Support for Indie Authors discussion

Does anyone know how to get people on an email list? I think I'll be creating one through Gmail yet I don't know how to get readers added to the contacts in the first place. I am newer to the writer world, so I'm still picking up on some things. Do I ask people that are into my genre to join, promote the fact that I'm starting a list, or do people join if they want to? Thank you.

There are some services out there like Mailchimp that can help you with that. Usually people put a little button on their blog for readers to subscribe to a newsletter or something, giving you their email address. It's best to entice them with little freebies or first look at new blog posts.

That said, don't freak out if you don't get a lot of people signing up. It's not a death knell for your writing, and on the flip side of that coin, getting a lot of people to sign up isn't a fool-proof sign of success either.

I found a service called Voracious Readers Only. It's a quid pro quo-- upload your title and description and in return for a free book to the reader, you're provided with the reader's email address for your mailing list. For their "Evergreen" program, they list your book until you take it down, for $20 per month per book. Readers can opt out of your mailing list at any time, of course. Anyway, I put two books up in mid-January, and so far have 135 subscribers to my list, with more coming in every day. Only two have opted out. I have a freebie (a novelette) I send to everyone who signs up. I plan to have little giveaways for my subscribers, like a $25 Amazon gift card, stuff like that. I also want to be interactive with my list--running ideas by them, etc.--rather than simply jabbering at them. I use Mailchimp to keep everything straight.

I would counsel against using gmail for this. You need to abide by the antispam laws of your recipients, and that’s pretty hard to do with Gmail and can have high fines and imprisonment as penalties for noncompliance. Email programs like Mailchimp and its competitors have the proper disclosures, subscribe and unsubscribe buttons, history tracking, etc. built in.

Dave wrote: "Does anyone know how to get people on an email list? I think I'll be creating one through Gmail yet I don't know how to get readers added to the contacts in the first place. I am newer to the write..."

One of the common tips to gaining readership/sales is to have an email list. I don't know what other authors experiences are (I'm sure we will hear more) but for me it is a slow process.

Why do people want to join an email list? To get free stuff, to be first to find out about new books, and to be entertained. My first requirement for my newsletter was that I would only update about once/week. I have unsubscribed from newsletters because I get to many emails.

I write a weekly newsletter each week, updating my progress as a writer, linking to my blog posts, and trying to be entertaining ( for me, that means making it humorous). I want to engage my subscribers, to make them know that I care that they are involved in my endeavours.

As for free stuff, sample pages or stories are great reader magnets to give away. Try before you buy essentially.

I use Mailchimp for my list. Most importantly, as P.D. mentioned, they take care of all the anti-spam issues. I like that I can see who opens my emails, each subscriber has an engagement rating, and I can see which links are clicked.

You can promote your newsletter on social media as well, but I find with most posts, they get buried quickly in the feed, so you have to post often (which I don't like to do - quality over quantity)

I am new at this too. I hope this helps.

Leon

I use Mailchimp. I put a Mail list sign-up box on my website, but that hasn’t had much influx because I don’t promote as much as I should. I did see positive results recently when I did a Mailchimp mail-list promotion, which offered a few people a chance to win the 2 kindle books in my series as a gift if they signed up for my mail list. I always include in any mail list promotion that it is “Spam Free.” People don’t tend to like a million emails. Personally, I only send out Mailchimp emails during discounted book promotions, new book updates or other significant news.

I started with my regular contacts/friends on Gmail. I put them in separate groups, e.g Friends, Writers/Bookstores, etc. (google or go to youtube for instructions on how to save emails to contacts). It'll be easy.

The only downside with Gmail, you can only send up to 50 contacts otherwise they will flag your account. I got around this by sending it to the groups. With a reasonable list, I opened a free account and exported the list to MailChimp. They give you up to 2000 contacts for free.

Unfortunately, the best way to get people on your mailing list is to invite those who have just read and enjoyed your book to sign up and be notified when a new one comes out. Would you want to be notified when someone you’ve never read releases a book? Would you sign up for a newsletter from someone you know nothing about? Have you?

