Of course, that’s easier said than done, especially if you haven’t published anything yet. This giveaway grew a new email list from zero to 6500+ in a week, and I’m going to do another one next week and try to reach 10K. Are there any tips or tricks authors really ought to (or not to) put into the autoresponder series? Step 1: Make an Unforgettable First Impression. • Engage – Make your channel meaningful by starting and nurturing conversations. This usually involves telling your readers about a book in the same genre that you think they’d be interested in reading. Some people inevitably unsubscribe each time you email and that can put sensitive authors off. Most authors are aware that they should start building their author mailing list months in advance, they just don’t know how. The main consideration is that people get to download a really valuable thing. This process needs to happen gradually as an indirect way to introduce your list to the fact you are an author. Our mission is to help you succeed and feel confident in self-publishing, marketing your ebook, and connecting with readers using all the tools you can dream of, from landing pages to ebook delivery. If you’re a newbie, you might not have very many people on your list at first, but as your journey progresses, your list can grow over time and can make you a lot of money. (See below). Then put a signup wall between the user and getting the audio, and that built the mailing list very quickly. We recently did a post about authenticity for authors, in which we explored this concept of “know, like and trust” in marketing: The Ultimate Guide to Authenticity for Indie Authors. Writing a new book takes months, or years. Maintain a single list of all your subscribers and segment it according to particular interest groups. It will be like a code, like %first name%, and that will import the reader’s first name. In general, any prizes that are specific to your genre are useful. Regularly invite email contact. Exactly! That’s a manageable routine for writers who want to integrate the seven elements of ACCESSS marketing into their weekly routine. Why should they focus on yours? There are four paradigm shifts. (Please note a full transcript of the interview is available below. If you write genre books, the chances are a subscriber would love to know what books in that genre you’ve loved as an author. Honestly, if somebody has signed up for your list, it’s proof that they do want to hear from you. In an exclusive interview with us, he explains how he was able to build an author mailing list of 10,000 readers, from scratch, in less than a week. A reader should be able to tell by the most cursory look at your attractor channel (social media account, ads) what your books are about. Want a 100% free LitRPG novella? Invite input into characters, plot turns (fiction), ideas and quandries (nonfiction) word choices and formats (poetry). Derek’s campaign cost him around $600-700 (full breakdown here). Create a warm automated email sequence that encourages readers to interact with you. What happens if Facebook, TikTok or Instagram goes bust or their popularity wanes? If you send an email with information about where your story world came from with interesting facts that connect to your book, readers will find that both interesting and valuable. Thank you for your time. The other part of delivery satisfaction is keeping your promises. covers that aren’t working well or feedback that we’ve observed in reviews or just things from general life. The key is to ensure it’s a book they’ll actually like and not a historical fiction novel on sale when you write science fiction. Set up your author mailing list and create an automated email sequence, 5. For example: Also note that all of the above are “asks” and as mentioned earlier, you should always balance the ratio of ask to give. the right readers for your books. It doesn’t have to be books. You cannot achieve this if you start charging for your book too early as a first-time author. Non-Facebook Ways to Build Your Author Mailing List. And all the research shows that the closest connection we can have with the reader is by email. The purpose of the autoresponder sequence is to “warm” your new subscribers to you and your work, and build on the all important knowing, liking, trusting. It’s a marketplace. Your email address will not be published. When somebody does contact you, make sure you respond in a voice appropriate to the content you’ve been publishing for those readers and in a way that satisfies their needs. All you have to do to get your hands on a copy of Side Quest: The Goblin Village is sign up to my mailing list below.. Wondered what happened to Samuel, Arthur and Elaine in the run-up to the bandit attack? Readers already know, like and trust you and your work. They may know nothing about you, or your other books–or they may already be a fan. I started a really simple WordPress page and made the music MP3s available as the download. Create a Compelling Optin Gift for Your Readers. We often hear fears along the lines of: “I have nothing interesting to say” or “Why would readers care about my stuff?” Or more technical fears like “I can’t wrap my head around mailing list software”. With your own mailing list, you have individual email addresses that you can use to make contact, either in bulk or individually. This is also one of the techniques that allowed indie author ML Banner to reach #1 on Amazon with his first fiction book. The author is not pushing their work on readers, the readers are asking “when is the next book out?”