans are more than sufficient. MailerLite and MailChimp both offer fantastic free plans.
When exploring these email platforms, here are the must-have features you should be looking for:
The number of emails you can send each month (it should be a few thousand, at least)
Sign-up and pop-up forms
Email template options
These features will help you create professional marketing content and strategize effectively, so ensure your platform of choice has all these things before creating an account. Play around with each platform’s free plans before committing to any paid upgrades.
2. Setting up sign-up forms
Sign-up forms are how people sign up to be on your mailing list. When creating a sign-up form, you want to consider its design, prompts, where it’s located, and what happens after someone fills it out.
The most popular and effective form is the pop-up form, which pops up right away or a few seconds after someone visits your website. Although you might think they’re a nuisance, marketing studies show that pop-ups are the highest performing sign-up forms out there.
What makes them so effective? Pop-ups fill the user’s screen, demand attention, and usually offer an enticing incentive (or “freebie”) in exchange for inputting a name and email. We’ll discuss freebies in more depth later.
When signing up for an email marketing platform, they will have different how-to guides for setting up a pop-up form on your website. After you’ve designed the pop-up, you usually receive a specific code that you can copy and embed on your website. Follow the instructions on your chosen platform to properly integrate your form into your website.
Another sign-up form that’s great for beginners is the inline form. Like the pop-up form, it’s also placed on your website. The inline form lacks any design elements and is formatted quite simply. It’s most commonly found on your website’s homepage, or at the very bottom in the website footer. In fact, if you scroll to the bottom of this blog post, you’ll find an example of an inline form FriesenPress uses!
Inline forms should include a short headline and subheader sharing the value proposition (“Subscribe to my email newsletter to get a free chapter of my book [insert title] and monthly writing updates.”), a space for people to input their name and email address, and a button to submit.
Remember to only ask for the information you need (Name and Email Address are likely sufficient for a newsletter). Also make sure your button stands out and includes a short, compelling call to action.
Finally, you’ll need to set up an email that’s automatically sent to the people who fill out your form. This will be easily done in your email platform. Be sure to express gratitude to your new subscriber, and warmly welcome them to experience the journey ahead!
3. Determining the freebie you should give away
Before building out a list of email subscribers, you should determine what freebie you’ll give to those signing up.
A freebie is an incentive in exchange for subscribing to your email list. Because people want something in return for giving you their email address, it needs to have value. Again using FriesenPress as an example, you can get their helpful Author’s Guide to Successful Publishing by filling out the inline form at the end of this blog post.
As an author, there are a lot of fun freebies you can offer your subscribers:
The first several chapters of one of your books;
Early access to new releases or new book covers;
An exclusive short story;
An exclusive prequel to one of your books;
Any exclusives, period!
The easiest way to share your freebies is to upload them as PDFs to your email platform or your website. This provides your subscriber with a link to easily download your freebie content, so include the link within your welcome email.
4. Creating a landing page for newsletter signups
A crucial step of starting an author newsletter is creating a landing page to generate signups. A landing page is a web page that users land on (hence the name) that features an inline form where they can input their information to subscribe to your newsletter. Some of the email providers listed in Section 1 allow you to easily create landing pages for your newsletter.
What makes a landing page so useful is that it gives you a dedicated link to send people so they can sign up to receive your email content (and newsletter). This makes it much easier and more effective to make dedicated marketing content with a clear call to action to sign up. (Don’t worry — we’ll explore this more in Section 5!) Your link should be short, sweet, and clear; authorname.com/newsletter, for example.
To view a live example of a landing page, visit publish.friesenpress.com to see what FriesenPress uses in their marketing efforts. Although this page isn’t designed for newsletter signup purposes, notice how effectively it incorporates the freebie, information about the freebie’s value, and the inline form.
5. Generating email subscribers
By creating your sign-up forms and landing page and determining your freebie, your email marketing foundation is set. Now, it’s time to start building that list of subscribers!