Sad but true, is that the best sales tool is our writing, followed by recommendations from those who’ve read it (it’s called, hand-selling). We all read and love our own work, but unless the potential reader settles back in their chair and says, “Damn…tell me more,” before the end of page three they’ll turn away—no matter what brought them to your Amazon page. My point is that mailing lists are great, and a quick way to let people know that new book is out there. And a newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with fans. But…ask yourself how many author’s mailing lists you’re on, and why you signed up.

Jay wrote: "Sad but true, is that the best sales tool is our writing, followed by recommendations from those who’ve read it (it’s called, hand-selling)."

Good point there. I've heard it called 'word of mouth' more, no matter that the 'mouth' is digital these days.

Jay wrote: "And a newsletter is a great way to keep in touch with fans. But…ask yourself how many author’s mailing lists you’re on, and why you signed up."

That is why I am a newsletter skeptic. The only list I'm on is from a person that gives author advice. If I want to know about a sequel coming out, I'll just follow the author on Amazon. They let me know ASAP because it's (almost) guaranteed money for them.

It then turns into a chicken-egg situation: a large list of dedicated super-fans can cause this word-of-mouth to spread a lot, but it takes a lot of time, and a lot of quality writing aimed at the right target audience, to reach that point.

But…ask yourself how many author’s mailing lists you’re on, and why you signed up.

Exactly. I have signed up for many and subsequently unsubscribed because of the volume of emails they send. Each email/newsletter needs to be worth something, either informative, or entertaining.

As writers we need to promote our works, but there is a fine line that if you cross it, you become pushy. I don't fret if someone unsubscribes, they probably won't buy your book anyway. I ran a giveaway promo and got eight new subscribers. When one subscriber found out that they did not win, they unsubscribed. I'm not going to worry about it.

If you can keep your list growing, you are doing everything right.

#1 You can't use google for a mailing list. They will shut you down real quick for sending "spam".
2. what you do need is an email list provider like Mailer lite, Mail Chimp, Convert Kit, etc.
3. to get people on that list, there a multiple ways. Set up a landing page for a reader magnet (A book you put out to get people to come to your website and sign up for your new letter.), Joining a email list builder, like prolific words or AXP, or Book sweeps. If you use Bookfunnel they have free joint promos you can join to increase your email list. I got over 450 in one small promo. BookBub has promos that you can use for list building also.
4. If you have a website, have a pop-up that asks people to join your email list.
5. Put a link in the back of you books to leave a review and to join your email list via your website.
6. Remember, people want something, so what you need to do is give them something of value. That can be a character sheet, a out-take from a book, a short story, information out you, your family, etc. DO NOT use your newsletter solely to get people to buy your book. Have links to your books at the bottom, but the newsletter is that.. something worth reading, not just a big ad. I will unsubscribe if all you do is say "buy my book". Let the reader get to know you, the author and maybe your family, where you live, etc. (MIne all know I have 3 mustangs, 2 dogs and cat named Boo, live in northern AZ and ride a HD Trike.) Remember, giving away a lot of "stuff" like gift cards, kindles, etc, many will enter and never read your book just for the 'free' stuff so make it something dealing with your story or genre.
7. Don't expect huge numbers of people to buy your book until you are better known, so get out there, chat on blogs if you go on them, Set up an author page on FB and post pics and fun things. Support other authors in your genre. Help promote them. Give them slices of your life past or present.
8. Above all, have fun with it. If you make it a chore, it will show in what you write and do.

Thanks, B.A.. That’s great information.

There's also an algorithm which counts the hard and soft bounces of your email. If not Google, then your email sender software serves a gatekeeper function too. It is also subject to such rules.

It would be a good idea to clean your mailing list first before finalizing your actual email address book.

I can't stress this enough....do not use Google, Yahoo, Outlook or AOL for email lists. They will shut you down if you are sending out a lot of emails over a short period of time. Get an email list server where you can send out that 100 to 50K emails. If you send out over a certain number in the normal personal email providers listed above, they will tell you to stop. There is something like 25 to 100 a day you can send on your personal email. You need to get a business account if you are planning on sending more but then they also have rules on that too. You can get a free account at mailerlite and Mailchimp to start off. When you get a bigger list, it will cost you, but the nice thing is, that by that time, you will see the benefit of paying for it.