. You have to do all the publishing work. Others might offer a short story, or a character guide for an ongoing series. When we talk about offering readers “value”, that doesn’t mean giving away lots of free content but that what you provide is compelling to that kind of reader. Eventually, clean up your list by telling your subscribers there are no more giveaways. When the time comes, it is just a matter of sending an email or other message about the book and where to purchase. The ultimate relationship you want with your readers is the one where their imagination and yours come together in the pages of your books. KingSumo is preferable for collecting a large amount of email signups quickly. See part two here: Growing a Reader Mailing List. And the best way to do this is to build a huge and devoted fan base that you can reach through email. ALLi is also pleased to present a discounted ticket rate for its members. Whitelisting is something you need to communicate to your readers, preferably on a screen just after sign-up, as well as in regular emails and autoresponders. But here is a list of topic and content ideas inspired by the post: The list of what you could include is almost endless. Many authors use MailChimp because it has a free tier for up to 2000 subscribers. Your attractor content must be carefully crafted to hook the right readers (pay attention to images as well as words) and have real value. From there, you continue to satisfy their need for entertainment, knowledge or inspiration, even more. Give a brief review of each one and an Amazon link where they can buy the book. I moved my offer to sign up to the very front of my books. You know, it’s a great, kind of, call to action that can summarize the whole email in a sentence or two i.e. A subject line that shows up in the inbox preview and encourages people to click. Yes, each email is like a mini-publication. My unsubscribe rate would go up. Email isn’t dead. In business terms, it’s also described as a “gift for prospects”. You’re aiming to delight them so much that they move from this social media channel into one of your own, owned email funnels. The rub, of course, is that mailing lists are slow to build, just as they take time and effort to maintain. At least, until recently. Social media definitely has its uses but authors do best, over the long term, when we use social media to attract interest (see ACCESSS marketing below) but focus on getting those interested readers to sign up and subscribe to a mailing list that we own ourselves. We now do it in the form of a conversation between the two of us, so it’s light and funny. You've written a book, now's the time set it up for success by planning your book launch! There are other platforms you can promote your giveaway on such as StumbleUpon’s Paid Discovery, Reddit’s advertising platform and promoted posts on Twitter. Derek has been a longtime friend of Reedsy, and been in the business of publishing for quite a few years now (check out his cool site creativindie.com). They review positively and spread the word because you’ve done the work–craft work and emotional labor–that gains precious reader access and loyalty–and continues to nurture it. And finally, the biggest paradigm is that you can launch your book more than once. Let’s begin with a quote from our latest guidebook, by ML Ronn in his 150 Self-Publishing Questions Answered: “A mailing list is still pretty important these days. And I’ll show you how. What sort of influence do you want to have? You want them on there because they want to be. The obvious one is that you are giving away prizes that are genuinely sought after, so you will generate a lot of traffic. You can customise this form, share it on your author website, or any social media platforms you have. With deep thanks to all of our members who took the time to respond and special thanks to Heide Goody, Joseph Alexander, and … And NO author list builder offers readers as dedicated as ours! People flit and scroll through social posts but engage much more deeply with words and images that land in an inbox. However, it is not uncommon for authors to spend this amount on marketing with no clearly defined results over a much longer time period. Someone who has had some success in this area is Derek Murphy. As well as offering it on social, it can also be given out at the end of talks or events, and you might even want to carry a physical copy around with you to hand to strangers who ask what you do. (This also helps the author ecosystem as chances are, the subscriber will go purchase some of those books). For novelists, I advise you to engage your readers by talking about your characters and then transitioning that into a personal story about why that character exists. That breaks the “know, like, trust” chain you’ve so carefully cultivated. He’s a great book designer and has helped a lot of authors with their marketing efforts. I have also, recently, segmented my list into fiction and non-fiction and send out 2 newsletters. “The nice thing about giveaways is that other people share for you. An email list is a list of email addresses of people that have subscribed to your blog, website, or other channel. ACCESS marketing is a sequence of progressive actions that takes your readers from discovering you or your writing to engaging with you and subscribing to your email list. So, instead of ‘Hi’, it’s ‘Hi, Sacha’. Sure you do. What’s the purpose of your writing? Also provided is a link to their websites. Nothing is more powerful than your own mailing list. Averages 500-3000 reader emails. I talk about things around the book and about my writing process. With deep thanks to all of our members who took the time to respond and special thanks to Heide Goody, Joseph