Support for Indie Authors discussion

Okay, all of those marketing gurus say ya gotta have a mailing list. But wait, first ya wanna have something to give away to get people to sign up. Then ya gotta manage your followers... we've all read the same stuff, "How to Sell a Bajillion Copies an' Getch Yerself a Bes' Seller!!"

So now I've got a nice give-away Novella, a sequel to my trilogy, but managing all three of my followers? (no, not you Mom) Well, I've set up with Mail Chimp and gone through the tutorials.

My reaction?


Yow, at some point the learning curve goes asymptotic... that, or it's early-onset stupid. Donno. All I want is a nice button that says, "Gimme Fee Book" and an automatic email response that says, "Here, and by the way, I've sold your email address to the North Koreans."

Well, maybe not that... but simple anyway, and direct. So, what's my point? I will make notes of my journey, and post infrequent progress reports (so said Captain John Franklin as well).

Going against conventional wisdom, I don't give away stuff to get signups to my mail list. I'd rather have a small list of folks who are actually interested in my books than a large one of freebie-chasers. YMMV, etc.

If you do a search, there are a couple of threads about newsletters and mail chimp specifically. I'm in the minority in that I think newsletters are a bigger risk than reward (far to easy to do something in violation of the can-spam act). I just have a subscribe button on my blog and let Google cover the legalities. That and I don't like getting too much email, so I wouldn't want to create a way to give people more email. ;+P

Ken - good comment, and I agree, most contests and giveaways seem to attract short-term followers. I think it's important to target readers with something that relates to what they've already read... maps, art, short fiction. That is, something of benefit only to your readers. BTW, awesome that you've attracted a list just based on the quality of your stuff.

Christina - Valid comments as well... I've read many of the earlier posts on the topic. I'm writing this more as a journal of my efforts than as an RFI. It seems that you prefer to keep a lower profile and let the merits of your stuff do the selling for you. Also awesome.

Personally, I'm really on the fence about the whole concept. I don't think spam-botting a bunch of fluff is gonna sell anything. But if someone actually likes what I write, wouldn't they want to hear about an upcoming release or a new low price?

Readers can elect to follow writers on Amazon and on some of the more reputable advertisers like BookBub. Perhaps you could shoo them into the Followers' corral. I mean that in the nicest, gentlest possible way.

Mail Chimp has corrupted my website which has been demoted by Google I will let you know.

Mary Jane wrote: "Mail Chimp has corrupted my website which has been demoted by Google I will let you know."

Eeeek! Really? So sorry. Hope you can get it fixed easily. Hugs

I gave up on getting Mail Chimp to work. I find that I get more people to my facebook page than I do to the website. Of course my website is totally horrid, so them not going there isn't too bad, I'm looking at revamping the website with a totally new look, and a subscribe/follow thingy to see what happens. Now to find the time....

I still don't have a website but I've been thinking and going back and forth on this whole mailing list thing for a while and reading all kinds of articles. In the end, I decided to make a simple newsletter subscription form on google forms and add it to the end of my already published short stories.

It doesn't look the way I want and I think it being a google form might deter people from entering their info, but at least now if people do manage to find, read to the finish, and actually like something I've written they have a way of directly connecting with me to find out about new releases.

*shrug* It's so hard to get people to notice indie stories in the first place, I feel like some of these things - like mailing lists - are just one more thing to promote... >.>

Quick update: I've sidelined Mail Chimp for now. I seems to be focused on website e-marketing strategies with multi-k email blasts. Not really what I need at this point.

My personal website has an email forwarding button (forwarding address that I can change). I've directed it to a gmail account and set a filter for my email bounce address.

For now, I'm trying that..

I've been using mailchimp to send out newsletters in a voluntary work context, adding the addresses myself as people join the work. That works fine, it's really a great tool, easy to use.
I've also set up a mailchimp connection on one of my author pages, but there has been zilch response yet.
I hate getting newsletters about things I'm not interested in, so I'm not surprised that people don't sign up. As was said before, you get more interaction on facebook and blogs can be used for news as well, so why bother with a newsletter?