I can't quite understand, considering all the restrictions on this site, why Goodreads is advising people on how to create spam. That's what it is.

For businesses like authors, you have to use a business e-mail server. That came about from those who did use their person email to spam people way back when the internet became a popular way of selling things. Today, you need the people's permission to send them things. (Like you signed up for this site) That becomes your email list. Your personal email can't be use to send out a 1000 emails in a day. It isn't spam. The people sign up and then leave whenever they want, unlike those on your personal list. If using your person list, you have to go through and add each person, one at a time in a BCC type format. Try doing that for 1000 people.

With that said, email lists that you build are yours and you can use that list to your advantage when launching a book or keep fans with little snippets of your life, etc. That is where I got most of my sales for my last launch. remember,. these are people who signed up to hear from you. That isn't spam.

One way not to get me on a list is to make it a requirement to sign up before I can look at anything. Nope. Won't work. :)
The next worse thing is to have a dialog box following you up and down the page. That won't work either. :)

ML, I agree. I hate the ones you can't seem to click out of, but if I can make it go away, I'm good. As to the ones that follow you, hate them and will never use one. You want people to come to your site. The sign up boxes are annoying, but do need to be there but never make it so the person can't see your site.

The other thing I totally despise and will get me to leave your list is continuous...buy my book emails. Send me them for a launch (never closer than every other day) and for special sales. Otherwise, give me something about you, or other authors, or other things that might interest me. Yes, email lists are used for promotions, but is is also to connect to your readers. I actually insulted an author when she asked me why I didn't stay on her list. my response, "I am not a captive audience. I was here by choice and my choice is to get rid of newsletters that are nothing but begging for a sale. Your's fits that category." She was one who I met when I lived in FL and was attending RWA. There were seldom anything worth reading in her emails. Her website was the same...nothing but buy this, buy that.

B.A., what you say is much true, and is why I'm skeptical about having my own newsletter. I'm trying to think through the positives and negatives both before I make the decision, and one of the hardest question is: what could I write monthly (or so) to be interesting?

After all, there's not that much interesting about me - and while I could use some behind-the-scenes, that won't last forever...

Tomas wrote: "B.A., what you say is much true, and is why I'm skeptical about having my own newsletter. I'm trying to think through the positives and negatives both before I make the decision, and one of the har..."

It's still worth having a newsletter even if you don't want to send many emails. My mailing list is pretty much only for letting readers know about new releases. I probably only send 2-3 emails a year, and that works OK for me and I wouldn't personally be able to do more than that. You have to find what works for you, and I wouldn't rule out using a mailing list just because you feel you don't have much to talk about, because then you miss out on being able to let your readers know about new releases.

It doesn't have to be long. Once a month is good. I'm sure you can come up with an interesting story here and there. I've talked about my horses (3 female mustangs who aren't broke) my two nutty dogs (both rescues) and my cat named Boo (who is nothing but a furball that eats and makes a mess). I traveled some, so I'll give snippets of of my travels. Little things about where I live (high desert with is different than the Phoenix low desert.) I'll add a picture here and there. I'll also give snippets of work in progress, Talk about a character in an upcoming book, etc. There is so much you and write a few hundred words about once you get started.

You are a writer....so write. Send a short story, a poem, song lyrics you wrote. Describe how you came up with the last book you wrote, or the character, or the setting, etc. Little things that you can expand on. One Newsletter the author talked about her fight with her phone that didn't want to work. It was hilarious.

Again, you are a writer, just take a topic and write.

B.A. wrote: "you are a writer, just take a topic and write."

But... I'm an overthinker. I was at 'maybe one day' stage for 10+ years before I started writing. I can't just write out of the blue.

Anyway, what you say is right. I think if I split my posts into trios - rotating something personal (such as my travels) as one topic, behind-the-scenes and status updates as the second topic, and book recommendations as the third topic - each on quarter-year rotation... that might work.

Another question would be the sign-up bait enticement. At this point, the only thing I have semi-ready is a short story around 3k words 'long' which could work - but I'm not sure that's good enough. At least I'm not drawing completely blank.

