One of my writer friends made an interesting comment the other day. We were talking about email newsletters, and he pointed out that Jordan Peterson’s 5th rule, “don’t let your children do anything that makes you dislike them,” also applies to newsletter subscribers.
Obviously, I don’t think that my newsletter subscribers are my children. But the principle is the same. We tend to care more about people that we like, and are more willing to spend time and energy on them. When we dislike people, we either try to avoid them or we end up harboring resentment in some fashion.
My goal for my author newsletter is to attract casual readers who have read, at most, only one or two of my books, and convert them into loyal fans who eagerly await my next book. Until now, one of the things I’ve advertised is that I have a free and a 99¢ book with every newsletter. I have enough books out that I’ve been able to keep that up for the last two years or so, although most of the freebies have been short stories.
But I worry that I’ve been training my newsletter subscribers to only pick up the free books, or to wait until the book goes free. That’s a problem. I don’t mind giving away free books from time to time, but I’m not going to give away the store, and if readers come to expect that then I run the risk of breaking Jordan Peterson’s 5th rule.
So I’ve decided to make a change to my email newsletter, or at least to how I advertise it. Instead of giving away a free and 99¢ book in every newsletter, I’m going to look into other ways to provide value and convert casual readers into fans. Don’t get me wrong—I still intend to share free books from time to time. Just not with every newsletter, or not a different selection with each one.
I do want to share more book recommendations, especially since one of my new year’s resolutions is to read a novel every week. What I’ll probably do is set up another blog using MyBookTable with all of the book links, so as not to mix my own books with the ones I’m recommending, and include those in a newsletter every one or two months.
In the last few months, I’ve also been sharing updates on my writing with each newsletter. That may be a better place to share that stuff than here on my blog. What do you think? Blogs are better for public discussions, since they’re indexed by search engines and usually have a comment section with each post.
Either way, I definitely need to update my newsletter templates. I cranked those out way back in 2015, and they’re not too pretty. My girlfriend is a programmer, so maybe I could persuade her to help me out with that. But first, I should probably figure out all what I want to put in them.
What do you think? Are there things you’ve seen in other author newsletters that you’d like to see in mine? Any other interesting ideas or approaches? I’m open to anything that adds value without giving away the store.