The first thing you can do is reach out to your network of family, friends, and fellow writers and send them the link to your landing page to subscribe.
I also recommend linking to your newsletter landing page in the bio of your social media profiles and your email signature with a clear call to action like “Subscribe to my newsletter here!”. These are easy and impactful ways of generating passive signups on top of your other book marketing activities.
Next, make a social media post asking your followers to subscribe. Remember to mention your freebie and the other fun things readers can expect from the newsletter! Direct them to the link in your bio where they can sign up via your landing page.
Finally, consider adding this landing page link in the back of your books where you list your social media profiles or website.
6. Creating content to include in your newsletters
The Current Draft newsletter by FriesenPress
Now, let’s get into the actual content of your newsletter. You might be thinking, “What do I talk about? I don’t have anything interesting to say.” Well, if you’re an author, you really do!
There are so many things you can write about and share in your newsletter. Here are just a few ideas:
Let your readers know about any upcoming in-person and online events;
Share special book promotions you have going on (or coming up);
Announce in-store or in-library availability when your book gets shelf space;
Share positive new book reviews and praise for your work;
Update people on what you’re reading;
Ask questions and get input for your current writing projects through interactive features;
Include relevant photos and images alongside your text — especially photos of yourself at events, or posing with readers!
Share writing updates for your next book(s) — and announce your next book when it’s ready to be published!
Further building on this list: consider what makes you, your book, and your brand unique. Weave these unique selling points into your newsletter content so they’re always front of mind for your subscribers. If you’ve written a cookbook, consider sharing recipes themed with the time of year. If you’ve written about dogs, share information about local shelters looking for folks to adopt dogs, or share interesting articles about dog behaviour.
I recommend combining a few of these ideas to make one newsletter. For example, share news about an upcoming event, a positive review, and conclude with updates on what you’re writing and reading. Experiment with different formats until you find one that works for you.
Also, always include links to buy your books at the bottom of your newsletter, right above a brief sign-off. Make the “buy” link a button to make it extra appealing and clickable!
7. Turning email subscribers into readers
We’ve arrived at the big question: “How do I turn email subscribers into readers?”
Your email marketing strategy should aim to convert subscribers into paying customers. But it’s important to note that a potential buyer needs to see a product or service up to seven times before they decide whether or not to buy it.
In your newsletters, you need to talk about your books without only talking about your books. As I mentioned above, including a section at the bottom of your email about your books available for purchase is a subtle but effective way of generating sales.
Mentioning your current writing projects will also get readers organically interested in your upcoming books without directly asking them to buy. When your next book is eventually released, they’ll already be interested in it (and therefore more likely to purchase).
Offering exclusive free snippets of your work to newsletter subscribers will also help warm them up to purchasing a book from you. It’s like taking a bite of a cupcake — if you like the flavour, you want to eat the whole thing. So when it comes to the release date for a new book, always tease the first couple of pages in your newsletter. Maybe even the entire first chapter! Get creative in building up interest in your book and encourage sales without resorting to yelling “buy this!”
To increase your conversion rates among subscribers, be mindful of your email frequency. Quality should always come before quantity. A monthly newsletter is a good starting point, but there’s nothing wrong with a bi-monthly or quarterly newsletter if you find that suits you better. For example, I send mine out on the last day of every month to show up consistently for my subscribers. Similarly, FriesenPress’s The Current Draft newsletter goes out in the middle of every month on Saturday mornings.
Through the combined efforts of sign-up forms and value-rich email newsletters, you will see positive results — like a consistent flow of new subscribers. Remember to ensure every newsletter answers this one question: “Will this content help convert email subscribers into paying readers?”
Building an email list from scratch can be slow at first. But over time and by staying consistent, you will gain momentum. Good luck!
Zoe Mathers is a social media manager and copywriter from beautiful British Columbia. She strives to help authors grow brand awareness and find their ideal readers on social media. In her free time, she can be found writing her own stories or browsing the shelves of her local bookstores.
Explore her services or scroll through her blog at zoemathers.com.