I recently made an account with Story Origin, which is free for now, in order to join a group promo that someone I know was running. I've been kind of playing around with story origin since then, trying to find group promos and stuff to join, testing things out.

Anyway, one of their features is that you can make a landing page for a reader magnet. I have a bunch of published short stories so I just used one of them and offered it for free in exchange for people signing up for my (not yet existent) newsletter. I then entered that "reader magnet" in a group promo, in which all the participating authors advertise the promo page on social media and their own newsletters. Anyway, I've been getting a pretty steady stream of sign-ups from it recently and I'm thinking to start sending out the actual newsletter sometime between now and December.

For me personally, I totally agree with you Tomas. I don't feel like I have enough to "talk about" in the newsletter or content to create that wouldn't take away from my actual writing, which is more important. So I plan to just send it out maybe 2-3 times a year when there's a release I want to talk about, or when I have a "top books I read this year" list or something else interesting to share.

Thomas,

You can rock this. Relax. That short story will work. Think about a character work sheet where to give their past up until the story starts. Or why you choose a setting. I actually did a novella as a reader magnet (bait/freebie) and use my first book (not the best) as a 'gift'. You can do this.

Noor, you have a lot to talk about. I'm a boring person also, but if you send out an update ever month or two, you're good to go.

Story Origin sounds like Bookfunnel who also has promotions. All you need is a novella or short story to use with a cover. Remember, that newsletter doesn't have to be long. Just remember that 'buy my book' isn't a newsletter. That is an ad. you can have links at the bottom for your books, but that shouldn't be the only purpose of the newsletter.

B.A. wrote: "Think about a character work sheet where to give their past up until the story starts."

I actually have this on the static part of my weblog for the main characters - though some aspects could be delved deeper into.

Thanks for the support either way.

To answer the original question of how you can increase your email list. Remember to start with everyone you know and simply ask if the would be interested in what you are offering. Then really think about how often you want to send your subscribers information according to the amount of time you have. I post twice a month to my blog and podcast. The main thing I promote is my podcast but direct everyone to my website which has everything. Check out Pat Flynn podcast and website. he offers good information on this topic. I’m presently in his email class and am learning about landing pages.

Thanks for the encouragement, B.A. I'm definitely going to give it a try and see how it goes.

I think you may find that once you get going it's easier than you thought it would be. The main thing is to write on a steady basis - not necessarily for your newsletter, but about things that appeal and you enjoy writing about - then select a few. Five? Not a lot. And keep them short, 100-200 words. I will read something 100 words or less way before something long. Same for short stories. If it's a novel length, I want a paperback. For short stories, an e-book - and in that case I'll choose short story over long.

Thanks for the tips, M. L. So when you say to pick 5, do you mean to choose five topics/features for each newsletter e-mail? Just double checking, as I was wondering about the number of things to include in each e-mail.

First, I think you are off to a successful start with people already signing up for your newsletter. That's a good thing and I don't want to mess with success. :) It's working.

What I did was search for author newsletters. The templates I looked at have, at first glance, 4, 5 maybe 6 separate topics on a front page. There were visuals, maybe not for each, but enough to see 'something' beyond words. I would suggest searching for images of templates. If they work like websites (I use Wordpress) you can save drafts until you are ready to publish, try things out, change formats and styles, colors, etc., choose if you want to show the whole post or an excerpt. Excerpts work better in my opinion. (If I see a whole page, wall to wall, I won't read it.)
And pictures. If you subscribe to BookBub, there is a brief paragraph and the book cover. That's how I decide which books to check out.

Good luck!

:) Thanks! This is very helpful!

I've also found that if you add pictures, it does create more engagement. I traveled a lot and have tons of pictures, so I'll include them in my newsletters if I''m talking about a certain spot or area or even of plants...could have kicked myself this morning though. I didn't' get a picture of the Arizona tarantula that was sitting on my kitchen floor as I was screaming for Al to come and get it...lol

That's funny! I would still be screaming. I've never even seen a tarantula in person.

Yeah, I definitely wouldn't be in the mindset to take any pictures if I saw that!