Alexander, and Wendy H Jones for their contributions. In order to build a list, you need to give people a … Building an email list is one of the best methods to make money online in 2020, if done correctly. It’s much easier than trying to build great content that people share. This will be a way of finding out where your true fanbase lies. Participate in a Bookfunnel giveaway. A well-built, carefully curated email list is, in fact, one of the most potent author platforms it is possible to build. What are your strategies for growing your author mailing list? After uploading your book into their system, check out their list of multi-author … You’re asking your readers to spend their money or their time in reading and reviewing your book. But also, you are “making friends” with other authors in your genre, and we all know how vital author collaboration can be. With this positive relationship in place you can also offer followers other premium products and services as well as books (See ten business models for authors). ALLi Director Orna Ross and Boni Wagner-Stafford attend DBW on behalf of indies globally. And that’s my whole business model for eight or nine years now. These sites keep track of how many people are clicking on the link and signing up to the author mailing list. > Book Marketing That said, down to business. Use Feedburner Another easy means of starting to collect email subscribers is to use Google’s Feedburner to … The difference with this approach is after the initial costs, you can instantly reconnect with your subscribers for free in the future. Below is a summarized transcript. at the bottom, it’s eye-catching, it will summarize the content and they’ll go, oh yeah, I can leave a review. We write good emails when we think of them as forming part of our body of work. The best way to grow your email list is to put a nice, juicy worm on your hook. Rafflecopter, on the other hand, encourages a wide variety of sharing techniques and is preferable for smaller contests designed for specific purposes. Your giveaway subscribers won't be receptive to the 'hard sell'. This episode is all about building a solid email list for your author business. Bad book reviews — they happen to all authors! "You need to be getting thousands of downloads to get hundreds of reviews". KingSumo, RaffleCopter and Gleam are the three softwares you can use to organize giveaways. Where you’re sending out hundreds or thousands of emails, as authors do, it’s easy to get tagged as a spammer by email providers. And you can build it. Ask questions. Links to the author’s reviews, books, samples and press clippings accompany a short Bio for each author. You could use a books-package giveaway to build a list before any product launch. Bring them into the coolest aspects of being a writer (spare them your headaches, challenges and down days, unless you can make this amusing or otherwise entertaining). Make sure you include indie authors in your list! But in email, you are really talking to one person at a time, since each person opens their email in the privacy of their inbox. I’ll show you how to set up your email list and signup form on your website so you can start to build a list of readers, develop a relationship with them over time, and sell more books! There’s one thing we haven’t mentioned yet: costs. • Attract – offer social media or other posts that your ideal reader can easily find or trip across online and freely consume. Here's how to build an author mailing list of 10,000 readers, from scratch, in less than a week. When you’ve solved their problem, entertained, informed or inspired them, as appropriate, ask their permission to add them to your email list, explaining the benefits of subscribing. The emails should perfectly match the social media communications or ads that originally attracted and engaged them and we must also write in a way that replicates and reinforces the writing style and creative intentions of our books. Maybe I missed it, but I'd love to take Derek back in time to have him think through his effort to gain the first 10 people (not family or friends) for his email list, the next 20, 50, 100. Step 2: Create an Awesome Sign Up Form. For example: Those are just three things you can share in your emails that cost you nothing to create and readers will find interesting and valuable. “My co-author & I have neglected our mailing list horribly in the past, but we re-booted this year. Quick note to Ricardo: You've really upped Reedsy game these past few months. The final, the fifth thing, is always use a P.S. You can also target people who like those books or authors specifically. This is Derek’s tactic: “I made an email list of maybe 500 book bloggers in my genre and all the ‘BookTubers’ who talk about and review YA books on YouTube… those are influencers, who have the traffic and platforms already, so I email all them about the contest”. Once you surpass that though, it can get pricy. You’re not pushing their work on readers, the readers are asking “when is the next book out?”. The solution is the same as when it comes to getting your book across the line: feel the fear and press the publish button anyway. It provides a variety of ways in which a contestant can bid for prizes including referring friends for extra entries or asking contestants to write a blog post on why they want to enter the competition, which in turn can be shared. If you do choose to do this, remember that your social media offerings are a separate format for your words, and you’ll need to block out time to properly craft them—and what ends up in the book will need editing to fit. 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